Scale of measuring total dissolved compounds in grape juice, and therefore ist approximate concentration of grape sugars. It is used in the United States.
Often abbreviated to MLF or malo, is the conversion of stronger malic acid anturally present in new wine into lactic acid (which has lower acidity) and carbon dioxide.
French for "white of whites", may justifiably be used to describe white wines made from pale-skinned grapes. As the great majority of them are. A real significance only when used for white sparkling wines.
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.
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.
IP was developed as a concept in 1974, and major development has come from France, Germany and Switzerland. IP emphasizes a holistic approach to viticulture, by considering the vineyard as an "agro-ecosystem". The reduction of chemical inputs, especially nitrogen fertilizer and broad spectrum insecticides, is a first step.
The most prestigious wine estate in Burgundy, based in Vosne-Romanée. The Domaine, as it is frequently called, is co-owned by the de Villaine and Leroy families and produces only Grand Cru wines.
Appellation for France's finest and certanly most complex vins doux naturels, made from vertiginous terraced vineyards above the Mediterranean at the southern limit of Roussillon.
Term used as France's shorthand for the country's finest dry sparkling wines made outside Champagne using the traditional method of sparkling winemaking.
Silicon dioxide (silica), a very common rock-forming mineral. It is seen as glassy, colourless grains in rocks such as granite and sandstone, producing sandy soils of low fertility. It also occurs as opaque white veins filling gashes in bedrocks, which weathering loosens into fragments that become the milky white pebbles seen in many vineyards soils.
Also known as Vin du Glacier or Gletscherwein in German, is a local speciality in the Val Anniviers near Sierre in the Valais in Switzerland. The white wine, traditionally made of the now obscure Rèze vine, comes from communally cultivated vines and is stored at high elevations in casks refilled just once a year on a solera system.
Spanish term used both to describe the process of ageing a wine and also for the youngest officially recognized category of a wood-matured wine. A crianza wine must have spent a minimum of six months in cask.
Red winemaking process which transforms a small amount of sugar in grapes which are uncrushed to ethanol, without the intervention of yeasts, it is used typically to produce light-bodied, brightly coloured, fruity red wines for early consumption, most famously but by no means exclusively in the Beaujolais region of France.
Means literally "late harvest" and in France is restricted to Alsace, where strict regulations cover ist production, even if too many producers are meeting only the bare minima.
Sometimes known as grey mould and sometimes just rot, the malevolent form of botrytis bunch rot and one of the most harmful of the fungal disease that attack vines. In this undesirable bunch rot form, the botrytis cinerea fungus rapidly spreads throughout the berry flesh and the skin breaks down.
The much-imitated French system for the designation and control of important geographical names not only of wines, but also of spirits, as well as many foods.
Is a French synonm for Sauvignon Blanc, notably in Pouilly-sur-Loire, centre of the Pouilly-Fumé, or Blanc Fumé de Pouilly, appellation, many of whose aromatic dry whites do indeed have a smoky, if not exactly smoked, perfume.
