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).
Wine trade term, French in origine, for wine sold as futures before being bottled. It comes from the word primeur. Cask samples of wines have customarily been shown in the spring following the vintage.
Important commercial centre on the River Saône and capital of the Mâconnais dynamic district of Burgundy which produces considerable quantities of white wine and some red.
French wine term derived from cuve, with many different meanings in different contexts. In general terms it can be used to mean any containerful, or even any lot, of wine.
Chemicals applied to vineyards to control the growth of weeds. They may be either pre-emergent (or residual) or post-emergent (knockdowm). The latter group comprises two types, contact and syntemic herbicides. Residual herbicides act against germinating seedlings of the weeds, while post-emergent herbicides are applied only to the strip of ground directly under the vine, and weeds growing between the rows are controlled by cultivation or mowing.
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.
Common winemaking practice, named after its French promulgator Jean-Antoine Chaptal, whereby the final alcoholic strength of a wine is increased by addition of sugar to the grape juice or must, before and/or during fermentation, although if it is added before, the higher sugar level will make it harder for the yeast to multiply.
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.
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.
Before concrete, stainless steel, and other inert materials replaced wood as the most common material for wine fermentation vessels and storage containers in the 1960s, each wine region had ist own legion of barrel types. Even today such terms as feuillette, tonneau, and fudre may be used to measure volumes of wine long after the actual containers themselves have been abandoned.
Or Melon de Bourgogne, the most planted grape variety in the Loire valley, planted on 10798ha/26671acres in 2011 and famous in only one respect and one region, Muscadet.
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.
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.
