This week’s Wine Word of the Week is Meritage. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Meritage is the name coined in 1981 by the winner of a competition in the Los Angeles Times for American wines made from a blend of grape varieties in the image of Bordeaux, devised to distinguish […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is sulfur dioxide. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Sulfur dioxide, or SO2, formed when elemental sulfur is burned in air, is the chemical compound most widely used by the winemaker, principally as a preservative and a disinfectant. …. Sulfur dioxide reacts with oxygen […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is yield. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Yield is an important statistic in wine production, which measures how much a vineyard produces. It has been a subject of intense interest from at least the time of classical Rome. Yield may be measured as […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is plonk. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Plonk, a vague and derogatory English term for wine of undistinguished quality, is a term of Australian slang that has been naturalized in Britain. Layman’s terms from Kori: Plonk is a term for cheap, low quality […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is volatile acidity. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Volatile acidity of a wine is its total concentration of volatile acids, those naturally occurring organic acids that are separable by distillation. Wine’s most common volatile acid by far is acetic acid (more than 96 […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is minerality. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Interestingly enough, The Oxford Companion to Wine does not give a definition for minerality. Ms. Robinson does list minerals and mineral elements such as potassium, nitrogen, sulfur, copper, etc. But it does not seem that those […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is fruit set. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Fruit set is an important and delicate stage of the vine’s development after flowering which marks the transition from flower to grape berry. The setting period of about a week is a critical one for […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is flowering. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Flowering is an important event in the annual growth cycle of vines, the process preceding the fertilization of vine flowers and their subsequent development into berries. …. Flowering, or bloom, takes place about six to 13 […]

Since I am hosting this month’s Wine Book Club and will be posting the roundup on Thursday, Wine Word of the Week moved to Tuesday just for this week. This week’s Wine Word of the Week is bud break. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Budbreak, or budburst, is a stage […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is viticulture. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Viticulture is the science and practice of grape culture. Viticulture is practiced consciously by viticulturists, often instinctively by grape-growers or vine-growers. Practices vary enormously around the world…. For still wines, it is arguable that the viticulturist […]