A–M

Acidity
The tart, mouthwatering quality in wine contributed mainly by tartaric and malic acid, which keeps a wine feeling fresh, balanced, and food-friendly rather than flat or heavy.
Appellation
A legally defined geographic region where a wine's grapes must be grown, and often where specific grape varieties and yields are mandated, for the wine to carry that name on its label.
Barrique
A small oak barrel, traditionally around 225 liters, used to age and sometimes ferment wine, imparting spice, vanilla, toast, and structure more intensely than a larger cask would.
Biodynamic
A holistic, organic farming approach that treats the vineyard as a self-sustaining ecosystem, using natural preparations and following a planting and harvesting calendar tied to lunar and cosmic cycles.
Blending
Combining wine from different grape varieties, vineyard plots, or vintages to achieve a desired style, balance, or consistency.
Body
A wine's perceived weight and fullness on the palate — light, medium, or full — driven largely by alcohol, sugar, and extract.
Botrytis
A fungus, sometimes called 'noble rot,' that punctures grape skins and concentrates their sugars, used deliberately to make certain intensely sweet wines like Sauternes.
Brix
A scale measuring the sugar content of grape must, used by winemakers to estimate a wine's potential alcohol level and to decide when to pick a vineyard.
Carbonic Maceration
A winemaking technique that ferments whole, uncrushed grape clusters in a sealed, carbon-dioxide-rich tank, producing soft, fruity, low-tannin red wines like Beaujolais Nouveau.
Chaptalization
The legal, regulated addition of sugar to grape must before or during fermentation to raise a wine's final alcohol level in cooler growing regions.
Clone
A specific genetic variant of a grape variety, selected and propagated for particular traits like yield, flavor, or disease resistance.
Cold Soak
Chilling crushed red grapes before fermentation begins, extracting color and aroma compounds without extracting as much tannin or alcohol.
Cork Taint
A musty, wet-cardboard flaw in wine caused by the compound TCA, usually originating in a contaminated cork, that mutes fruit character even when present at tiny concentrations.
Cru
A French term for a specific, officially recognized vineyard or group of vineyards considered to produce wine of superior quality.
Cuvée
A specific blend or batch of wine, often used on labels to denote a particular lot or bottling, especially in Champagne, where it can also mean the first, best pressing of juice.
Decanting
Pouring wine into a separate vessel before serving, either to separate it from sediment in older wines or to aerate a young, tightly wound wine so it opens up.
Disgorgement
The step in traditional sparkling winemaking where the frozen plug of sediment collected in a bottle's neck is removed before final corking.
Estate-Bottled
Wine grown, produced, and bottled entirely at one winery's own property, rather than blended from grapes or bulk wine sourced from outside growers.
Fining
A clarification process that uses an agent, such as egg white, isinglass, or bentonite clay, to bind and remove suspended particles from wine before it is bottled.
Fortified Wine
Wine to which a distilled spirit, usually brandy, has been added, raising its alcohol content and, in styles like port, stopping fermentation while sugar remains.
Grafting
Joining a grapevine's fruit-bearing top to a different rootstock, most commonly to protect against the phylloxera louse.
Ice Wine
A sweet wine made from grapes left on the vine until they freeze naturally, concentrating their sugars and acids before they are pressed while still frozen.
Late Harvest
Wine made from grapes picked well past normal ripeness, concentrating sugar in the fruit and often producing a noticeably sweeter, richer style than the same producer's standard bottling.
Lees
The dead yeast cells and other sediment left over after fermentation, sometimes deliberately left in contact with wine to add texture, richness, and bready complexity.
Maceration
The period grape skins, and sometimes stems and seeds, spend in contact with juice, extracting color, tannin, and flavor, and playing an especially important role in red winemaking.
Magnum
A wine bottle holding 1.5 liters, twice the volume of a standard bottle, often thought to age wine more gracefully due to its slower oxygen exchange.
Malolactic Fermentation
A secondary, bacteria-driven fermentation that converts sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid, common in many red wines and in richer, creamier styles of white wine like buttery Chardonnay.
Marc
A brandy distilled from the leftover grape skins, seeds, and stems after pressing, also called pomace brandy.
Must
The freshly pressed grape juice, skins, seeds, and stems, before or during fermentation into wine, and the base from which all still and sparkling wine begins.

N–Z

Native Yeast
The wild yeast naturally present on grape skins and in a winery's environment, used instead of a commercial cultured yeast strain to ferment wine.
Negociant
A wine producer or merchant who buys grapes or finished wine from other growers, then blends, ages, and bottles it under its own label rather than farming its own vineyards.
Nouveau
A wine style released and consumed within weeks of harvest, made using carbonic maceration, with Beaujolais Nouveau the best-known example.
Old Vine
An informal, legally unregulated term for wine made from unusually old grapevines, often prized for their naturally lower yields and concentrated fruit.
Oxidation
Exposure to air that changes a wine's color, aroma, and flavor over time, usually dulling fresh fruit character and, in excess, producing a flat, brownish, or sherry-like taste.
Phylloxera
A grape-vine-destroying aphid that devastated European vineyards in the late 19th century, leading most Vitis vinifera vines grown today to be grafted onto resistant American rootstock.
Pigeage
The French term for punching down the cap of grape skins that rises to the top of a fermenting red wine, keeping it in contact with the juice.
Punch Down
Pushing the floating cap of grape skins back down into the fermenting juice to maintain color and tannin extraction during red winemaking.
Racking
Transferring wine from one vessel to another, leaving sediment behind in the original container, a step used repeatedly during aging to clarify wine naturally without filtration.
Reserve
A term suggesting a wine of higher quality, older vines, or longer aging than a producer's standard bottling, though its legal meaning varies widely, or is entirely unregulated, by region.
Residual Sugar
The natural grape sugar remaining in a finished wine after fermentation stops or is stopped, measured in grams per liter, which largely determines how sweet or bone-dry a wine tastes.
Riddling
The traditional process of gradually rotating and tilting sparkling wine bottles, historically by hand, to collect sediment in the neck so it can be removed before final corking.
Rootstock
The root system onto which a fruit-bearing grapevine variety is grafted, typically chosen for resistance to phylloxera and adaptation to local soil.
Screw Cap
A metal bottle closure that seals wine without cork, eliminating cork taint and, many winemakers argue, preserving fresh fruit character particularly well.
Second Wine
A less prestigious wine made by an estate from grapes or lots not selected for its flagship bottling, often at a lower price.
Sommelier
A trained wine professional, typically working in a restaurant, responsible for building a wine list, advising guests, and recommending pairings to match food and budget.
Sulfites
Sulfur dioxide compounds used in winemaking as a preservative and antioxidant, protecting wine from spoilage and browning; they also occur naturally in small amounts in all fermented wine.
Sur Lie
A winemaking technique that ages wine on its lees after fermentation, sometimes with periodic stirring, adding richness, texture, and a bready or nutty character to the finished wine.
Tannin
A compound from grape skins, seeds, and oak that produces a drying, astringent sensation, mostly in red wine, and which also helps a wine age gracefully over many years.
Tartrate Crystals
Small, harmless crystal deposits, sometimes called 'wine diamonds,' that form when tartaric acid precipitates out of wine exposed to cold temperatures.
Terroir
The combination of soil, climate, slope, and geography believed to give a wine grown in a particular place its distinctive, non-replicable character.
Ullage
The empty space between a wine's surface and the top of its bottle or barrel, which naturally grows as wine evaporates and can hint at how well an old bottle was stored.
Varietal
A wine named after its dominant grape variety, such as Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, as opposed to a wine named for its region or blended under a proprietary name.
Vinification
The overall process of turning grapes into wine, encompassing crushing, fermentation, aging, and bottling.
Vintage
The year the grapes for a given wine were harvested, which appears on most labels and can meaningfully affect a wine's style due to that year's weather.
Viticulture
The cultivation and science of growing grapevines, covering everything from soil management and canopy training to pest control and the timing of harvest.
Whole Cluster
A fermentation method that includes uncrushed grape bunches, stems and all, which can add spice, structure, and a fresher, more savory edge to red wine.
Wine Fault
Any defect in a wine caused by a flaw in grapes, fermentation, storage, or packaging, such as cork taint, oxidation, or excessive volatile acidity.
Yield
The quantity of grapes or wine a vineyard produces, often measured per acre or hectare, with lower yields generally, though not always, associated with more concentrated, higher-quality fruit.
  • Glossary
  • Wine

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