Extremely popular sparkling wine made in the region of Veneto, located north-east of Italy. The DOC was once an IGT. To ensure that no one outside the region was able to jump on the luctrative Prosecco bandwagon, the grape variety was renamed Glera in 2009, and Prosecco was registered as a protected denomination of origin DOC.
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.
Occasionally madeirization, is the process by which a wine is made to taste like Madeira, involving mild oxidation over a long period and, usually, heat.
The special distinction of this region embedded within the Graves distric south of Bordeaux is that it is dedicated, in a way unmatched by any other wine region, to the production of unfortified, sweet, white wine.
An accumulation of clay and silt particles that have been deposited by the wind. Loess is typically pale-coloured, unstratified, and loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. Favoured for viticulture because it is porous, permeable, readily warmed and easily penetrated by roots.
A common plant acid, abundant in some fleshy fruits such as lemons, but rare in grapes. The grape is unusual among fruits in that its major acid is tartaric acid, rather than citric acid, whose concentration in the juice of most grape varieties is only about one-twentieth that of tartaric acid.
Term in common parlance, but not in federal law, in the US that suggests loosely that the wine came entirely from grapes farmed on the winery's own property.
The most famous northern Rhône appellation of all, producing extremely limited quantities of seriously long-lived reds and about a third as much full-bodied dry white wine which some believe is even more distinguished. Hermitage was one of France's most famous wines in the 18th and 19th centuries when the name alone was sufficient to justify prices higher than any wine other than a first growth bordeaux.
Prosperous village in Burgundy producing the most powerful red wines of the Côte de Beaune district of the côte d'Or, from the usual Pinot Noir grapes.
Stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita, a legal category established in Italy in 1963 for its highest-quality wines, at the same time as its DOC was created as an Italian version of the French appellation contrôllée.
French term for racking, or moving clear wine off ist sediment and into a clean container. It can also be used for the wine serving process of decanting.
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.
French term used to describe grapes which have been dried, or partially dried, before fermentation to increase the sugar content. It is used most commonly in Switzerland and occasionally in the Valle d'Aosta.
