Wine Terms
Acid or Acidity in Wine
-Acidity in wine is the feeling of your mouth salivating after you’ve taken a sip.
-The term “crisp” or “crisp wine” refers to the presence of high acidity in wine.
-The longer your mouth salivates after drinking, the crisper the wine is or more acidity is present.
Tannins in Wine or Tannic wine:
-Tannins come from grape skins, grape seeds, grape stems and oak barrels.
-Tannins in wine create that dry mouth-puckering feeling either in your gums or tongue.
Balanced Wine:
-Sometimes acidity in wine, alcohol and presence of tannins are too high.
-When the presence of tannins, alcohol and acids balance each other out so that neither are overly powerful.
Nose:
-When someone refers to wine’s “nose” it means the aroma or bouquet.
Palate:
-Palate refers to what you taste
Wine’s Body or Body:
-Body in wine or the “Wine’s Body” refers to how it feels in your mouth.
-To judge body, think of milk. Skim Milk = light, Whole Milk = full bodied.
Wine Mouthfeel:
-The wine’s Mouthfeel is similar body in wine. Mouthfeel refers to the wine’s texture.
-Wine can sometimes feel oily, or glycerol, velvety, smooth, etc…
Fruit Forward Wine:
-Fruit Forward Wine refers to having more fruit flavors than others such as earthy or spice.
Wine aroma:
-Wine aroma is what you smell in the wine that is a result of the wine’s aging process.
Wine Bouquet:
-Wine Bouquet is what you smell in wine that is result of the grapes themselves. Fruit and floral.
Letting the wine breath:
-Letting a wine breathe refers to allowing oxygen to wake up the flavors, aromas and bouquets.
-Wine is sealed up sometimes as much as 20 to 30 years. Letting it breathe is essential to wake everything up.
Finish:
-a wine’s finish is how long the flavor lingers in your mouth after drinking
Flabby
-Flabby wine is wine that has very low acidity
Dry Wine:
-Dry wine means wine that has no residual sugar.
-All wine is dry unless it specifies otherwise.
Off-Dry Wine:
-Off-Dry Wine is wine that has a small amount of residual sugar
-This will be made known on the wine.
-Demi-Sec is a term you may see as well.
***Wine’s that aren’t dry will say so. Terms such as Late Harvest, Dessert, Off-Dry, Sweet, Sec, Demi-Sec***
Terroir:
-A somewhat multi-definition word.
-In general, Terroir is the entire environment in which the grape grows.
-The climate, the soil, surrounding vegetation, the smells in the air, the personal touch of the wine grower and wine maker.
Vinification
-Turning grape juice into wine
It’s great to learn these terms! Thanks for the information and thank you so much for checking out and following Travel Oops! Cheers
Thank you very much! I’ll be updating some more terms on there as time goes on and adding more wine education stuff, so check back in!