volatile acidity of a wine is its total concentration of volatile acids, those naturally occurring organic acids of wines that are separable by distillation. Wine’s most common volatile acid by far is acetic acid (more than 96%), which is why it is used as the routine measure of volatile acidity (VA). A few other acids such as formic, propionic, succinic, and lactic, normally present in trace amounts in wines, are also volatile. The EU limit for VA (expressed as acetic) is 1.2 g/l for red wine and 1.08 g/l for white and rosé.
