Glossary Archives

WINE GLOSSARY

Acidity
Acidity is the component in a wine that makes a wine taste crisp. All wines contain acid (tartaric acid is found in grapes, therefore is found in wines) and is more often a noticeable flavor component in white wines than reds. Acid is the property that makes your mouth fill up with saliva and has a cleansing feeling. Some red wines may also contain a fair amount of acid which gives the wine a nice, clean finish. Acidity can be thought of as having the opposite effect on a wine’s finish as tannins—tannins make your mouth dry out, acid makes your mouth water.

Appellation
An appellation is a wine growing region. In every country, there are a set of laws that a wine must adhere to in order to have the appellation name put on the label. Each country has different rules and requirements. For example, in France, a wine must be made from 100% of the grape, if the name appears on the label. In the United States, the requirement is only 75%.

Aroma or Bouquet?
Aroma is simply the smell of a wine and is more commonly used when referring to young wines. The term Bouquet is generally used to describe an aged wine that has more complex and layers of smells.

Beaujolais Nouveau
By French law, Beaujolais Nouveau is available in the US starting the third Thursday of each November. From the Beaujolais region of France, this wine is made from Gamay grapes harvested just weeks ago! By bottling the wine without aging, the result is a light and fruity red that even non-red wine drinkers like. It’s the perfect wine for your Thanksgiving holiday.

Botti
Botti are huge oak casks, with capacities of thousands of liters typically used to age red wines in Italy.

Champagne or Sparkling?
The difference is quite simple. By winemaking law, only sparkling wines from the Champagne region of France can be called Champagne. Everything else is sparkling. Different countries may call their sparkling different names. For example, in Spain their sparkling wine is Cava; in Italy, you may see Prosecco or the sweet Moscato d’Asti. All are equally yummy!

Corked
Many people believe that a wine becomes corked when air inadvertently leaks into the bottle. Not so. A wine is corked when a mold develops on the cork called TCA (Trichloroanisole). This mold causes the wine to emit an unpleasant order and taste. Unfortunately, it renders the bottle useless! A corked bottle can smell musty or like wet cardboard. It is not always easy to tell if a wine is corked. One sure way to determine if a wine is bad is to let it sit for about an hour. A corked wine only gets worse over time once opened! My favorite corked bottle story is when a renowned wine writer admitted that he couldn’t tell if a wine was corked at a restaurant. His frustrated wife exclaimed, “If you can’t tell if the wine is corked, how can the rest of us fools tell?” The wine industry estimates that 3-7% of all wines are corked—a good reason for many producers to switch to screw caps. So don’t be turned off by the screw cap; you’ll never have to worry whether or not the wine you’re drinking is bad or just not your favorite!

Cross
A cross is simply a new grape variety created by combining one variety with another. An example of a cross is Cabernet Sauvignon, which is the result of a cross between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

Cuvee
A widely-used term, usually refers to a blend of grapes. In France, Cuvée is a blend of wines bottled as one product. It may also refer to the final blend in making sparkling wines.

Eiswein
Eiswein, as it is known in Germany, or Icewine is a dessert wine made from fully ripened grapes that are allowed to freeze on the vine. Unlike some other dessert wines, the grapes must have no mold or breakage in the skin. The grapes must be harvested quickly by hand and immediately gently pressed. The ice, or only water in the wine, stays in the grape, leaving a very small quantity of highly concentrated sugar solution. This solution is then fermented into a sweet dessert wine, with flavors of apricot, honey, and pear.

The following three terms are best demonstrated together:
Fermentation
After the juice has been extracted from the newly harvested grapes, fermentation occurs. Fermentation is the process of converting the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol. This is accomplished by adding yeast to the juice.
Dry
The technical definition of a dry wine is one that contains little or no residual sugar.
Sweet
A wine that contains residual sugar. If the fermentation process is left to complete on its own, the result is a dry wine. The yeast will work to covert the sugar to alcohol until there is no more sugar present. If the fermentation process is stopped before all of the sugar is converted to alcohol, you are left with a sweet wine.

Flavanoids
are health-beneficial polyphenol anti-oxidants that are found in chocolate, tea, red wine, and grape juice. That means that you get two anti-oxidant sources when you pair wine and chocolate!

Glögg
is the term for mulled wine in the Nordic countries. Mulled wine is usually a red wine, combined with spices and served hot. Wines were once mulled when they went bad to make them drinkable again. Nowadays it is a traditional drink during winter, especially around the holidays. The main ingredients are wine, spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves, sugar or molasses, and sometimes stronger spirits such as vodka, cognac, or brandy.

Ideal Wine Cellar Conditions
For ideal long-term wine storage, a cellar should have a temperature of 55° Fahrenheit and a Relative Humidity of 55-75%. The cooler temperature allows the wine to age at the ideal pace, while the humidity level will slow the wine’s evaporation through the cork. Also, ultraviolet light exposure and vibration should be kept to a minimum. These factors can rob the wine of its color, flavor, and aromas.

Lees
Lees is the term used for the dead yeast that remain in the barrel or tank after it has converted all of the sugar to alcohol during the fermentation process. Some winemakers like to age wine on its own lees (or sometimes on another wine’s lees) in order to add lavor and complexity to the finished
product.

Nigori
A variety of sake, a wine made froom rice. Loosely translated, nigori means cloudy, referring to its cloudy appearance. Sake is usually filtered to remove rice grain solids left behind after fermentation; however nigori sake is left unfiltered.

Oaked or Unoaked?
A wine is oaked when it has been fermented and/or aged in oak barrels. Unoaked wines are fermented and/or aged in stainless steel. The difference in methods makes a difference in the way a wine tastes. Generally, an oaked wine is usually fuller, richer, more rounded, and more multi-dimensional. Unoaked wines are light to medium weight and have a crisp, clean style with more simple, aromatic fruit flavors.

Organic/Biodynamic:
Organic grapes are produced without using pesticides or fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients. Biodynamics is an ultra-organic method of agriculture that balances a holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, and animals as a closed, self-nourishing system.

Reserve
Reserve is a wine term that refers to a higher quality wine or one that has been aged longer. However, Spain and Italy are the only two countries that regulate that term.

Riesling
Let’s talk about one of our favorite wines—Riesling (Rees-ling)! You all have seen the words Kabinett, Spätlese, and Auslese on the labels. Just what does this mean? Well, the winemaking laws in Germany require that the level of sugar be measured in all grapes at harvest. There are 4 tiers of harvest categories, Kabinett, Estate Riesling, Spätlese, and Auslese (not including dessert wines). Kabinett wines have the least amount of sugar at harvest, Auslese has the most. However, just because a wine is labeled Auslese, it does not mean that the wine will be the sweetest. The winemaker can still convert all of the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol leaving a dry Auslese. A good portion of these wines do not get exported, so most of what you see on wine shop shelves is the fruity or sweeter wines.

Sake
Sake is a wine made from rice, water, Koji, & sake yeast. Koji is an enzyme added to the cooked rice that converts starch in the rice to sugar. The sake yeast is then added to convert the sugar to alcohol. Premium sake is very full and flavorful and is the perfect complement to fresh dishes.

Sangria
Sangria is a wine punch made with fruit and wine usually from Spain and Portugal. The word sangria comes from the Spanish sangre meaning blood.

Syrah or Shiraz
Ever wonder what the difference is between Syrah and Shiraz? Well, there is none! Syrah and Shiraz both refer to the grape Syrah. Winemakers sometimes choose one name over the other to highlight the style of the wine they have made, Syrah being a wine more similar to Old World examples (more elegant or restrained) and Shiraz being more New World (riper and fruitier). The name of the grape Shiraz was taken from that of the city of Shiraz in Iran where the process of wine making may have possibly originated 7000 years ago.

Tannin
Tannin is a substance found in the skins, seeds, and stems of grapes. Tannins are found mostly in red wines, since its juice is left on the skins during the fermentation process (turning grape juice into alcohol), while white wines are fermented apart from the skins. The skins add the red color and flavors specific to a red wine. Tannins make your mouth feel dry and velvety and may even taste a little bitter. They are also the component that gives red wines its aging ability and holds a red wine together longer. As a wine ages, the tannins bind to the solids left in the wine and drop to the bottom to form sediment, causing the tannins to mellow (or become less noticeable in the taste), allowing the fruit to become more prominent.

Tartaric Acid/Tartrates
Tartaric acid is a natural acid found in grapes and therefore, found in wine. When the wine is chilled, this acid forms crystals or tartrates. Ever see white floaties in your white wines? These are just harmless tartrates. Some white wines are chilled and filtered before bottling, so that the tartrates are not present.

Vintage:
Refers to the year from which the grapes were harvested. A bottle of wine with a vintage on the label, i.e. 2001, indicates that the wine was made from that year’s harvest.
Non-Vintage:
Refers to a wine blended from two or more different harvests. No year will be listed on the label. This is common with Champagnes and sparkling wines, as well as more mass-produced wines.

Well-Balanced
What does it mean when a wine is well-balanced? We’ve talked about tannins, alcohol level, residual sugar, and acid in a wine. A balanced wine is one where these components are present in the taste, but no one of them overpowers the others. For example, a wine that feels hot in your mouth due to a high alcohol content is not a balanced wine.

What's a Varietal and How is it Different from a Variety?
These are terms that can be confusing and have thrown all of us at one point or another. A varietal is a wine made entirely or chiefly from one variety (the plant) of grape. For example, in the U.S., a wine labeled Chardonnay is made from at least 75% Chardonnay grapes. However, you may also hear varietal used as a synonym of the wine-making grape, i.e. this wine is made from the Chardonnay varietal.

BEER GLOSSARY

What’s the difference between a lager and an ale?
An ale is a beer that has been brewed using top fermenting yeast strains in warmer temperatures. This process results in a fruity tasting beer. A lager has been brewed with bottom fermenting yeast strains at cooler temperatures. The result is a crisper, cleaner tasting beer.

Black Beer
One of the rarest forms of beer, the earliest account of its existence dates back to 1557 in Brazil. It was brewed by the natives of the Amazon region using dark roasted corn or manioc root and fermented using wild yeast. Many Amazon Indian tribes placed great spiritual significance on black beer as a beverage used in religious and social ceremonies.

Hefe
A German word meaning "yeast". Used mostly in conjunction with wheat (weiss) beers to indicate that the beer is bottled or kegged with the yeast, or unfiltered. Hefe-weiss beers are cloudy, frothy, and very refreshing. Perfect for the summer!

Hops
Herb added to fermenting beer to impart a bitter aroma and flavors. Hop bitterness is measured in IBU’s or International Bitterness Units. Beer with higher IBU’s have clean grapefruit notes and are great paired with Chinese takeout, heavier fare, or spicy foods. Try our Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale for a tasty 45 IBU’s!

International Bitterness Units (IBUs)
A system used to measure the level of bitterness in beer due to the addition of hops during the brewing process.

Mead
Mead is the oldest style of alcoholic beverage. The term honeymoon came from a belief that if the newlywed couple consumes a glass of mead every night for the first month (moon) of their marriage, it would guarantee having a child! Mead is made of fermented local honey, with a rich sweetness and honey character. Our Lurgashall Christmas Mead comes with its own spice packet to steep with the Mead while warming, for a delicious holiday treat.

Oktoberfest Beer
The common Munich Oktoberfest beer served at Wies’n (the local term for the celebration, derived from Theresienwiese) contains only 4.5% alcohol by volume, is dark/copper in color, has a mild hop profile and is typically labeled as a Bavarian Märzenbier in style – an amber lager with bottom fermenting yeast at 45º-55ºF. Try our Hofbrau and Capital Brewery Oktoberfest Beers!

CHEESE GLOSSARY

Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée(AOC)
Just as there are AOC’s for wine production in France, there are AOC’s for cheese making. AOC’s guarantee that a cheese is made within a region using established methods of production such as type of milk used, where the milk was collected, and aging lengths.

Denominazione di Origine Protetta (DOP)
The Italian equivalent of Protected Designation of Origin, a law designed to protect the names of regional foods. This system protects the reputation and quality of the foods by ensuring that they are produced within the laws of their region.

Double & Triple Cream
A soft-ripened cheese that is made by adding extra cream to the fresh curd. Double cream contains at least 60% butterfat and triple cream contains at least 75%. Try our rich and buttery Saint Andre triple cream—like butter!

Fondue
The term fondue comes from the French word "fondre" (to melt) and refers to several types of communal dishes shared at the table in a pot over a small burner. We’re especially fond of cheese and chocolate fondues!

SPECIALTY FOOD GLOSSARY

% Cacao
Cacao (ca-cow) is a small tree whose seeds are used to make cocoa and chocolate. The term “% cacao” refers to the total percentage of ingredients by weight that come from the cacao bean. The higher the % cacao, the more intense the chocolate flavor and less added sugar.