This week’s Wine Word of the Week is terroir. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Terroir is a much-discussed term for the total natural environment of any viticultural site. No precise English equivalent exists for this quintessentially French term and concept. …. Major components of terroir are soil (as the word [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is closures. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Closures for wine containers are necessary to avoid harmful contact with oxygen and have changed remarkably little until recent times. Corks are still the principal closures used for wine bottles, just as they were more than [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is corked. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Corked is the pejorative tasting term for a wine spoiled by a cork stopper contaminated with cork taint. This is one of the most serious wine faults as in most cases it irrevocably imbues the wine [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is corkage. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Corkage is the charge customarily levied in a restaurant for each bottle of wine brought in and consumed on the premises rather than bought from the restaurant’s own selection. The term is derived from the fact [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is vintage. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: The vintage year is the year in which a wine was produced and the characteristics of that year. … In the southern hemisphere, a vintage-dated wine invariably carries the year in which the grapes were picked, [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is nose. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Nose is the most sensitive form of tasting equipment so far encountered, the sense of taste being so inextricably linked with the sense of smell. …. Nose is also used as a synonym for the smell, [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is palate. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Palate is a term used when describing tasting as a process and an ability. It is generally used to describe the combined human tasting faculties in the mouth and, sometimes, nose. The impact of a wine [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is legs (sometimes referred to as tears). Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Tears is a tasting term used to describe the behavior of the surface liquid layer that is observable in a glass of relatively strong wine. The wine wets the inside of [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is finish. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Since this is an oft used wine tasting term, I was surprised to find that there was no entry for “finish” is The Oxford Companion to Wine. However, I did locate entries for “long” and “short” [...]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is balance. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Wine tasters say that a wine has balance, or is well balanced, if its alcoholic strength, acidity, residual sugar, tannins, and fruit, complement each other so that no single one of them is obtrusive on the [...]