Ever been to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and been pressed to perform the “wine presentation”? The server pours a small splash of wine into your glass, expecting you to have some insight into the taste, but you don’t have anything to say besides, “Hmm… tastes like wine!” Here’s a primer on a few basic wine terms so you can peruse the wine list and talk to the sommelier (the wine expert at the restaurant) with a bit more confidence on your next dinner date.
Aeration
A wine is aerated when oxygen is introduced deliberately. A sommelier might leave the bottle to “breathe” for a bit after opening it, or even pour it into a separate container before it hits the wine glass (this process is called “decanting”). Introducing oxygen into the beverage releases aromas and flavors that round out and soften a wine. The word “aeration” means “act of exposing to air,” and comes from the French aération, which comes from the Latin aer, meaning “the air, atmosphere.”
Appellation
This word, meaning broadly “designation, name given to a person, thing, or class,” comes from the Old French apelacion, meaning “name, domination.” In modern French, je m’appelle translates to “my name is…” In relation to wine, “appellation” means a defined geographical region that identifies where the grapes were grown. Some examples in the United States include the Sonoma Coast and Napa Valley in California, and the Fingerlakes region in New York.
Body
“Body” refers to a sense of thickness on the drinker’s palate, which results from a combination of the wine’s alcohol content, sugar levels, and dissolved solids. The tactile sensation of the wine’s weight or fullness can be described as light, medium, or full-bodied.
Corked
Corked wine is a bummer for any wine drinker, but it actually has nothing to do with floating pieces of cork in the wine — if that’s the case, the wine isn’t the problem; it’s how it was opened. A corked bottle of wine is one that has been ruined by cork taint, which is a type of spoilage that results in musty aromas and flavors, like that of wet cardboard.
Fining
This process is also called “clarifying.” It’s a technique where agents including gelatin, egg whites, or other ingredients are added to remove unwanted particles, such as dead yeast cells, before bottling.
Sulfites
Sulfites are naturally occurring compounds found in wine (and a wide variety of other foods and beverages). Because they affect the wine’s flavor, they’ll sometimes be artificially created and introduced to alter the growth of yeast or bacteria in the batch. Some folks can have a sensitivity to sulfites, and the headaches or other symptoms associated with drinking wine may actually be related to the sulfites.
Tannins
Tannins are also naturally occurring compounds in wine. They create an astringent, bitter flavor, and occur more commonly in red wines than white. Particularly high-tannin varietals include cabernet sauvignon and nebbiolo.
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