September in the Northern Hemisphere is a huge month
for winemakers. Wine lovers should be
aware of the following vocabulary, especially if you’re visiting a winery:
- Alcoholic fermentation: the conversion of grape sugar to alcohol
- Battonage: stirring the wine during fermentation so that the liquid has contact with the lees (the solids)
- Brettanomyces: bad yeast that causes wines to spoil
- Brix: measurement of the amount of sugar in the grape
- Carbonic maceration: fermenting whole clusters of grapes that have not been crushed
- Fining: process used to clarify the wine (egg whites are used by many)
- Free-run juice: juice that has not been pressed but obtained simply by the weight of the grapes themselves
- Malo-lactic Fermention: Known also as “ML,” this is the conversion of harsh malic acid to softer lactic acid
- Must: unfermented grape juice
- Lees: sediment that occurs during fermentation (includes spent yeasts, seeds & other solids)
- Racking: process of separating the wine from the sediment by moving the liquid to another barrel
- Saignee: French term which literally means “to bleed,” this is the process of removing some of the unfermented grape juice to increase the wine/skin ratio
- Sulfites: chemicals that prevent spoilage of wine
- Tannin: compound found in the seeds, skins and stalks of grapes
- TCA: abbreviation for the destructive chemical that causes cork taint
- Topping-off: process of filling a wine barrel that has lost wine due to evaporation
