With an incredible 8,000-year-long rich history and a robust culture, you might find wine a little intimidating to appreciate and describe with hundreds of terms explaining its flavor, perpetration, and creation. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a wine scholar to appreciate and enjoy a good glass at a wine tasting. The following guide breaks down the most common wine-tasting terms.
Wine Types
Red Wine: These wines are made from red and/or black grapes with their skin left on during fermentation. These wines tend to have a stronger bitterness and aftertaste to them.
White Wine: These wines are made from white–and sometimes red–grapes with the skins removed during fermentation. These wines tend to be sweeter.
Flavor Terms
Acidity: All wines have some acidity to them, which presents itself in a sharp, sour taste that should be pleasant. A wine that’s too acidic tastes harsh; a wine with too little acidity tastes bland and empty.
Aroma (Nose): Wine tasters use aroma or nose to describe how a wine smells. Tasters can learn to break apart the different elements of a wine’s smell.
Balance: A “balanced” wine refers to evenly present sweetness, fruitiness, and alcohol flavor profiles relative to the acidity.
Bitterness: Grape skins, seeds, and stems feature a compound called tannin that gives the wine its bitter/dry aspects; this term refers to the strength of those aspects.
Body: The terms light-, medium-, and full-bodied describe how delicate to intense a wine tastes. The more bitter and alcoholic the wine, the fuller-bodied it tastes.
Dry and Sweet: The term “dry” refers to an absence of sweetness in the wine, whereas sweet wines have a present sugar flavor.
Finish (Smooth/Spicy/Bitter): The finish describes the aftertaste. A smooth finish has a tart feeling, a spicy finish leaves a burning sensation, and a bitter finish is an astringent feeling.
Fruit Level: The terms “Fruit Forward” and “Savory” describe wines with dominant sweet fruit flavor; savory describes fruit flavors that are bitter, sour, or tart.
Mouthfeel: This describes the texture or feeling of wine in your mouth. Wines can feel light, heavy, smooth, rough, dry, etc.
Preparation/Serving
Aeration: This is the process of introducing oxygen into the wine to enhance the flavor, often done with a device called an aerator.
Bottle/Half-Bottle: A bottle is 750ml; a half-bottle is 375ml.
Corked: This term can be confusing because you may think it means sealing the wine bottle with a cork: it means the wine has gone bad.
Decanting: Unlike most beverages, the act of pouring wine from the bottle into another container where contact is made with oxygen to the wine itself by aerating it and removing sediment.
Wine Glass Parts:
- Rim: The edge/opening of the glass.
- Bowl: The rounded part that holds the wine,
- Stem: The long, thin part that connects the bowl to the foot.
- Foot/Base: The flat bottom of the glass.
Creation
Aging: This describes storing wine over a long time, which helps it develop a more complex flavor.
Alcohol By Volume (ABV): This term describes how much alcohol is in the wine.
Fermentation: Specifically with wine, this is the process of combining grapes with yeast to turn sugar into alcohol.
Terroir: This French term describes the environmental factors that affected the wine’s creation.
Varietal: A varietal wine is mostly made from a single type of grape.
Vintage: A wine’s vintage states its grape harvesting year.
Whether you’re a first-timer, beginner, or seasoned veteran wine taster, there’s always something new and exciting to experience at a wine tasting. At San Antonio Winery, we would be delighted to share our wine varietals and unique charm with you at our locations in Los Angeles, Ontario, and Paso Robles.