Wine Glossary: Every Term Explained

Acidity: The tart, mouth-watering sensation in wine, similar to biting into a lemon. Acidity keeps wine feeling fresh and balanced, and helps it pair well with food.
Appellation: A legally defined geographic area where a wine's grapes must be grown for the wine to use that name on its label, such as "Napa Valley" or "Bordeaux."
Body: The overall weight and richness of a wine in your mouth, often described as light, medium, or full — similar to the difference between skim milk and heavy cream.
Decant: To pour wine into a separate container before drinking, either to separate it from sediment in older wines, or to expose it to air, which can soften tannins and open up aromas in younger, more powerful wines.
Dry: A wine with little to no perceptible residual sugar. It describes sweetness level, not tartness — a wine can be dry and still have high acidity.
Estate Bottled: Indicates the winery grew the grapes, made the wine, and bottled it all themselves, without buying grapes or bulk wine from outside sources.
Fermentation: The process where yeast converts the natural sugar in grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide, transforming juice into wine.
Legs: The streaks that run down the inside of a glass after swirling wine. They're mostly an indicator of alcohol content, not quality, despite their reputation.
Malolactic Fermentation: A secondary process, common in red wines and some whites, that converts sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid, giving wine a rounder, sometimes creamier texture.
Must: Freshly crushed grape juice, skins, seeds, and stems, before or during fermentation — essentially, wine in its earliest stage.
NV (Non-Vintage): Indicates a wine, most often Champagne or sparkling wine, blended from multiple harvest years to maintain a consistent house style year after year.
Oak Aging: Resting wine in oak barrels, which can add flavors like vanilla, toast, and spice, while also softening tannins through slow, gentle exposure to oxygen.
Old World / New World: "Old World" refers to traditional wine-producing regions in Europe and the Mediterranean; "New World" refers to regions that developed their wine industries later, including the Americas, Australia, and South Africa.
Phylloxera: A microscopic insect that devastated European vineyards in the 19th century by attacking vine roots. Most of the world's vines today are grafted onto resistant American rootstock as a result.
Reserve: A term suggesting a wine of higher quality than a producer's standard bottling, though its meaning varies widely and is strictly regulated in some countries but not others.
Sommelier: A trained wine professional, often working in restaurants, responsible for curating wine lists and helping guests choose and pair wine.
Tannin: A compound found in grape skins, seeds, and stems that creates a dry, sometimes gripping sensation in the mouth, especially noticeable in young red wines.
Terroir: A French term describing how a specific location's soil, climate, and topography combine to give wine from that place a distinctive, recognizable character.
Varietal: A wine named after the primary grape variety used to make it, such as "Chardonnay" or "Merlot," as opposed to a wine named after its region.
Vintage: The year the grapes for a wine were harvested, not necessarily the year it was bottled or released for sale.