Translates directly from French as a wine that is naturally sweet. Vins doux naturels are made by mutage, by artificially arresting the conversion of grape sugar to alcohol by adding spirit before fermentation is complete.
Known as Bourgogne in French, province of eastern France famous for ist great red and white wines produced mostly from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay rapes respectively.
In the dialect of the north west Italian region of Piemonte, indicates the highest part of an elevation in the landscapeor, in particular, a vineyard with a steep gradient at the top of a hill.
Appellation for France's finest and certanly most complex vins doux naturels, made from vertiginous terraced vineyards above the Mediterranean at the southern limit of Roussillon.
Scale of measuring total dissolved compounds in grape juice, and therefore ist approximate concentration of grape sugars. It is used in the United States.
Unregulated term of approbation referring to German Rieslings. Use of gold capsules to signify superior quality was a response, initially and still primarily in the Mosel, to the 1971 German Wine Law's prohibition on labels of traditional terms such as Cabinet, feine, feinste, or hochfeinste.
The most prestigious wine estate in Burgundy, based in Vosne-Romanée. The Domaine, as it is frequently called, is co-owned by the de Villaine and Leroy families and produces only Grand Cru wines.
Latin word from the Greek for a vessel with two handles. Although the term may refer sometimes to fine wares, it is normally used to describe the large pottery containers which were used for the bulk transport of many goods and luquids ind the Mediterranean world.
A fortified wine made by adding brandy to arrest fermenting grape must which results in a wine, red and sometimes white, that is both sweet and high in alcohol.
Even in Ancient Rome it was said Bacchus amat colles, or Bacchus loves the hills, suggesting that hillside vineyards have long been regarded as a source of high-quality wine.
Progressive winemaking operation which removes suspended and insoluble material from grape juice, or new wine, in which these solids are known as lees.
Increasingly popular and currently fashionable winemaking practice known to the Ancient Romans whereby newly fermented wine is deliberately left in contact with the lees. This period of lees contact may take place in any container, from a bottle to a large tank or vat-although a small oak barrel is the most common location for lees contact.
Or premier cru classé, is a cru judged of the first rank, usually according to some official classification. The direct translation of the French term premier cru, much used in the context of Bordeaux, is first growth. In Burgundy, scores of vineyards are designated premiers crus, capable of producing wine distinctly superior to village wine but not quite so great as the produce of the grands crus.
The mountain of Reims, or the forested high ground between the Champagne towns of Reims and Épernay. Ist lower slopes are famed for the quality of Pinot Noir base wine they produce.
The practice of adding spirits, usually grape spirit, to wine to ensure microbiological stability, thereby adding alcoholic strength and precluding any further fermentation.
French word for the process by which passerillé grapes are dried, shrivelled, or raisined on the vine, concentrating the sugar in grapes-an alternative to wines whose sugars have been concentrated by botrytis.
Microscopic, single-celled fungi, having round to oval cells which reproduce by forming buds, are vital to the alcoholic fermentation process, which, starved of oxygen, transforms grape juice to wine.
