What is Volatile Acidity (V.A.)?

And what should we think when it's in our wine?

I was recently visiting family in the States, and went into a Whole Foods hoping to find a few interesting bottles (but also aware of the potential Gulp Hablo phenomenon).

I grabbed a wine called “Blanc Space” that ticked the boxes of natural wine in appearance: a clear bottle through which I could see a hazy, dark-yellow liquid, and a label bearing nothing except the cuvée name, no information about grapes or location. It was a $16 gamble to see whether it was another Gulp Hablo—in that case, made from biodynamic grapes but very heavily sulfited—or something more interesting.

What shocked me when I opened the bottle was that the wine was heavily marked by V.A.—as in, volatile acidity. Vinegary notes smacked me in the face as I sipped from a glass, and I tried to imagine how any Whole Foods buyer, tasting this wine, thought, “Sure, let’s sell that in an expensive luxury health-based food store.”

Does that buyer simply think that’s how natural wine should taste?

Let’s back up and unpack what V.A. is, why it’s often perceptible in naturally-made wines (indigenous yeasts, no filtering/fining, zero or little added sulfites), and what it means to us as wine drinkers.

Volatile Acidity defined + its causes

Fermenting grapes, left untended or with too much intensity, will develop vinegary qualities. This can be converted into volatile acidity, a common component in wine but one which, if left unchecked, can make it undrinkable.