Written on 01/09/2020
The language of wine
Wine has its own language. It is discussed as much as it is tasted. From the erotic to the scientific, the wine lexicon is vast and sometimes mysterious. We've heard the terms a thousand times without ever admitting we don't understand them. Here's a selection of words you need to know and master to talk about "wine" without getting your feet stuck in the vine...
DRY WINE
It all depends on which wine you're talking about...
For white wine, this is a wine with very little sweetness. The palate perceives no sweetness. For producers, it's a wine that contains less than 2 grams of sugar per liter of wine. In Alsace, we even classify them on a scale of 1 to 5.
If you're having a white wine dinner, serve the dry wines before the sweet ones. The sweetness of the latter risks masking all the aromas of the former!
Champagne, on the other hand, is a sweeter-than-average wine.
And with reds, it's a flaw, a criticism. Dry reds are harsh and astringent. They leave an unpleasant, drying impression on the palate.
PHYLLOXERA (The)
Fortunately, phylloxera no longer claims any victims. This aphid crossed the Atlantic to ravage European vineyards at the end of the 19th century. Two and a half million hectares were uprooted by the beast, which devoured the leaves and roots of our vines, destroying certain timeless grape varieties forever.
PIQUETTE
There's little suspense: it's a bad wine. But theorigin of this word can be traced back to phylloxera. Faced with a shortage of vines, people tried to make two wines from the same harvest. Water was roughly added to the marc. Piquette" was born. Several laws were then put in place to regulate wine production, as well as the first geographical regulations, forerunners of the appellation d'origine controlée.
CAUDALIE
We go from the dark hours to the heights of taste. Caudalie is the measure of aromatic persistence in the mouth after a sip of wine. It's measured in seconds, and the longer it lasts, the more the wine is considered "great".
Here are a few dog-eared pages in the never-ending dictionary of wine. We could still have talked about balsamic wine, the hat, or the taste of light... but that's only part of the story!
