Wine glossary

44 terms, defined in plain words. Where a term is one of our style scales or a type of wine, the link takes you to the page that shows it.

Acidity: The tart, mouth-watering quality of a wine. High acidity reads as fresh and crisp; low acidity reads as soft or flat. Acidity is one of our four style scales. See Grape finder.
Appellation: A named, legally defined wine region. The name on the label promises the grapes came from that place and the wine follows its rules. See Regions.
AVA: American Viticultural Area: a wine region defined by the United States Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. An AVA sets a boundary, not a grape or a style. See American AVAs.
Balance: The state in which fruit, acidity, tannin, alcohol and sweetness sit together with none of them sticking out.
Barrique: A 225-litre oak barrel, the Bordeaux size. New barriques add vanilla, toast and spice; old ones add little flavour and let the wine breathe.
Blend: A wine made from more than one grape, vineyard or vintage. Bordeaux, Champagne and Châteauneuf-du-Pape are classic blends. See Types of wine.
Body: The weight and texture of a wine in the mouth, from light like skimmed milk to full like cream. Alcohol, sugar, extract and oak all add body. One of our four style scales.
Botrytis: Noble rot, the fungus Botrytis cinerea. On ripe white grapes in misty autumns it shrivels the berries and concentrates sugar and acid. Sauternes and Tokaji depend on it.
Brut: The dryness word on sparkling wine. Brut carries up to 12 grams of sugar per litre; Extra Brut up to 6; Brut Nature up to 3. Extra Dry is, oddly, sweeter than Brut. See Sweetness chart.
Carbonic maceration: Fermentation of whole, uncrushed grapes in a tank filled with carbon dioxide. It gives light colour, low tannin and a candied, grapey fruit. Beaujolais Nouveau is the textbook case.
Corked: A wine spoiled by TCA, a compound from a tainted cork. It smells of damp cardboard and mutes the fruit. Screwcaps avoid it.
Cru: French for growth: a vineyard or village ranked above its neighbours. Grand cru sits above premier cru in Burgundy; in Bordeaux the 1855 ranking used the same word.
Cuvée: A specific blend or bottling. On a label it names a particular wine, not a quality level.
Decanting: Pouring a wine from its bottle into a jug. It leaves sediment behind in old reds and lets air soften a young, tannic one.
Dosage: The sugar syrup added to sparkling wine after disgorgement. It sets the sweetness level, from Brut Nature to Doux.
Dry: A wine with little or no residual sugar. In the European Union a still wine may say dry at up to 4 grams per litre, or up to 9 when the acidity is high enough to hide it. See Sweetness chart.
Fermentation: Yeast turning grape sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Stop it early and sugar stays behind; let it finish and the wine is dry.
Finish: The flavour that remains after you swallow. A long finish is a mark of quality; a short one fades in seconds.
Flor: A film of yeast that grows on the surface of Fino and Manzanilla sherry. It shields the wine from air and gives it a bread-and-almond tang. See Sherry.
Fortified: A wine with grape spirit added. Port, Sherry, Madeira and Marsala are fortified; the spirit lifts the alcohol to 15 to 22%. See Fortified wine.
Frizzante: Italian for lightly sparkling: a gentle fizz at under 2.5 bar, softer than a full spumante. Moscato d'Asti and much Lambrusco are frizzante.
Hybrid: A grape bred from two different vine species, usually Vitis vinifera crossed with an American vine. Hybrids resist cold and disease; some carry a foxy flavour.
Late harvest: Grapes picked weeks after normal ripeness, so the wine is sweeter and richer. Vendange tardive in Alsace; Spätlese and Auslese in Germany. See Late harvest wine.
Lees: The dead yeast that settles after fermentation. Wine left on its lees (sur lie) gains a creamy texture and a bready note; Muscadet and Champagne both use it.
Legs: The streaks that run down the inside of a glass after swirling. They show alcohol and sugar, not quality.
Maceration: The time the juice spends in contact with the skins. Longer maceration means more colour and more tannin. Rosé gets hours; big reds get weeks.
Malolactic: A second, bacterial conversion that turns sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid. Almost all reds go through it; in whites it gives the buttery note of many Chardonnays.
Minerality: A tasting word for flavours that read as stone, flint, chalk or salt rather than fruit. Loved, argued over, and not a measure of minerals in the wine.
Oak: The wood of barrels and the flavours it gives: vanilla, toast, coconut, smoke. New oak is loud; old oak is quiet. Unoaked wine sees only steel or concrete.
Off-dry: A wine with a little residual sugar you can taste, but well short of sweet. Many Rieslings, Chenin Blancs and Proseccos sit here. See Sweetness chart.
Old vines: Vines old enough to give small crops of concentrated fruit. The term has no legal age in most places; vieilles vignes and viñas viejas mean the same.
Orange wine: White wine fermented on its skins like a red. Amber in colour, with tannin and a savoury, nutty flavour. See Orange wine.
Oxidation: The effect of air on wine. A little softens a young red; a lot turns wine brown and flat. Sherry and Madeira are made oxidative on purpose.
Residual sugar: The grape sugar left in a finished wine, measured in grams per litre. Under 4 is dry; over 45 is sweet. See Sweetness chart.
Rosé: Pink wine from red grapes given only a few hours of skin contact. Dry in Provence and most of Europe; often off-dry in California blush. See Rosé wine.
Sediment: The grit at the bottom of an older red or a vintage Port: pigment and tannin that fell out of solution. Harmless; decant to leave it behind.
Solera: A stack of barrels in which young wine tops up older wine year after year. Sherry, Madeira and some Marsala age this way, so no bottle carries a single vintage.
Sulphites: Sulphur dioxide, added to almost every wine to stop oxidation and spoilage. The label warning is a legal requirement above 10 milligrams per litre.
Tannin: The drying, grippy sensation on the gums, from grape skins, seeds and oak. Strong tea has it. Tannin is one of our four style scales and is why red wine loves steak. See Steak pairings.
Terroir: The whole of a vineyard's site: soil, slope, climate and the people's habits. The word claims that a place can be tasted in the wine.
Traditional method: Sparkling wine made by a second fermentation in the bottle it is sold in. Champagne, Cava, Crémant and Franciacorta all use it; the tank method is the cheaper alternative. See Sparkling wine.
Varietal: A wine named after its one main grape, such as Merlot or Chardonnay. Not the same as variety, which is the grape itself. See Varietal wine.
Vintage: The year the grapes were picked. A vintage wine comes from one year; non-vintage blends several.
Vitis vinifera: The European grapevine species behind almost every wine grape. American species (labrusca, riparia) supply rootstocks and a few hybrids. See Grapes.