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.
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.
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 most famous northern Rhône appellation of all, producing extremely limited quantities of seriously long-lived reds and about a third as much full-bodied dry white wine which some believe is even more distinguished. Hermitage was one of France's most famous wines in the 18th and 19th centuries when the name alone was sufficient to justify prices higher than any wine other than a first growth bordeaux.
Stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita, a legal category established in Italy in 1963 for its highest-quality wines, at the same time as its DOC was created as an Italian version of the French appellation contrôllée.
French term for the intricate traditional method described in detail in sparkling winemaking. From 1994 the term was outlawed by EU authorities in favour of one of the following: méthode traditionelle; méthode classique; méthode traditionelle classique; fermented in this bottle and traditional method.
French term for racking, or moving clear wine off ist sediment and into a clean container. It can also be used for the wine serving process of decanting.
Unregulated term of approbation referring to German Rieslings. Use of gold capsules to signify superior quality was a response, initially and still primarily in the Mosel, to the 1971 German Wine Law's prohibition on labels of traditional terms such as Cabinet, feine, feinste, or hochfeinste.
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.
Large and prosperous village in the Côte de Beaune district of Burgundy's Côte d'Or producing mostly white wines from the Chardonnay grape. Although Meursault contains no Grand Cru vineyards, the quality of white burgundy from Meursault's best Premier Crus is rarely surpassed.
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.
Attractive small village in the Côte de Beaune district of Burgundy's Côte d'Or producing elegant red wines from Pinot Noir. The wines of Volnay were celebratet under the ancien régime for their delicacy.
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.
