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Richard Grant Wine - Wine production glossary Category: Food and Drink > Wine Date & country: 28/10/2013, USA Words: 301

Demi-sec
Champagne term signifying that the product is medium-sweet. See Extra-Dry.

Dessert wine
Any of a class of sweet wines, usually fortified to higher alcohol content, which are served with desserts or as after dinner drinks. Common dessert wines are Ports, Sherries, Muscatel, Madeira, Today and Angelica.

Dionysus
Greek god of wine and revelry. See Bacchus to avoid confusing the two Gods.

Decant
The act of pouring an older wine carefully from a bottle in which loose sediment would otherwise become stirred up. After carefully pouring off the clear wine into a pitcher until only the sediment remains behind, the sediment can be rinsed out of the bottle. Then the decanted wine can be returned to the clean bottle for serving. Decanting is most often done within 1 hour of serving. It is almost never necessary to remove sediment from wines that have been in bottle for less than three or four years. However, decanting can be used for two reasons.

Delaware
American hybrid wine grape grown throughout the eastern U.S. and used for both still and sparkling wine. Delaware is also very pleasant to eat as a table grape even though the berry size is small and each grape contains seeds.

De Chaunac
(duh-sh

Cuvee
A given lot or batch on wine usually held in a single tank or large cask. Cuvee often refers to a specific blend of still wines that was blended purposely for later champagne making.

Cutting
(Noun) A piece of grape vine, usually 10 to 20 inches long, cut from a dormant vine in wintertime for use in propagating new vines in spring. Cuttings are taken only from last year's growth (never two-year old wood) and are a convenient way to store and handle the vine buds. It is the buds on the cutting that have the ability to begin new vine growth next year. Grafted or budded properly, each bud can become a new vine that is genetically identical to all the other vines from the original vine. See Clone, Wrotham Pinot.

Cremant
A category of champagne or sparkling wine that contains less carbonation than standard champagnes or sparkling wines. Cremant Champagnes are usually quite light and fruity.

Crisp
Tasting term to describe good acidity and pleasant taste without excessive sweetness.

Crust
The sediment, often crystalline, which forms inside wine bottles during long bottle aging. It is often brittle and can break into pieces as the wine is being poured. It is usually composed of natural cream of tartar.

Cooperage
The common term in general use to describe any container used for aging and storing wine. Cooperage includes barrels and tanks of all sizes.

Cream of tartar
A natural component of grape juice and wine. The chemical name is potassium bi-tartrate. Removed from wine as a by-product, cream of tartar is used in cooking and as a component of baking powder.

Cognac
Wine district in western France in which most of the wine produced is not consumed directly but is distilled instead. The brandy produced from distillation in this region is also called Cognac and this product is widely regarded throughout the world as one of the finest quality distilled alcohol drinks available anywhere.

Cold stable
A wine that can be kept in a refrigerator without forming sediment or crystals is said to be cold stable.

Compound bud
The normal type of bud that appears at each node along a vine shoot or cane. It contains not one but three separate, partially developed shoots with rudimentary leaves in greatly condensed (microscopic) form. Usually, only the middle one grows when the bud pushes out in the spring. The others break dormancy only if the primary shoot is damaged or other abnormality occurs.

Clos
(pronounced klo) In France, a walled or enclosed vineyard. The word is now used in other countries as part of a fanciful name for a winery or wine label.

Closed-top tanks
Fermentation tanks with permanent tops. These always have doors or vents in the top to facilitate cleaning and for monitoring fermentations.

Coarse
A wine tasting term referring to an unfinished, rough or crude wine which is difficult to drink.

Clarity
In wine evaluation, clarity is a subjective term for the absence of cloudiness or sediment in a wine.

Claret
Common name, especially in Britain, for the red wines of Bordeaux.

Chloroplasts
Oval, chlorophyll-bearing structures inside the cells of leaves. Chloroplasts act as tiny factories within the leaves -- to produce sugar for plant growth from CO2 and water. The energy used for this conversion is sunlight, captured by the chlorophyll.

Chianti
Medium to full-bodied red table wine of Tuscany in Italy. Chiantis are blends, but the primary grape variety used is Sangiovese.

Chateau
French word meaning a wine estate, used especially in the Bordeaux region of France.

Chenin Blanc
A white grape variety widely planted in many regions of the world. Produces the distinctive Loire wines in France as well as a great number of blends in California, Australia, South Africa and other countries. It can produce a high tonnage of average quality wine grapes under the conditions of California's hot and irrigated San Joaquin Valley. For that reason, Chenin Blanc came to be one of the backbone varieties of white winemaking, especially for low priced wines in California. It has mostly given way to Chardonnay for that purpose in recent years.

Charmat Process
A process for producing sparkling wine or champagne cheaply and in large quantities by conducting the secondary fermentation in large tanks rather than individual bottles. Eugene Charmat, a Frenchman, developed the process in 1910. It is widely used all over the world for making every day, lower priced sparkling wines.

Character
A wine tasting term referring to the style of taste.

Charbono
A red wine grape originally from Italy but now grown elsewhere as well. It produces full-bodied, often tannic wines, highly prized by some; yet it hasn't achieved widespread acceptance around the world.

Chardonnay
This is clearly the world's greatest white wine grape variety. Chardonnay produces many of the finest white wines, both still and sparkling, all around the globe.

Chablis
A wine region in central France named for the village near its center. By appellation rules, these wines are produced 100% from Chardonnay.

Chancellor
A French-American hybrid wine grape grown throughout the eastern U.S. It produces a fruity, medium bodied, red wine.

Chaptalization
The act of adding sugar to grape juice or must early in the fermentation to correct for natural deficiencies in poor vintages when grape ripening is slow or incomplete. It is illegal in California and Oregon, but is permitted in other states by U.S. law and by other nations of the world.

Chablis
A generic name used in America for common white table wines (especially blends containing more than one grape variety) throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Originally, Chablis was used in America (as well as terms like Burgundy, Champagne, Rhine Wine, Claret, etc) to describe the type of wine in the bottle to new wine drinkers. It helped to familiarize, and therefore, introduce wine to people who had not drunk it previously. Wine producers in Chablis, Burgundy, etc. in France objected to the practice but could not prevent it legally.

Central Valley
The common name for the San Joaquin Valley, the largest wine growing region in California. The Central Valley produces 80 to 85% of California's annual wine gallonage.

Centurion
A wine variety developed at the U.C. Davis campus by crossing Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache and Carignane. The intention was to produce a Cabernet-like wine that could be grown in the Central Valley. Carignane and Grenache are well suited to the Central Valley climate, but Cabernet Sauvignon requires a cooler growing location. As in the case of Ruby Cabernet, it was thought that the result of the cross might retain the quality of Cabernet wine and the viticultural characteristics of the other two varieties. Centurion hasn't yet seen widespread acceptance, but the variety is a definite improvement over most traditional Central Valley varieties.

Catawba
An American hybrid wine grape grown in the eastern U.S. wine regions and used to make sparkling wines, ros

Cayuga White
An American hybrid wine grape grown in many eastern U.S. wine regions. Cayuga White produces wines of greater delicacy than Catawba. It is used for high quality white table wines and blends in the eastern US.

Cask
Any wooden container used for wine aging or storage. The term includes barrels, puncheons, butts, pipes, etc.

Capacity
The quantity, as opposed to quality, of grapevine growth and total crop produced and ripened. See also vigor, which is used in contrast to capacity.

Carbohydrate
The technical name for a class of compounds composed of carbon along with hydrogen and oxygen in their 2

Carbon dioxide (CO2)
A heavy gas that occurs naturally in air. It gives carbonated drinks their bubbles and, as dry ice (frozen CO2), it is used to keep things very cold. Vine leaves produce sugar from CO2 and water, using sunlight as their source of energy. This sugar is the ultimate source of energy used by the vine for growth and grape production.

Cap stem
The small length of stem that connects each individual grape berry to its bunch.

Cap
A tiny green cover on an individual, unopened grape flower in a cluster on the vine. The cap loosens and then falls off, exposing the pinhead-size, female ovary and releasing the yellow, pollinating (male) anthers of an individual grape flower. When this cap falls off, allowing the yellow anthers to open, the flower is said to be in bloom.

Cap
The floating solids (skins and bits of stem) in a tank of fermenting red wine. The floating solids bind together forming a thick mat, which must be wetted at least daily during fermentation of red wine in order to extract the maximum amount of color and flavor from the skins into the wine. Failure to wet the cap during fermentation usually produces lighter, less flavorful and less tannic red wines, which have a shorter shelf life.

Cane
The mature (tan or brown, not green) shoot of a vine. If the color is green, it's a shoot; if the color is brown, it's a cane.

Bung
The primary closure for barrels, hammered into place with a wooden hammer. Bungs are normally made of hardwood (but softer than the oak used for barrel staves to avoid damaging the bunghole when opening and closing the barrel). When bungs are to be removed and replaced repeatedly, winemakers now use bungs made of silicone rubber and they work like a charm.

Bunghole
The hole in the side of a wine barrel through which the barrel is filled and emptied. In barrel manufacture, coopers always use at least one very wide barrel stave (the bung stave) somewhere in the group of staves making up the circumference of a barrel. The bung stave has to be wide enough to allow boring the bunghole without affecting the strength of that stave.

Brilliant
A sensory evaluation term to describe a wine that is crystal clear and absolutely free from sediment or cloudiness.

Bud
Small swelling on a grapevine shoot or cane from which a new shoot develops.

Bud break
Also Bud Burst. The action of new vine buds swelling, opening and beginning new vine growth in spring.

Breeding
Snobbish term referring to the parentage of certain wine grapes. Yep, it finally happened

Brandy
The alcoholic liquid obtained from distillation of wine.

Breathing
The act of allowing a bottle of wine to stand for a few minutes to an hour or so after pulling the cork but before serving it. It is often noticed that wines which exhibit off odors or tastes when first opened may be improved by air exposure prior to serving. Experienced tasters claim that very old bottles of red wines should always be opened an hour prior to serving the wine. Aeration may be enhanced by pouring the newly opened wine into a pitcher with splashing prior to replacing the wine into the bottle. Very young wines rarely need air contact and aren't usually allowed to breathe before being consumed.

Bloom
The grape flower, or blossom. The term also refers to the time of grape flowering in the spring.

Bloom
The grayish, powdery film that occurs naturally on grapes in the field, and which contains wild yeast and dust. Brush your finger across the skin of a ripe grape and you'll see this bloom easily.

Bouquet
Smell or fragrance in wine that has its origins in the wine production or aging methods. This is in contrast to Aroma, which comes not from aging or handling, but from the grapes themselves.

Blanc de blancs
A Champagne or Sparkling Wine term referring to white wine made from only white (usually Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc) grapes.

Blanc de noir
A Champagne or Sparkling Wine term referring to white wine made from black (Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier or, ahem, Wrotham Pinot) grapes.

Blending
Combining two or more wine varieties, wine types or wine lots for the purpose of correcting (or covering up) some deficiency in one of them. Also, to improve the final blend by a harmonious addition of some other wine which can add a desirable feature to the combination.

Black rot
Fungus disease of grape vines. Kills 'em dead, too.

Bitter
Subjective tasting term. Bitterness usually comes from excessive tannin in wine and is sensed by taste buds along the sides of the tongue at the extreme back.

Berry
Common name given to an individual grape.

Big
Subjective tasting term that refers to a heavily flavored, often tannic and alcoholic wine.

Binning
Storage of newly bottled wine or Champagne in bins -- for bottle aging prior to labeling and shipping to market.

Beaune
The

Bentonite
A purified natural clay that is used in fining white wines for the purpose of correcting heat instability. When stirred into a white wine, the Bentonite particles quickly glom onto the larger molecules of protein in the wine, collecting them as the Bentonite settles to the bottom of the wine tank. Later, the act of removing the Bentonite from the tank by racking or filtration removes the excessive protein from the wine. It was these larger proteins in the wine that had caused heat instability, so Bentonite treatment corrects the original heat instability of the wine. Bentonite is never used for red wines because the red pigments of wine tend to stick to the Bentonite also. Heavy Bentonite use in red wine would effectively destroy the red color of the wine.

Bead
A colloquial term referring to the bubbles that float in groups on top of a fermenting wine or Champagne/Sparkling Wine in the glass.

Baum
A system for measuring the sugar content of grape juice by its density. It is not easy to use because the numbers aren't easy to handle

BATF
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - the U.S. federal agency that historically collected alcohol taxes and administered wine regulations. After the insane terrorist attacks of 9-11-01, BATF was reorganized to deal primarily with firearms control, leaving wine regulations under the control of the Tobacco and Tax Bureau (TTB).

Barrel fermenting
The act of fermenting white grape juice in barrels instead of using the more usual stainless steel tanks. Red wines are never fermented in barrels because of the necessity to ferment red wines in contact with the grape skins. It is virtually impossible to move grape skins in and out of a barrel through the small bunghole and nobody attempts to do that a second time.

Barreling down
The act of placing a wine into barrels and sealing them for aging.

Barolo
A big, dark, tannic and heavy red wine grown and produced near the town of Barolo in the Piedmont region of Italy. Often seen as one of Italy

Banyuls
The most famous dessert wines of France (if Sauternes and Barsac are not included as dessert wines). Banyuls wines are similar to light tawny Port.

Barbera
A wine grape best known for producing red wines in the Piedmont district of Italy. It is also grown in other countries and is used as one of the best red varieties in California's central valley. It also excels in many of the vineyards of Amador County in California.

Balance
A subjective term used in wine evaluation. A wine in which the tastes of acid, sugar, tannin, alcohol and flavor are in harmony is said to be in balance.

Australasia
Australia and New Zealand, taken together.

Axil
see leaf axil.

Bacchus
Roman god of wine. Not to be confused (though it often is) with Dionysus, who was the Greek god of wine before the age of Rome.

Baco Noir
A French hybrid wine variety, used primarily in the eastern U.S. for dry, red table wines.

Bacterial
A tasting term often used by wine judges to describe wines with unpleasant, but ill defined off odors or flavors.

Aurore
(uh-r

Atmosphere
Unit of measure for pressure inside a bottle of Sparking Wine or Champagne. 1 Atmosphere equals 14.7 pounds per square inch (the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level in the world). Commercial sparkling wines commonly contain 4 to 6 atmospheres of CO2 pressure at room temperature.

Astringency
Sensation of taste, caused by tannins in wine, which is best described as mouth drying, bitter or puckery.

Argols
Name given to raw cream of tartar crystals found in chunks adhering to the inside walls and bottoms of wine tanks. Historically, the primary source of the world's cream of tartar used in cooking and manufacturing has been this by-product of wine production.

Appellation controlee (AC/AOC)
French wine laws that dictate which varieties can be planted in specific regions, certain production methods, etc. These tight controls are not a guarantee of quality, unfortunately.

Appley nose
A tasting term that describes an aroma in wine reminiscent of fresh apples. Most often this character is limited to white table wines, usually Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc.

Aramon
A European wine grape best known not for its wine quality but for its original use as a parent in producing the hybrid rootstock AXR-1. AXR-1 was the predominately used rootstock in California's coastal counties during the mid to late 1900's until a new biotype of the Phylloxera root aphid appeared. That biotype was able to attack and kill AXR-1 grapevines, and AXR-1 is no longer recommended for use in commercial vineyards.

Appearance
A term used in sensory evaluation of wine to describe whether a wine is crystal clear (brilliant), cloudy, or contains sediment. In this context, appearance has nothing to do with color.

Appellation
A term used to describe the vineyard location where the grapes were grown for a specific wine. It can refer to a broad region, such as Napa Valley in California or Bordeaux in France. Or, it can refer to a more tightly defined sub-region like Oak Knoll within Napa Valley or M

Amphora
A distinctively shaped jar that was used for storing and transporting wine in Greek and Roman times. Many have been recovered from the Mediterranean floor in perfect condition by modern divers, some still containing traces of the wine or oil they once held.

Aperitif wine
Any wine served before a meal. Traditionally, aperitifs were vermouths and other similar wines flavored with herbs and spices.

Ampelography
A book that describes the structural characteristics of various varieties of grape vines. Used for identification of vine varieties in the field.

Amontillado
A type of Spanish sherry, medium in color and sweetness between Fino (light and dry) and Olorosso (heavier and sweet). Amontillados are known for a distinctively nutty flavor not possessed by the other Sherry types.

Altus
A town in western Arkansas for which the state's primary viticultural area takes its name.

Amador
Name of the primary viticultural county in California's Sierra foothills. The area is best known for Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc wines.

Aligot
A white wine grape used in various blends in many countries but best known for its fruity, light wines from Burgundy in France.

Alliers
Forested region in central France from which come oak barrels of the same name. The Departement of Alliers contains the forest of Troncais. The wood is generally tighter-grained than oak from other regions.

Aleatico
A wine grape usually used for sweet dessert wines because of its pungent, Muscat-like flavor. The Italian Vino Santos are made from this variety.

Alicante Bouchet
A red wine grape, originally from Spain, used in France's Burgundy region to add color to Burgundy blends when necessary. Also used in some central California table wines for the same purpose. Alicante wines often lack flavor and the wines are generally of lower quality and price.

Advection Fog
Fog which forms in shallow horizontal layers when warm, moist air is cooled from below, usually by passing over cold water. This type of fog is typical along west coasts of the world's continents in summer. California, Australia, Chile and France are example wine growing regions whose climate is tempered by advection fog, which greatly improves their wine quality.