Wine Peeps is an independent wine blog dedicated to helping you get the most bang for your buck in wine. We do this through blind tastings of wine from around the world and calculations of 
Wine Word of the Week: Chai
By Kori ~ January 9th, 2010.
This week’s Wine Word of the Week is chai.
Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine:
Chai is a French, and particularly Bordelais, term for a place where wine and occasionally brandy is stored, typically in barrel. Thus a smart Bordeaux chateau will have (perhaps) the chateau building itself with no direct wine-making function, a cuverie in which fermentation takes place, a first-year chai in which the most recent vintage’s crop undergoes elevage, and a second-year chai to which it is moved at some point before the year end in order to make way for the next year’s crop.
Layman’s terms from Kori:
Chai is the place where wine is stored in barrels, frequently referred to as the barrel room in the United States.
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