Wine Word of the Week: Avvinare



By Kori ~ June 5th, 2010.

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 small amount of wine already in them. What the sommelier has done is called avvinare—Italian for priming the glass with the wine to come. The practice is both practical and ceremonial. A glass that is rinsed with wine is less likely to smell of chlorinated water, dishwashing detergents, or any other off odors that can collect in the bowl of a wine glass.

Layman’s terms from Kori:
Avvinare is an Italian term for priming a wine glass with wine to eliminate any off odors in the glass.


Filed under: Wine Word of the Week

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