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About Wines
Jargon Busting & Fault Finding
Each year in the UK we consume around a billion bottles, that’s a thousand million bottles, of wine. (1,000,000,000 !!)
As we consume so much of it we may as well get to know a little bit about the jargon and how to recognise when a wine is not at its best.
Jargon
Lots of wines are aged in oak and some are even fermented in oak. Most people can recognise the woody flavour especially in white wines. Oak aged gives an aroma of vanilla and nutmeg and adds smoothness to the taste.
Acidity
Tartic acid is one of the many types of acid found in wine. Good acidity Is necessary to the fresh taste of young wines and to help the best wines to age.
Try not to confuse dryness with acidity, too much acid will result in a bitterness or sourness and will spoil the wine. The acidity of wine is what makes your mouth water.
Tannin comes from the stalks, pips and skins of grapes. The colour of red wine is from the skins of the grapes as grape juice is colourless and therefore tannin will also be extracted from the skin along with the colour. Tannin gives the furry, drying feeling in the mouth that makes some young reds hard to drink but is does disappear with age as the wine matures in the bottle.
Balanced / Round is referring to the combination of alcohol, the acidity and the fruitiness of wine.
Body is the word used to describe how the wine feels in your mouth. Generally the higher the alcohol levels the more full- bodied the wine is described as. This term can apply to white wines as well as reds.
Robust is a term only applied to red wines. It generally means that although the wine is full bodied it does not have a lot of finesse so it is best with food.
Some wines (red and white) have obvious aromas of fruit and these are simply described as Fruity. For example Cabernet is reminiscent of blackcurrants and Sauvignon Blanc is like gooseberries.
Mature is the word used to describe the age of the wine and whether it is ready to drink. Some wines have to be aged and mature before they can be drunk.
Spotting wine faults
Corked wine
- Wine quality affected by an off-flavour from the cork. People usually think that this means that the wine itself will have cork in it but this is not the true meaning of this jargon.
- A corked wine will smell musty, sweaty and dull – like a pair of old trainers!
- It only happens to a wine with a natural cork stopper and not to synthetic or screw-cap closures.
Crystals (Tartrates)
- Harmless crystals which look like sugar crystals and are caused by the natural tartaric acid in the wine.
Oxidation
- This means that oxygen has got into the wine and it has gone off.
- The wine will be a darker colour than normal (white wine will look brown) and smell like sherry.
- Air can seep into the bottle when the cork dries out and this can happen because it has been stood upright for too long.
Screw cap closures
- The perception of screw caps is changing. Historically they were linked to cheap wine but that is no longer the case.
- A screw cap gives a perfect seal
- There are benefits to the ease of opening, convenience and maintained freshness.
- Unlike cork closures, the screw cap eliminates all possibility of wine getting air into it causing it to oxidise or go off.
- They are more popularly used in new world, quality wines and are more expensive to produce than cork.
- Screw caps slow down the ageing process in the bottle so some wines will always have to have cork stoppers.
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