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.
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.
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.
French for "white of blacks", describes a white wine made from dark-skinned grapes by pressing them very gently and running the pale juice off the skins as clear as possibl.
The most valuable category of white wines made from the ripest grapes on the best sites of the Wachau in Austria. The category is named after the green lizard that basks in the sun on the Wachau's steep stone terraces above the river Danube. Alcohol levels in the unchaptalized Grüner Veltliners and Rieslings that qualify must be more than 12.5%.
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.
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.
An accumulation of clay and silt particles that have been deposited by the wind. Loess is typically pale-coloured, unstratified, and loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. Favoured for viticulture because it is porous, permeable, readily warmed and easily penetrated by roots.
Occasionally madeirization, is the process by which a wine is made to taste like Madeira, involving mild oxidation over a long period and, usually, heat.
French word for the important operation in the production of fine wines of deciding which lots will be assembled to make the final blend. It plays a crucial role in sparkling winemaking when some cuvées may be assembled from several hunderd different components.
French term for punching down, the winemaking operation of breaking up and submerging the cap of skins and other solids during red wine fermentation to stop the cap from drying out.
Sometimes simply as botrytis, is the benevolent form of botrytis bunch rot, in which the Botrytis cinerea fungus attacks ripe, undamaged white wine grapes and, given the right weather, can result in extremely sweet grapes.
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.
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.
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.
