Even in Ancient Rome it was said Bacchus amat colles, or Bacchus loves the hills, suggesting that hillside vineyards have long been regarded as a source of high-quality wine.
Term used as France's shorthand for the country's finest dry sparkling wines made outside Champagne using the traditional method of sparkling winemaking.
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.
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.
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.
Is the winemaking operation of storing a fermented wine in wooden barrels to create ideal conditions for the components of the wine to evolve and so that the wood imparts some oak flavour.
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.
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 French for "old vines". The term is used widely on wine labels-as is vinhas velhas (Portugal), alte Reben (Germany)-in the hope that potential buyers are aware that wine quality is often associated with senior vine age.
Small village in the Côte de Nuits district of Burgundy producing red wines from the Pinot Noir grape. The name is derived from the diminutive of Vouge, a small stream flowing through the village. The village's fame rests squarely with the 50.6 ha Grand Cru, Clos de Vougeot.
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.
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.
A common plant acid, abundant in some fleshy fruits such as lemons, but rare in grapes. The grape is unusual among fruits in that its major acid is tartaric acid, rather than citric acid, whose concentration in the juice of most grape varieties is only about one-twentieth that of tartaric acid.
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.
Italian term meaning literally "repassed", for the technique of adding extra flavour, and alcohol, to Valpolicella by refermenting the young wine on the unpressed skins of Amarone wines after these dried-grape wines have finished their fermentation in the spring, and racked off.
The general French term both for grape pomace and, more widely, for pomace brandy. It is used to distinguish the product from a fine, which may be made by distilling local wine. Most traditional wine regions make marc from the pomace, grape skins, and pips left after pressing.
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 heart of the Burgundy wine region in eastern France in the form of an escarpment supporting a narrow band of vineyards for nearly 50km/30miles southwards from Dijon. Viticulturally it is divided into two sectors, the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune.
Prosperous village in Burgundy producing the most powerful red wines of the Côte de Beaune district of the côte d'Or, from the usual Pinot Noir grapes.
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.
