ADVERTISING: Advertorial — Wine terms explained

Wine like any other specialized industry has its own set of jargon. And like professionals in any industry those who manufacture wine, sell wine and write about wine can tend to throw those industry specific terms around without regard for non-wine professionals’ potential understanding. Especially when writing about wine as part of a column or writing tasting notes, we try to be creative, so we are not repetitive in reviews and notes. The more “flowery” we get though the more difficult it can be for those reading to interpret our meaning. Here are explanations of some of those terms in the hope wine consumers understand better what we are attempting to communicate.

We will frequently describe a wine as extracted, almost always it refers to red wines. Specifically, it refers to color or tannins being extracted from the skins of the red wine grapes. If you take a red grape and squeeze it the juice from the grape will run clear. It is only from the time the clear juice spends in contact with the skins during fermentation that the juice takes on the color. This process of extraction also provides the wine with much of its tannic structure, what gives the wine not only that dry sensation in the mouth but also provides the wine with its age worthiness. The more time the wine spends on the skins the more extracted the wine is. There can be too much of a good thing though, too much skin contact or for too long and the wine becomes overly tannic and astringent.

While we are on the subject of tannins, the only sources of tannin that we described above are the skins of the grapes and oak barrels used to age the wines. White wines therefore do not have tannins even though some are aged in oak barrels they just don’t extract much tannin from the barrels. This is important to note if you are having an allergic reaction to red wines but not white wines, tannins are most likely the culprit.

Wine descriptors fall generally into two categories, descriptors related to fruit flavors and aromas and those related to spices, tobacco, wood and the like. These aromas and flavors come from two origins; all of the fruit-based descriptors come from the grapes themselves. Anything related to spices, wood flavors and smells, other descriptors like leather, coffee, and bacon come from the oak barrels or other vessels that the wine is fermented or aged in.

One other note on wine aromas. Some white wines specifically Riesling but some other European white varietals will show a distinctive aroma we describe as petrol. It is an aroma that very definitely has an oily character to it. This comes from fermenting the grapes with the stems in the fermenter. That oily nature is extracted from those stems.

Yeast is what makes ordinary grape juice into wine with alcohol. The yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and creates alcohol and carbon dioxide. The alcohol eventually kills of the yeast cells when it reaches a high enough level. The dead yeast cells are referred to as lees. Lees when they are stirred from the bottom of the vessel the wine is aged in can create a creamy or silky texture in the wine. When we describe the palate of the wine as silky or sleek it is many times from the stirring of the lees.

Two of the most confusing terms in wine are sweet and dry. When wine professionals use these terms, they have very specific meanings. If a wine is described as dry it means that the yeast, we talked about above has consumed all the sugar in the grapes to the point where the remaining sugar is undetectable by the human palate. Most of us can detect true sugar in wine somewhere between .5% and 1.5% sugar. A wine is described as dry usually when the sugar level is below .5%. It is usually described as off-dry or sweet when it is above 1.5%. The percentages are referring to residual sugar, it doesn’t indicate that additional sugar has been added to the wine only that fermentation was stopped prior to all of the sugar from the grapes being consumed by the yeast. The complicating factor in the sweet versus dry conversation though is that when most of us taste fruit flavors in wine our brains go to sweet even though the wine is technically dry.

We hope these explanations help you better understand what we write about each week. If you have specific questions stop by the shop and we will do our best to answer them.

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George Balling is co-owner with his wife, Mary Lancaster, of the dinner party, a wine and gift shop in Coeur d’Alene by Costco. The dinner party has won the award for best wine shop in North Idaho twice, including for 2018. George is also published in several other publications around the country. After working in wineries in California and judging many wine competitions, he moved to Coeur d’Alene with Mary more than 10 years ago to open the shop. You can also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop.