This week’s Wine Word of the Week is saignée. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Saignée is a 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-fun juice from just-crushed dark-skinned grapes after a short, […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is élevage. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Élevage is a French word that describes an important aspect of winemaking but has no direct equivalent in English. Élevage means literally ‘rearing’, ‘breeding’, or ‘raising’ and is commonly applied to livestock, or humans as in […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is Crémant. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Crémant is a term used in France’s shorthand for the country’s finest dry sparkling wines made outside Champagne using the traditional method of sparkling wine-making. The term was adopted in the late 1980s, when the expression […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is Pierce’s disease. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Pierce’s disease, or PD, is one of the vine bacterial diseases most feared around the world as it can quickly kill vines and there is no cure. The disease, along with flavescence dorée, is a […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is leafroll virus. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Leafroll virus is a virus disease that is widespread in all countries where grapes are grown. The disease is now thought to be due to a complex of different viruses which can be differentiated. Of […]

Note: This “Wine Word of the Week” series, which previously ran on Saturdays, will now be running on Tuesdays starting today. This week’s Wine Word of the Week is Charmat. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Charmat is the name of a bulk sparkling winemaking process which involves provoking a second […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is loess. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Loess is a light-coloured, fine-grained accumulation of clay and silt particles that have been deposited by the wind. An essentially unconsolidated, unstratified calcareous silt, it is usually homogenous, permeable, and buff to grey in colour, containing […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is port. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Port, 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. Port derives its name from Oporto […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is mercaptans. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Mercaptans, or thiol compounds, are a group of usually potent and often foul-smelling chemical compounds formed by yeast reacting with sulfur in the lees after the primary alcoholic fermentation. If not removed from the new wine […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is vieilles vignes. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Vieilles vignes is French for ‘old vines’. The term is used widely on wine labels in the hope that potential buyers are aware that wine quality is often associated with senior vine age. There are […]