Wine Terms we should know

Wine Terms we should know

Acidity Sometimes called the sour factor, acidity refers to the tartness that is a result of the citric, malic, tartaric or lactic acid of the grapes. The acidity also acts as a preservative.

Acetobacter Genus of bacteria of the family Bacteriaceae. The organisms oxidize alcohol to acetic acid.

Anthocyanins The pigment in red wine grapes

Angel s Share The portion of a wine in an aging barrel that is lost to evaporation.

Aftertaste The flavour that remains in your mouth after you have swallowed the wine.

ABV-Alcohol by Volume The amount of alcohol expressed as a percentage of the total volume of wine.

Appellation A geographic region where a wine's grapes are grown and made into wine.

Aperitif Alcoholic beverages consumed before meals as appetizers.

Aroma The smell of the wine, especially during the first year, as opposed to the bouquet which develops later during the aging and fermenting process. The aroma can be fruity, smoky, floral, etc.

Agrafe(uh-GRAF) A metal clap used to hold the temporary cork in place in sparkling wines

Alembic Copper Pot still

Acetic Acid A volatile organic acid often encountered in food, this is the main acid responsible for the flavor of vinegar. From this you'll have gathered that it is not a desirable component of wine. If you leave a bottle of wine open for a couple of weeks, a bug called Acetobacter will turn the alcohol into acetic acid, and you'll have vinegar.

Assemblage [Ah sem blahj] A French term for the process of making a wine by blending the component parts. In old world wine regions this might mean mixing together different barrels containing wine from portions of the same vineyard; in Australia it might involve blending wines from regions thousands of miles apart.

Aqua vitae Latin for Water of Life

Barrel fermentation The process of fermenting grape juice in small oak barrels. Especially when the barrels are new, this can add complexity and oak-derived flavors to the finished wine.

Barrique Small oak barrel holding 225 litres (300 75cl bottles) of wine, traditionally used in Bordeaux; now increasingly used in other regions worldwide.

Bacchus Roman god of wine.

Baumé Scale for measuring the concentration of grape sugars, indicating a potential alcohol by volume, commonly used in France.

Batonnage French term for the stirring of the lees in barrels during winemaking.

Beerenauslese Wine producers go through their vineyards and select individual grapes to make wine from; Beerenausle, means literally 'selected berries'. These grapes will be over-ripe, and usually affected by botrytis. This rather fanatical practice results in luscious, complex and very expensive sweet white wines. A similar selection is carried out by the better producers of botrytised wines in the Loire and Sauternes regions of France.

Bentonite A type of clay used for fining.

Berry Common name given to an individual grape.

Blind tasting Single-blind tasting is when you know the identity of the wines in the tasting, but their identities are masked; double-blind is when the identities are hidden and you don't know which wines are in the tasting.

Body Tasting term describing the weight of the wine in the mouth. A full bodied wine will have good concentration, lots of alcohol and plenty of extract; a light bodied wine won't. The full bodied wines tend to get all the attention in big tasting events and competitions, even if they aren't the sort of wines you'd necessarily want to spend an evening with.

Brut French word meaning 'bone dry' in Champagne. Not really used for other wines.

Botrytis "Botrytis Cinerea", a mold or fungus that attacks grapes in humid climate conditions, causing the concentration of sugar and acid content by making grapes at a certain level of maturity shrivel

Bodega Spanish Wine cellar

Blush Wine Rose Wine

Blanc de Blancs White wine made from white grapes Blanc de Noirs White wine made from black grapes

Brix Scale for measuring concentration of grape sugars, commonly used in the USA.

Blending Mixing of two or more similar wines/alcohols to obtain a better quality and taste.

Bloom The whitish powdery film which occurs on grapes containing wild yeast.

Bunghole The hole in the side of the wine barrel through which the barrel is filled and emptied.

Bung Stopper for barrels made of wood or rubber.

Butt A large wine barrel 100 gallons in capacity.

Carbonic maceration Process widely used in Beaujolais where uncrushed grapes are allowed to begin fermentation in a protective atmosphere of CO2. What happens is that the largely intact grapes begin fermenting inside their own skins, which produces light, fruity reds for early drinking.

Cage Wire hood on Champagne bottle.

Cava Spanish for sparkling wine.

Cave Underground cellar.

Chai Overground cellar.

Cépage French term for grape variety

Cask Barrel used for fermentation and maturation usually made of Oak wood.

Chaptalization Winemaking trick in which the alcoholic strength of a wine is increased by the addition of sugar to crushed grapes before fermentation takes place. Can be useful if your grapes aren't ripe enough. Occurs commonly in Beaujolais, Bordeaux and Burgundy, although the best producers will often shun this practice. Named after the Frenchman who invented the process, Jean- Antione Chaptal.

Cork Corks are the traditional way of closing wine bottles. Cork is a natural product which comes from the bark of a type of evergreen oak tree, Quercus suber. Portugal produces over half the world s cork. A very important quality of cork is its elasticity, so if it is compressed it will try to regain its original size

Corked /Corky Have you ever opened a bottle, and instead of clean, fruity aromas found that it smells of moldy cellars and damp cardboard? This is what a corked wine smells like.

Corkage A fee charged by a hotel/banquets for serving and opening of wine that a customer brought with him.

Cooperage The process of Barrel making

Crémant (France) A sparkling wine made by the Méthode Champenoise.

Cru (France) A term meaning 'growth' which is used in a number of French regions as a means of classifying wines. In Burgundy the best vineyards are Grands Crus, although in Bordeaux the term relates to the châteaux that own the land; they are the Cru Classé estates. In Champagne the term is applied to whole villages.

Crust The sediment formed by vintage Port.

Capsule Once lead, now foil or plastic-film, which covers and protects the cork and bottle neck. Wax is also sometimes used, particularly for vintage Port.

Congeners The colouring and flavouring matter in wines.

Débourbage (France) [de bor bahj] The process of allowing white wine must to settle prior to racking off the wine, thereby reducing the need for fining or filtration. The must is then racked to another tank for fermentation.

Dégorgement (France) [de goorg mun] Part of the process of making sparkling wine. At this stage the bottle is opened after the neck has been frozen. Out flies a plug of frozen wine, containing the dead yeast from the second fermentation which occurs in bottle. The wine is then topped up - dosage - and resealed.

Demi-Sec (France) Medium-dry.

Destemming Also known as Egrappage. The process of removing the stems/stalks from the grape bunches before fermentation. Unripe stems will result in a green, unripe taste in the wine.

Dosage (France) When making a sparkling wine, after dégorgement the wine can be topped up with sugar and wine to reach the desired level of sweetness and flavour. This is dosage.

Decant Aerating the wine by pouring it into another decanter. This also removes any sediment from the wine.

Doux (France) [do] Sweet.

DOM Deo Optimo Maximo, To God most Good Most Great. The term is often found on a Benedictine Bottle.

Egrappage (France) The process of destemming - removing stems/stalks from the grape bunches before fermentation

Eiswein (Germany, Austria) An expensive, labour intensive sweet wine made from frozen grapes, principally in Germany and Austria, but also in Canada where it is called Icewine. The grapes are harvested during the cold of winter, facilitating the removal of much of the water as ice, intensifying the remaining sugar and flavour.

Estufa (Portugal) The estufa are the hothouses where Madiera is made. The heating of the wine is an essential part in the development of the character and flavour of Madeira wine.

Fermentation Yeasts do a really useful job, they eat up sugar in grape juice and excrete alcohol. This is called fermentation

Fining Fining refers to the filtration process in wine making. Wine goes through a clarification and filtration process in order to remove unwanted material.

Frappe Served Frozen or on Crushed Ice

Green wines Wines made from underripe grapes; they lack richness and generosity as well as having a vegetal character. Green wines are infrequently made in the Rhone, although vintages such as 1977 were characterized by a lack of ripening.

Generic wines Wines named after specific geographical region e.g. Chablis, Sauterns.

Late Harvest If you see a wine labelled as 'late harvest' it means that the grapes were harvested later than normal, and thus with a higher sugar level. The wine will probably be quite sweet, although in some cases may have been fermented to dryness, in which case the potential alcohol will be higher. The French term for this is 'vendange tardive', in German it is 'spätlese

Hectare A measurement of land comprising 10000m2 = 2.47 acres = 2 football fields.

Hogshead In Australia this is a 300 liter barrel.

Ice-wine A principally Canadian style of wine, named after the Eisweins made in Germany and Austria.

Flavones Colourless crystalline tricyclic compounds, generally present in White wines

Jeroboam A large format bottle, and the most confusing of all, for it means different things to different wines. In Bordeaux it is equivalent to six standard bottles, but in Burgundy and Champagne a Jeroboam contains the equivalent of a mere four bottles (a double magnum in Bordeaux).

Kieselguhr A coarse grade earth called kieselguhr, which is commonly used as the filter medium, is deposited on a supporting screen within a filter tank. A mixture of water and kieselguhr may be used to develop the filter bed. Wine is passed through the filter and the bed gradually increases in depth.

Lactic acid The main acid present in yoghurt, and which is also found in varying quantities of wine. It is much softer in flavour than the other two main acids in wine, malic acid and tartaric acid. After alcoholic fermentation, most red wines and some white wines undergo a malolactic fermentation, in which lactic acid bacteria transform the harsher-tasting malic acid into lactic acid. The result is that the wine tastes softer and less acidic

Legs The rivulets of wine that run down inside the glass after it has been swirled. Rich wines high in alcohol show greater viscosity. Also known as Tears and Cathedral Windows.

Lagar Plural 'lagares'. A shallow stone trough traditionally used for the foottreading of grapes. They are still in use in some regions of the Douro, in Portugal. In Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine there is a wonderful old picture of some chaps crushing grapes in a lagar without a stitch of clothing on. I believe they wear shorts these days.

Late bottled vintage A style of Port, first introduced by Quinta do Noval in 1954. It is designed to mimic the vintage style, with less time until release and less expense. The wines are softened by ageing in wood for up to six years and are generally ready for consumption when released. The best, although not the cheapest, examples are labeled 'traditional' or 'unfiltered'. These offer a real glimpse of vintage quality and often continue to improve after release.

Lees The gunk that settles at the bottom of a fermentation or ageing vessel. This consists of dead yeast cells, grape skin fragments and other insoluble material

Liqueur de tirage Mixture of sugar and yeast added to base wine at the time of bottling to induce secondary fermentation in traditional method sparkling wine production.

Liqueur de expedition Solution of cane sugar and older champagne added to the bottle after degorgement to compensate for lost wine.

Madeirization A tasting term. Wines that taste Madeirized - like Madeira - are most probably oxidized and therefore faulty. It generally only occurs in white wines. The resemblance to Madeira comes from the fact that oxidation is an intrinsic aspect of this unique wine. This oxidation occurs as the wines are heated in the estufa, so it may be that wines that taste Madeirized have been the victim of poor storage.

Magnum A big bottle that holds 1.5 liters of wine, equivalent to two full bottles. Rather fun, and wine in magnums is supposed to age better than in standard 75 cl bottles.

Malic acid An acid found in high concentrations in unripe grapes, it has a tart, sharp flavor. It is lost as the grapes ripen, which is one reason why wines from very warm climates often have a low natural acidity and can taste flabby. It is also lost through malolactic fermentation during the winemaking process.

Malolactic fermentation The conversion of the tart, sharp malic acid into the softer, less harsh lactic acid by lactic acid bacteria, which takes place after alcoholic fermentation.

Marc The solid stuff left after pressing grapes, which is also used to describe the spirit made from distilling this.

Muller-Thurgau Also known as Rivaner is a crossing bred in 1882 by Professor Müller from Thurgau in Switzerland. It was once thought to be a crossing of Riesling (mother) and Silvaner (father), although the current belief is that the father was the variety Gutedel (also known as Chasselas).

Mulled wine Heated wine flavoured with spirits

Mutage The addition of alcohol to stop fermentation used to make sweet fortified wines.

Négociant French term for someone who deals in wines. Commonly, small growers who lack the facility to make wine will sell their grapes to a négociant, who then makes, bottles and markets the wine.

New World A term used to describe wines from non-european regions such as Australia, California, Chile, Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand.

Organic Viticulture Like any other branch of agriculture, some winemakers wish to rely less on fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals. Those that meet certain criteria may be labeled as organic. It is often compared to biodynamic viticulture, although this is much more extreme.

Organic wines Wine produced from organically grown grapes

Oenology The science of winemaking.

Pierce's disease A really nasty vine disease caused by a bacterium carried by an insect called the sharpshooter. It is currently causing havoc in Californian vineyards, but fortunately hasn't yet spread to Europe.

Pernospera Fungal disease, commonly known as downy mildew, affecting vines.

ph A measure of the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration in a polar liquid and, hence, the acidity of the liquid. ph is measured on a scale from 0 to 14, where 7 is neutral, below 7 is acidic and above 7 is alkaline.

Pupitre (France) A wine rack which holds bottles in a suitable position for remuage.

Punt The concave indentation in the bottom of certain wine bottles, especially those containing sparkling wine.

Pigeage Punching down of the cap of grape skins formed during fermentation to prevent drying out and encourage the release of colouring matter and tannins. It can be done either manually or mechanically

Racking Traditional method of wine clarification. Sequential transfer of wine to several containers, each transfer leaving behind some particulate matter.

Rehoboam A large format Burgundy and Champagne bottle, equivalent to six standard bottles. In Bordeaux this size is known as a Jeroboam - although in Burgundy and Champagne a Jeroboam contains only four bottles. Confusing!

Refractometer An optical instrument used in the vineyard for measuring must weight of grapes (grape ripeness).

Remuage (France) [rem whaj] An essential step in the production of Champagne. The remuage or riddling process involves gradual turning and inversion of the bottle, bring the lees into the neck prior to their removal.

Remontage Process in red wine making during fermentation when the must is drawn from the bottom of the vat and sprayed onto the floating cap of skins. The purpose is to extract colour and tannins from the skins.

Salmanazar A large format Champagne bottle, equivalent to twelve standard bottles.

Sec French term for 'dry'

Sekt German for sparkling wine

Solera A system for ageing sherry, consisting of a series of barrels (known as butts), arranged next to and top of each other. It's all rather complex, but in simplest terms when wine is drawn off for bottling from an old barrel, this barrel is then topped-up with younger wine from another barrel. Thus, if a solera was set up 100 years ago, the wine that is bottled today would technically contain some wine that was 100 years old.

Spätlese A German term for late harvest. The Germans love rules, and there are a stack load of regulations that wines labelled spätlese must satisfy. Suffice to say, all the consumer needs to know is that these wines will probably have a touch of sweetness, usually with good balancing acidity, unless they are labeled 'trocken', in which case they will be dry and fresh.

Sur Lie If you find these words on a wine label, it means that the wine was aged on the lees: the gunk at the bottom of a barrel or tank that consists mostly of dead yeast cells. It can add complex, yeasty flavors to a white wine

Sommelier A sommelier is a wine expert. Sommeliers have extensive training and maintain wine collections at fine restaurants. Sommeliers will help you pair your meal with the perfect wine.

Stuck fermentation Alcoholic fermentation that has prematurely stopped before the conversion of all sugars.

Sussreserve Sweet, unfermented grape juice that may be added prior to bottling to sweeten wines. Often practiced in Germany and England.

Saignee A term used to describe the process in which the colour of skins of black grapes has been allowed to bleed for a short period into the juice. Often used to produce rosé wines.

Tafelwein (Germany) A low quality classification for German wine, essentially 'table wine'. The best German wines are classified as Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP).

Tannin Collective name for a bitter, astringent group of chemicals that are found in skins, pips and stems of grapes, and also in the oak barrels that are commonly used to age wine in.

Terroir The characteristics of a particular growing region--its soil, water, and climate which determine the quality of the grapes and resulting wine. You could say terroir is the micro climate the varietals grow in, and each vineyard owner tries to improve the ecosystem.

Trocken (German) 'dry'.

Toasting The charcoal that is burned into the inside of wine casks. Also known as Charring or Firing.

Trockenbeerenauslese (Germany, Austria) A sweet Prädikat category which translates literally as "dry berry selected". Essentially it refers to wines made using selected grapes affected by noble rot.

Ullage The air space between the wine and the roof of cask, or in bottle, cork.

Umami There are four basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter and sour. It turns out that there are in fact at least five, and the Japanese have known this for ages. Sake blenders in Japan long ago identified a fifth taste, which they called 'umami' (translated this means 'deliciousness'), and scientists have shown that this is the taste of monsodium glutamate, picked up by glutamate receptors on the tongue. Now you know. Some wines have 'umami' flavours, apparently.

Varietal wines A wine takes its name from the grape it was made from. As an example Zinfandel and Riesling are varietals.

Vin de Pays (France) Essentially 'country wines', there are many very good wines to be found in this category. The category lies below Appellation d'origine Contrôlée and the rapidly disappearing Vin Délimité de Qualité Supérieure, but is distinctly superior to the usually awful Vin de Table.

Vin de Table (France) The lowest category for French wine. By law such wines may not even declare grape varieties or vintage Sommelier Terminology and Tasting Guide on the label - that is if they ever get as far as being bottled. These are the wines that you still see dispensed by the petrol pump appliances en vrac at lowly co-operatives.

Vin doux naturel (France) A style of wine common in the south, vin doux naturel describes fortified wines where grape spirit has been added before completion of fermentation. This action kills the yeast, and the unfermented sugar causes the wine to be sweet.

Vintage The 'vintage' simply refers to the year the grapes were grown. So, for instance, we might describe the year 2000 as a great vintage for Bordeaux as the weather that year was excellent, and many superlative wines were made. When it comes to Champagne, a vintage wine is one that is made from grapes all grown in the year declared on the label, whereas a nonvintage wine is a blend of wines from several years.

Viticulture The agricultural science of growing grapes for the purpose of making wine.

Wine thief A tubular instrument for removing a sample from a cask or barrel. Also called a pipe..

Port Tongs Tongs are long metal graspers, usually made from cast iron with wooden handles, which have a ring at the end. The ring allows one to grasp the neck of a port bottle.

Pisco Colorless or yellowish-to-amber colored grape brandy produced in winemaking regions of Peru and There are many theories about the origin of the name pisco some saying that it takes name from town of Pisco, located on the coast of Peru.

Dunder Yeast-rich foam leftovers from one batch of rum that is used to start the yeast culture of a second batch. It is the traditional yeast source in Jamaican rum Otherwise can be applied as fertilizer.

Taquería (sometimes misspelled as taquiria) is a Spanish word meaning taco shop.

Bocksbeutel Type of wine bottle with the form of a flattened ellipsoid. It is commonly used for wines from Franconia in Germany, but is also used for some Portuguese wines.

Cochylis Genus of moths

Congeners also known as fusel oils, are substances produced during fermentation.congeners are responsible for most of the taste and aroma of distilled alcohols. It has been suggested that these substances contribute to the symptoms of a hangover

Metaxa Greek distilled spirit invented by Spyros Metaxas in 1888. It is a blend of brandy and wine made from sun-dried Sultana and Black Corinth grape varieties Metaxa, exported to over 60 countries, was the first alcoholic drink consumed in space

Starka Traditional dry vodka distilled from rye grain, produced mostly in Poland and Lithuania. Traditional Starka is made from natural (up to 2distillations, no rectification) rye spirit and aged in oak barrels with small addition of lime-tree and apple-tree leaves.

Beeswing Potassium tartrate, a sediment from winemaking, used in cooking as "cream of tartar

Brussels Lace Foam that lingers on the side of your beer glass? It s called Brussels Lace, and supposedly it s a measure of the beer s freshness

Thank you Any Questions