Can You Learn Homemade Wine Making If You Don’t Know the Words?
As you venture into the world of homemade wine making you are going to encounter many new terms related to the topic of grape growing and winemaking. These words are commonly used by experienced vintners and viticulturists, but uncommon to beginners just starting out. If you have an avid interest in creating great wines in your own backyard, the list below will help introduce you to some of the jargon. But I recommend you don’t try to memorize the words. Instead just practice saying them outloud in sentences. It might feel funny at first, but if you do it regularly, this method will quickly boost your wine making vocabulary and get you talking like a Wine Wizard in no time.
Ok, Let’s take a look at some Winemaking Terminology …
Vintner – a person engaged in making wine
Viticulture – the activity of growing grapes.
Grape Variety – the type of grapes used to make a wine.
Varietal – term for grape variety.
Yield – the production of a vineyard in tons/acre or liters/hectare. Generally a lower yield gives wines of more power and concentration.
Pigeage – a French winemaking term for the traditional stomping of grapes in open fermentation tanks
Oenology – the science of wine and winemaking.
Vinification – The activity of making grape juice into wine.
Must – the combination of grapes, juice and skins that ferments to create wine.
Skin contact – The pre-fermentation period in which the grape juice rests in contact with the skins of the grapes. Used in red winemaking to enhance colors and texture; may be used briefly in white winemaking to enhance aromas.
Fermentation – A naturally-occurring process by which the action of yeasts converts sugar in grape juice into alcohol, and the juice becomes wine. Carbon dioxide is produced as a by-product.
Maceration – The process of soaking the skins of red grapes in their juice to extract color, tannins and other substances into the wine; can occur pre or post fermentation.
Tannin. A substance found in the skins, stems and seeds of grapes (grape tannins) and imparted by oak barrels (wood tannins), that, in balance, can lend structure, texture and ageability to red wines.
Lees – The grape solids and spent yeast cells that fall to the bottom of a white wine after fermentation
Racking – The process by which clear wine is removed from the settled sediment or lees in the bottom of a container.
Riddling – The art of turning and tilting bottles of sparkling wine in order to ease the sediment into the neck of the bottle. Often performed mechanically in modern facilities.
Maturation – The process by which a wine reaches a point of readiness for bottling; can continue in the bottle.
Sediment – Residue in the bottom of a bottle of red wine that forms as the wine ages.
Acidity – Level of tartness perceived in the taste of the wine, acidity is a naturally component consisting of mainly tartaric acid, at about 0.5 to 0.7 percent of the wine by volume.
pH – a measure of the acidity of wine, based on the ionization of hydrogen. The pH of most wines is between 3.2 and 3.8.
Brix – A measure of sugar content or concentration in the grape juice at harvest.. One degree Brix is approximately 12 g/l sugar. It also includes many other soluble substances such as salts, acids and tannins, sometimes called Total Soluble Solids (TSS)
Residual sugar – Remaining sugar in wine after fermentation.
Chaptalization. technique of adding sugar to the grapes or must to balance the wine.
Seepage – leakage of wine past the edges of the cork. In time, this can lead to loss of wine and oxidation.
Oxidized – having been spoiled by exposure to too much air. The resulting wine tastes old, flat, and tired.
Topping up – The process by which evaporated wine is replaced in the barrel, completely filling casks or tanks with wine to assure that there is no air space in the container.
Vinegar Fly – Common name for the insect Drosophila melanogaster. It is a winemaker’s biggest enemy. A vinegar fly may turn your wine into vinegar.
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