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V –
B –
Blanc de Blancs
French for "white of whites", may justifiably be used to describe white wines made from pale-skinned grapes. As the great majority of them are. A real significance only when used for white sparkling wines.
M –
Mercurey
Most important village in the Côte Chalonnaise district of Burgundy. While most of the production is in red wines made from Pinot Noir, a small quantity of unusually scented white wine from Chardonnay is also made.
R –
reductive winemaking
Increasingly fashionable and aims at reducing the exposure of must and wine to oxygen in the winery by minimizing or eliminating practices such as racking, lees stirring, and the use of new oak barrels.
C –
château
May be French for castle but in wine parlance it usually means a vine-growing, winemaking estate.
B –
bottle fermented
Descsription of some sparkling wines made either by the traditional method, or by the transfer method.
V –
Vendange Tardive
Means literally "late harvest" and in France is restricted to Alsace, where strict regulations cover ist production, even if too many producers are meeting only the bare minima.
T –
tonneau
Traditional Bordeaux measure of wine volume, once a large woodes cask holding 900 lit., or 252 imperial wine gallons, the equivalent of four barriques.
V –
Vougeot
Small village in the Côte de Nuits district of Burgundy producing red wines from the Pinot Noir grape. The name is derived from the diminutive of Vouge, a small stream flowing through the village. The village's fame rests squarely with the 50.6 ha Grand Cru, Clos de Vougeot.
O –
Oechsle
Scale of measuring grape sugars, and therefore grape ripeness, based on the density of grape juice.
A –
amphora
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.
M –
microclimate
Widely misused term meaning strictly the climate within a defined and usually very restricted space or position. In viticulture, it might be at specific positions between rows of vines, or distances above the ground.
P –
premier cru
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.
S –
Selection
A Prädikat that means literally "selected harvest" but is officilly defined by the must weight at harvest.
S –
Superiore
Italian term applied to DOC wines which are deemed superior because of their higher minimum alcoholic strength, usually by a half or one per cent, a longer period of ageing before commercial release, or a lower maximum permited yield, or all three.
S –
Süssreserve
German term for sweet reserve, the unfermented or part-fermented must much used in the 1970s and 1980s to sweeten all but the finest or driest German wines.
T –
terroir
Much-discussed term for the total natural evironment of any viticultural site. Major components of terroir are soil, and local topography, macroclimate, mesoclimate and microclimate.
P –
R –
Riserva
Nebulous Italian term usually denoting a wine given extended ageing before release, and suggesting a higher quality, and a higher percentage of alcohol than the normal version of the same wine. The ageing requirement for Riservas varies from DOC to DOC, but normally is a minimum of one year, up to 62 months for Barolo Riserva. In many cases this must include a period in cask, aswell as in bottle.
B –
barrel types
Before concrete, stainless steel, and other inert materials replaced wood as the most common material for wine fermentation vessels and storage containers in the 1960s, each wine region had ist own legion of barrel types. Even today such terms as feuillette, tonneau, and fudre may be used to measure volumes of wine long after the actual containers themselves have been abandoned.
S –
solera
System of fractional blending used most commonly in Jerez for maintaining the consistency of a style of Sherry which takes ist name from those barrels closest to the suelo, or floor, from which the final blend was customarily drawn.
V –
R –
remuage
Is French for the riddling process. A person or machine that performs remuage is a remueur.
H –
herbicides
Chemicals applied to vineyards to control the growth of weeds. They may be either pre-emergent (or residual) or post-emergent (knockdowm). The latter group comprises two types, contact and syntemic herbicides. Residual herbicides act against germinating seedlings of the weeds, while post-emergent herbicides are applied only to the strip of ground directly under the vine, and weeds growing between the rows are controlled by cultivation or mowing.
E –
en primeur
Wine trade term, French in origine, for wine sold as futures before being bottled. It comes from the word primeur. Cask samples of wines have customarily been shown in the spring following the vintage.
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