This week’s Wine Word of the Week is cuvée. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Cuvée is a 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 and therefore wine […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is cassis. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Cassis is French for blackcurrant and is used often as a tasting note for red wines, particularly red wines based on Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. Layman’s terms from Kori: Cassis, French for blackcurrant, aromas and flavors can […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is foxy. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Foxy is usually a deeply pejorative tasting term for the peculiar flavour of many wines, particularly red wines, made from American vines and American hybrids, vine varieties developed from both American and European species of the […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is vinifera. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Vinifera, the European species of Vitis that is the vine most used for wine production, to which all the most familiar vine varieties belong. Vinifera is not a classical Latin word, but one made up by […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is residual sugar. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Residual sugar, occasionally RS, is the total quantity of sugars remaining unfermented in the finished wine.  This may include both fermentable sugars, mainly glucose and fructose, which have for some reason remained unconverted to alcohol […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is wine writers. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Wine writers is an imprecise term that includes all those who communicate through the various media on the subject of wine. Some of them style themselves wine critics (notably the consumerist Robert Parker) while such […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is foil cutter. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: A foil cutter is a gadget for serving wine which helps cut the foil neatly just below the lip of the bottle with the advantages that this avoids unsightly and possibly dangerous torn metal edges, […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is riddling. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Riddling is an integral stage in the traditional method of making sparkling wines, known as remuage in French. It involves dislodging the deposit left in a bottle after a second fermentation has taken place inside it […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is disgorgement. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Disgorgement, or degorgement in French, is an integral stage in the traditional method of sparkling wine-making entailing the removal of a pellet of frozen sediment from the neck of each bottle. Modern alternative techniques such as […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is avvinare. Official definition from Karen MacNeil’s The Wine Lover’s Page-A-Day Calendar: If you’ve been to Italy—or even a top Italian restaurant in the United States—you might have noticed that after you order a bottle of fine wine, wine glasses will be brought to the table with a […]