French term meaning "on the lees", customarily applied to white wines whose principal deviation from everyday white winemaking techniques was some form of lees contact.
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.
Of a wine is ist total concentration of volatile acids, those naturally occuring organic acids of wines that are separable by distillation. Wine's most common volatile acid by far is acetic acid (more than 96%).
Dramatically situated hilltop town on the left bank of the upper Loire which lends ist name to one of the Loire's most famous, and famously variable, wines: racy, pungent, dry white Sauvignon Blanc.
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.
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.
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.
The most valuable category of white wines made from the ripest grapes on the best sites of the Wachau in Austria. The category is named after the green lizard that basks in the sun on the Wachau's steep stone terraces above the river Danube. Alcohol levels in the unchaptalized Grüner Veltliners and Rieslings that qualify must be more than 12.5%.
French for "white of blacks", describes a white wine made from dark-skinned grapes by pressing them very gently and running the pale juice off the skins as clear as possibl.
Town north of Perpignan in southern France that gives ist name to two of the biggest appellations of Roussillon, Rivesaltes and Muscat de Rivesaltes, both of them vins doux naturels.
Is a term used particularly in Burgundy for wine which qualifies for an appellation that coincides with the name of the village or commune in which the wine is made.
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.
Red-brown loam or clay directly over well-drained limestone found typically in regions with a mediterranean climate. Such soils are found in southern Europe, North Africa and parts of Australia.
Is the uniquely steely, dry, age-worthy white wine of the most northern vineyards of Burgundy in north east France, made, like all fine whites Burgundy, from Chardonnay grapes.
