WINE TASTING TERMS
Acerbic: Sour or bitter tasting- Acidity: Causes your tongue to tingle, or your mouth to salivate. Provides depth to wine.
- Aggressive: Applies to wine that has either harsh tannin or acidity
- Approachable: A wine that is easy to drink, or ready to drink now.
- Astringency: Biting tannins, higher than usual tannin.
- Balanced: Sweetness, alcohol, tannin, and acidity all working together in a wine.
- Bitterness: Biting acidity, causing a bitter reaction.
- Body: The “weight” of the wine. Ie. Pinot noir, Light body. Petit Syrah, Heavy body.
- Bouquet: the Aroma of the wine
- Bright: A wine with crisp acid, is often referred to as bright
- Chewy: Generally referring to red wines, which are heavy bodied, and big tannin.
- Coarse: Thick green tannin, make the wine feel almost gritty on the finish
- Corked: Caused by a bacteria, TCA, Causes the wine to smell like “Mildew”
- Delicate: Light, subtle tasting wines
Extra-Dry: Refers to a sparkling wine that has a touch of sweetness to it. Often confused with Brut, Brut is a dryer wine than extra-dry- Finish: The lingering flavors in the mouth, after you’ve swallowed the wine.
- Fruity: Showing fruit qualities on the front of a wine, generally refers to “New World” wines.
- Full-bodied: Heavy weight wine, rich, deep, hearty.
- Grassy: Generally referring to Sauvignon Blanc, grassy wines can actually display an aroma of fresh cut grass
- Green: Refers to “Stemmy” Bitter tannin in a wine
- Hard: Wines with abrasive tannin or acidity.
- Harsh: Wines that are very hard, almost difficult to drink
- Heavy: Another term for Full-Bodied. Big hearty wine.
- Hollow: Wines that have nothing going on, boring, “Hollow” wines tend to be thin and watery.
- Light: Light wines, are wines with lower acidity and tannin.
- Lively: Synonym for Fresh, lively wines are young higher acid wines.
- Long Finish: Wines where the finish lingers and develops in your mouth.
Melon: A flavor or nose of melon, generally appearing in unoaked chardonnay.- Round: A very good quality, round wines are aged wines that have lost their youthful tannin.
- Short Finish: Wines whose finish generally ends while still in the mouth.
- Silky: Generally referring to tannin, well integrated, soft tannin are generally referred to as silky or velvety.
- Structure: Word used to discuss the components of wine, Acid, Tannin, Sugar, Alcohol. Each component makes up the wines structure.
- Spicy: Referring to wines with a cinnamon or spicy quality, such as Red Zinfandel from California.
- Thick: Heavy, astringent, tannic wine. Almost feels thick and syrupy on the palate.
- Thin: synonym to Hollow… light wines with not much character.
- Warm: Synonym to Hot. Refers to a wine with High alcohol such as some Australian Shiraz.
