Glossary of Wine Making
Acid Alcohol Barrel Basket Pressing Baumé Faults Fermentation Lees Malolactic Fermentation Phylloxera Do not remove any part of a grapevine (leaves, fruit, canes, roots, etc.) from quarantine areas. Road signs mark the boundaries of the quarantine areas. Tannin
Essential component of grapes and wine, where it gives ‘juiciness’ and life and xestiness to the experience of drinking. Low acid wines are flat and dull.
Without it, wine would just be grape juice. Alcohol can be tasted – as a warm, even sweet sensation towards the back of the tongue.
Wine barrels are made from oak – either vanilla-and –coconut-flavoured American oak or more savoury, subtle French oak – and are used to mature fuller white wine like Chardonnay and most red wines. This maturation rounds out a wine and adds extra complexity of flavour.
An old-fashioned but still very-much-used, manually-operated way of gently pressing new wine away from the mass of grape skins and seeds (know as the ‘marc’) after fermentation.
A measure of sugar content in the grapes, roughly equal to potential alcohol; so 12 baumé grapes will make a wine that’s about 12 per cent alcohol.
Many things can spoil a wine’s flavour and make it fault. The most obvious is cork taint, where a must-smelling cork causes the wine that comes into contact with it to taste musty too (or sometimes just to taste flat and dull). Hydrogen sulphide is a compound that can be produced during fermentation and, although eradicable, can sometimes make it into bottle; you’ll detect it as a farmyardy, eggy smell. And volatile acidity, while tolerable in small amounts (and can actually help to lift a wine’s aroma), can also spoil a wine with its vinegary or nail-polish-remover smell if present in large dowse.
The conversion by yeasts of sugar to alcohol, carbon dioxide and heat.
The name given to the deposit of dead yeasts of dead yeast cells that forms in barrels of wine after fermentation or bottle of sparkling wine. Lees add a savoury flavour and creamy texture to a wine that is matured in contact with it.
The conversion by bacteria of hard-tasting malic acid to softer-tasting lactic acid usually after the alcoholic fermentation has taken place. Happens in all red wines and some whites, most notably barrel-matured Chardonnay.
A microscopic vine louse that attacks the roots of a vine, decreasing yields and in most cases eventually destroying the vineyard. Can be prevented by grafting vines onto resistant rootstocks. Some areas of Victoria are Phylloxera zones (Nagambie, King Valley, Glenrowan, Milawa, Rutherglen and Corowa areas). and cellar door visitors should be aware of restrictions on travelling within by observing vineyard signs.
Substance extracted from the skins of red grapes (and oak barrels) that is felt as a ‘grip’ or gentle bitterness on the sides of the tongue and the gums. Tannin helps give red wine their body and structure.
