This week’s Wine Word of the Week is toast. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Toast, given to a barrel when forming it over a heat source, is one of the processes in barrel making that most obviously affect eventual wine flavor. …. The toast provides a buffer between the alcohol […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is malolactic fermentation. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Malolactic fermentation is the conversion of stronger malic acid naturally present in new wine into lactic acid (which has lower acidity) and carbon dioxide. …. It is accomplished by lactic acid bacteria, which are naturally […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is lees. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Lees is the Old English word for the dregs or sediment that settles at the bottom of a container such as a fermentation vessel. Wine lees are made up of dead yeast cells, grape seeds, pulp, […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is claret. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Claret is the English (not American) term generally used to describe red wines from the Bordeaux region, or red Bordeaux. Claret has also been used as a generic term for a vaguely identified class of red […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is body. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Body is the tasting term for the perceived ‘weight’—the sensation of fullness, resulting from density or viscosity—of a wine on the palate. Wines at either end of the scale are described as full bodied and light […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is aroma. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Aroma is an imprecise tasting term for a relatively simple smell such as that of a grape, fermenting must, or young wine. Originally from the Greek word meaning ‘spice’, it has evolved so that in generally […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is racking. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Racking is the wine-making operation of removing clear wine from the settled sediment or lees in the bottom of a container. The verb to rack has been used thus at least since the 14th century. Racking […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is capsule. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Capsule is the French and occasional English name for the sheath over the top of a cork and bottle-neck, otherwise known as a foil, just as a capsule cutter is more widely known as a foil […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is appellation. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Controlled appellations are a method of labeling wine and designating quality that is modeled on France’s appellation controlee system. It embraces geographical delimitation and is the principle on which quality wine schemes such as the DOC […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is veraison. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Veraison is the word used by English speakers for that intermediate stage of grape berry development which marks the beginning of ripening, when the grapes change from the hard, green state to their softened and coloured […]