Term in common parlance, but not in federal law, in the US that suggests loosely that the wine came entirely from grapes farmed on the winery's own property.
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.
Term much used in the wine world, initially smoewhat patronizingly but with increasing admiration in the last quarter of the 20th century as the New World's share of global exports rose from 3 to 23%, to distinguish the colonies established as a result of the longer voyages in the 15th century.
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.
Distinctive category of north-east Italian dried-grape wines, a historic speciality of Veneto. The most common forms of Recioto are sweet red Recioto della Valpolicella and the rare sweet white Recioto di Soave and Recioto di Gambellara.
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.
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.
Is a term liberally used by wine producers for various bottlings. It should be quite literally reserved itself, for superior wines, but, unlike Reserva and Riserva, the English term Reserve has few controls on ist use.
Of a wine is ist total concentration of volatile acids, those naturally occuring organic acids of wines that are separable by distillation. Wine's most common volatile acid by far is acetic acid (more than 96%).
The practice of adding spirits, usually grape spirit, to wine to ensure microbiological stability, thereby adding alcoholic strength and precluding any further fermentation.
The greatest wine of Sauternes and, according to the famous 1855 classification, of the entire Bordeaux region it is sweet, golden, and apparently almost immortal.
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.
Microscopic, single-celled fungi, having round to oval cells which reproduce by forming buds, are vital to the alcoholic fermentation process, which, starved of oxygen, transforms grape juice to wine.
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.
Is Europe and the rest of the Mediterranean basin such as the Near East and North Africa. The term is used solely in contrast to the New World, the Old World having little sense of homogeneity. Old World techniques in vineyard and cellar have relied more on tradition and less on science than in the New World.
