French term meaning "on the lees", customarily applied to white wines whose principal deviation from everyday white winemaking techniques was some form of lees contact.
German term for sweet reserve, the unfermented or part-fermented must much used in the 1970s and 1980s to sweeten all but the finest or driest German wines.
The process of deliberately maturing a wine after bottling, whether for a few weeks as a conscious effort on the part of the bottler to allow the wine to recover from bottle sickness or, in the case of very fine wines, for many years in order to allow the wine to mature.
A fortified wine made by adding brandy to arrest fermenting grape must which results in a wine, red and sometimes white, that is both sweet and high in alcohol.
Named after the principal town of Nuits-St-Georges, this is the northern half of the escarpment of the Côte d'Or, producing the greatest red wines of Burgundy, from the Pinot Noir grape, and very occasional white wines.
Red-brown loam or clay directly over well-drained limestone found typically in regions with a mediterranean climate. Such soils are found in southern Europe, North Africa and parts of Australia.
The special distinction of this region embedded within the Graves distric south of Bordeaux is that it is dedicated, in a way unmatched by any other wine region, to the production of unfortified, sweet, white wine.
Is used in much the same way as the word cave in French, for any sort of wine-producing premises wheather above or below ground. A German wine specifying a Keller rather than a Weingut on the label is usually the produce of a merchant rather than an estate. In Alto Adige, the Italian Tyrol, Kellereigenossenschaft is a common name for one of the many wine co-operatives.
One of the most important wine rivers, linking a range of vineyards as dissimilar as those of Châteauneuf-du Pape in southern France, sparkling Seyssel, and Fendant du Valais in Switzerland.
Is a complex of sensations resulting from the shrinking, drawing, or puckering of the tissues of the mouth. The most important astringent materials are tannins.
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.
The principal milk protein, is used by winemakers as a fining agent particularly useful for removing brown colours from white wines. It is used also in the clarification of young wines.
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.
