A Glossary of
Wine Terms
by Kate Bardessano

Santa Barbara County has become one of the most influential wine grape growing regions in the state of California. In our beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, wine tasting has become extremely popular among visitors and local wine lovers. In this article, I will share with you some ways to enhance your tasting experience by giving you some wine terms and tips for tasting like a pro
  When you are served a full wine tasting, you will usually go from the wines with the lightest body style to the wines with the heaviest body style. Most wines are DRY, meaning that they have little or no sugar in them. Wines that have sugar in them will be served last, so as not to compromise your PALATE, or sense of taste. !

    The sugar level in wine is measured in percentages. At the lowest, or 0% the wine is DRY, then it goes to OFF-DRY and SWEET. With Champagne, or Sparkling wine, you can add in EXTRA-DRY and BRUT. When a wine tastes fairly sweet, and has a sugary feel in the back of your tongue, ask what the RESIDUAL SUGAR is. The attendant will then give you the percentage of sugar that is in the wine, and you will have won some respect!
   Wine has many different acids in it. I tell my tasters that when you feel a drying, puckering sensation on the center of your tongue, and/or the front of your teeth, that’s TANNIC ACID, also known as ASTRINGENCY.
   TANNIC ACID comes from the grape juice’s contact with the skin of the grape. It is the healthy stuff that keeps fat from attacking your arteries, which is why your doctor may recommend you drink a bit of red wine with dinner. It also helps the wine age longer in your wine closet. It doesn’t taste that great in large quantities, but TANNIC ACID dies over time, being replaced by the fruit and spice components of the wine.
   A wine that is HOT usually has too much alcohol, and may be UNBALANCED. A wine must have BALANCE. In a BALANCED wine, the taste doesn’t go away too fast, and it isn’t too strong on any part of your mouth. It is a kind of elegant state of harmony from the front of your tongue to the very FINISH.
   Here are a few more terms you may find useful:
   CORKED: A wine that smells like mould, wet cardboard, or “swampy” may be CORKED from a diseased cork.
   VOLUPTUOUS: Also known as ROUND, it means that the wine is full-bodied, with an all-over mouth feel. Most people like a wine to be smooth feeling and well-rounded in their mouths.
   VARIETAL: That term refers to a specific type of grape. If a wine reminds you of the grape that it comes from, you can say, “It is true to its varietal character.” You may get especially good at this after you take a lot of tours around the valley during harvest time and have a chance to taste the grapes right off of the vine. Wine really does reflect the taste of the original grape!
   BREATHE: A wine is left open to BREATHE, so it can open-up in flavor, like a rose. The wines most likely to need this help are bigger bodied red wines. To help a wine BREATHE, you can pour the whole bottle into a carafe, or other wine decanter an hour or so before serving it. The process of putting your wine in a larger container so it can AIRRATE, or BREATHE, is simply called DECANTING.
    FAT: Yes, even in wine, this is not a good word. Although, with all of the great food that wine goes with, you wouldn’t think that that would be the case at all! Anyway, those wines that are too “FAT”, are typically wines that remind you of a bit of Vaseline, and have too little ACIDITY to be refreshing, due to their richness in glycerol. This can also be referred to as “FLABBY", but I prefer, VOLUPTOUS, or “Big Boned,” myself!
    FORTIFIED: This is good to know here in the valley because some of our wineries produce some great Port-styled wines that are FORTIFIED. That means that they have extra SPIRIT, usually meaning brandy, to increase their strength, flavor, burn factor, and shelf life.
   LEGS: When you spin your wine around in your glass, and watch it drip down the sides, you are looking at the LEGS of the wine. That won’t mean much to you if you aren’t in the business of earning money to state the viscosity and sugar content of a wine without cheating and looking at the winemaker’s notes. I usually spin the wine to bring up the aroma to the top of the glass. After all, most of our taste is in our nose!
   OENOLOGY: This is a great spelling word to give to friends after a few winery stops! It refers to the science of wine making.
   One of the most impressive wine terms you can use is TERROIR. It refers to the climate, geology, aspect, soil type, rainfall, and all outside influences on the quality of a wine via the grapes from which it was fermented. In other words: The area where the grapes were grown gives the wine its own unique flavor. With practice, some people have become very well known for their ability to taste a wine and tell you where it came from. When you are really into wine tasting here, and you continue on to other geographic areas, you will notice an immediate difference in the style of the taste. That is TERROIR.
   VELVETY: I love this description, especially for Cabernet Franc! A wine that has a definite “feel” on the mid to front section of your tongue, you can describe as “VELVETY.” Now that’s cool!
   A VIGNERON, or VITICULTURE SPECIALIST, is a Grape Grower.
   A VINTNER is a WINEMAKER, and that person usually has an ASSISTANT WINEMAKER, and one or more CELLAR ASSISTANTS or PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS.
If a wine is ESTATE BOTTLED, then you know that the grapes for that wine came from property that the winery owns, their “ESTATE FRUIT.”
   Another frequently asked question is whether the flavors and the aromas of any given wine are imparted by adding vanilla extract, pepper, pineapple juice, etc. The answer is that no extra flavors are added. Grapes just have a chemical structure and aroma that, when made into wine, gives that wine similarities in taste and smell to almost all of the other vegetables, fruits and spices that we are familiar with.
   I hope these terms will help you have a more enjoyable experience tasting our wonderful Santa Ynez Valley wines! Please feel free to write to the Santa Ynez Valley Guest with any questions or comments you may have—we’ll try to answer them in our next issue. Happy tasting!