Dry Wines

[Tyrrell]

While I was familiar with the use of the term dry to denote (white) wines with negligible sugar in them (dry being the opposite of sweet in this case), I had also thought that the term is used to refer to wines that have lots of tannins. I previously thought that this duel meaning was just a peculiarity of the English language, but if I understand you correctly then if I were to drink a young Zinfandel with so many tannins that my mouth feels like it's being sucked into a vacuum cleaner I shouldn't say "Wow! That's really dry!" because I'd be talking about acidity rather than tannins and completely failing to communicate.

Is this correct?

[This message has been edited by Tyrrell (edited 01-05-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Tyrrell (edited 01-05-2004).]