French term meaning "bled" for a winemaking technique which results in a rosé wine made by running off, or "bleeding", a certain amount of free-run juice from just-crushed dark-skinned grapes after a short, prefermentation maceration.
Coupage in French, is a practice that was once more distrusted than understood. In fact almost all of the world's finest wines are made by blending the contents of different vats and different barrels.
Term used as France's shorthand for the country's finest dry sparkling wines made outside Champagne using the traditional method of sparkling winemaking.
Before concrete, stainless steel, and other inert materials replaced wood as the most common material for wine fermentation vessels and storage containers in the 1960s, each wine region had ist own legion of barrel types. Even today such terms as feuillette, tonneau, and fudre may be used to measure volumes of wine long after the actual containers themselves have been abandoned.
Long, loosely defined strip of tuskan coastline south of Livorno extending southwards through the province of Grosseto. Production of bottled wine is consequently a recent phenomenon and quality wine can be said to date from the first bottles of Sassicaia in the 1970s, although the zone of Morellino di Scansano, enjoyed a certain reputation in the past.
Is just west of, and very much smaller than, the much more famous Sancerre, near the city of Bourges, producing a not dissimilar range of red, white, and rosé wines which can often offer better value.
Very large group of highly reactive chemical compounds of which phenol is the basic building block. These include many natural colour pigments such as the anthocyanins of fruit and dark-skinned grapes, most natural vegetable tannins such as occur in grapes, and many flavour compounds.
The higher, southern part of the Médoc district of Bordeaux which includes the world-famous communes of Margaux, Pauillac, St-Estèphe and St-Julien, as well as the less glamorous ones of Listrac and Moulis.
Winemaking operation of breaking open the grape berry so that the juice is more readily available to the yeast for fermentation and to increase the pulp and skin contact.
Meaning literally "yellow wine" in French, extraordinary style of wine made in France, mainly in the Jura region, using a technique similar to that used for making Sherry but without fortification.
Spring and summer time viticultural practice of placing vine shoots in the desierd position to assist in trimming, leaf removal, and harvest operations, and to facilitate the control of vine diseases and vine pests.
Chemicals applied to vineyards to control the growth of weeds. They may be either pre-emergent (or residual) or post-emergent (knockdowm). The latter group comprises two types, contact and syntemic herbicides. Residual herbicides act against germinating seedlings of the weeds, while post-emergent herbicides are applied only to the strip of ground directly under the vine, and weeds growing between the rows are controlled by cultivation or mowing.
Important commercial centre on the River Saône and capital of the Mâconnais dynamic district of Burgundy which produces considerable quantities of white wine and some red.
Traditional Bordeaux measure of wine volume, once a large woodes cask holding 900 lit., or 252 imperial wine gallons, the equivalent of four barriques.
Occasionally madeirization, is the process by which a wine is made to taste like Madeira, involving mild oxidation over a long period and, usually, heat.
One of the two principal organic acids of grapes and wines. Ist name comes from malum, Latin for apple, the fruit in which it was first identified. Present in nearly all fruits and berries.
Winemaking process with the aim of clarification and stabilization of a wine whereby a fining agent, one of a range of special materials, is added to coagulate or adsorb and precipitate quickly the colloids suspended in it.