Known as Bourgogne in French, province of eastern France famous for ist great red and white wines produced mostly from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay rapes respectively.
Widely misused term meaning strictly the climate within a defined and usually very restricted space or position. In viticulture, it might be at specific positions between rows of vines, or distances above the ground.
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 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.
Imprecise tasting term used in many languages for a distinctive style of wine, often fortified wine or vin doux naturel, achieved by deliberately maderizing the wine by exposing it to oxygen and/or heat.
The most important, and variable, appellation in the southern Rhône in terms of quality, producing mainly rich, spicy, full-bodied red wines which can be some of the most alluring expressions of warm-climate viticulture, but can also be either impossibly tannic or disappointingly jammy.
Essential element for healthy vine growth. A deficiency of zinc affects the plant's ability to synthesize the hormones auxins, deficiency in which results in a failure of the shoots to grow normally.
The connection of two pieces of living plant tissue so that they unite and grow as one plant, has been a particularly important element in growing vines since the end of the 19th century.
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.
Scale of measuring total dissolved compounds in grape juice, and therefore ist approximate concentration of grape sugars. It is used in the United States.
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.
An element that is extremely important in wine production. The addition of sulfur dioxide during crushing and pressing deactivates enzymes that catalyse oxidation, which leads to juice browning and modification of aromas and flavours, which is why it is often added to freshly picked grapes in the salt form of metabisulfite. (The compound is widely, often more liberally, used in the preparation of other foods and drinks, particularly in fruit juices and dried fruits).
Winemaking technique of fermenting grape juice or must in small barrels rather than in a larger fermentation vessel. The technique is used principally for white wines because of the difficulty of extracting through a barrel's small bung-hole the mass of skins and seeds which necessarily remains after red wine fermentation.
German term for young wine popularly consumed before botteling-generally cloudy and often still fermenting-and typically referred to in Austria as Sturm or Heuriger.
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.
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.
The general term used by winemakers to describe the harmless crystalline deposits that separate from wines during fermentation and ageing. The principal component of this deposit is potassium acid tartrate, the potassium salt of tartaric acid, which has therefore given rise to the name.
