Let’s discover 9 wine terms like ‘acidity,’ and ‘terroir,’ to elevate your wine game! Learn how to describe wine confidently and impress fellow enthusiasts.

Let’s face it: wine people have their own language, and if you might feel left out. Want to impress someone with your wine knowledge? Maybe you want to become a wine snob yourself? Worry not. I’ve got you covered.

Here, we’ll cover some terminology that will be useful when consuming wine content. It’s useful to be aware of these concepts if you’re interested in broadening your wine knowledge. But I’m doing this wrong. Let me fix it:

9 Wine Terms to Sound Like a Snob. You Won’t Believe Number 6!

Varietal

This is just the grape variety. Cabernet Sauvignon is not a style of wine, it is wine made with the Cabernet Sauvignon grape. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Sangiovese are grape varieties, and those are their names. In New World wines, it’s typical to find bottles labeled with the varietal, whereas in the Old World they use the region instead.

Of course, a lot of Old World producers make blends. In Bordeaux, for instance, red wines are a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and other grapes like Malbec or Cabernet Franc. But other regions are making single variety wines and still only use the region on the label[1].

Should you use it in a regular conversation? Please don’t, unless you want to look snobbish doing it. In Spanish we use this term more than in English, and you can just stick to using “grape variety”. But if you must: “Beaujolais is a region in France famous for making wine with the Gamay varietal”.

Eyes, Nose, and Palate

Three-for-one? Is this cheating? Wait! Hear me out. These are all words you can use while on a proper wine tasting, so please allow me to bundle all three like I was selling you insurance. Now let me break them all out for you:

Eyes

Eyes is not the correct word, and yes, that’s a lousy way to start us off. This refers to the wine’s appearance, especially its color. And no, I’m not only talking about white or red. This is about shades. In whites it can be stuff like straw, gold, or greenish. And in reds you’re looking for pink, garnet, or violet. Sometimes you can hear someone saying “on the eyes, this wine is brick colored”

Nose

Nose is the aromas you recognize in the wine. A bonus term you can use here is bouquet. In other words, getting your nose inside the glass and giving it a good sniff. What’s there? Funny enough, wine doesn’t smell like grapes[2]. Connoisseurs will smell the wine and throw out names of fruits and flowers. You don’t have to go that far. If you smell berries there’s no need to get more specific than that. Still, you might smell citrus, rose petals, or tobacco.

Palate

Palate, as you can guess, is what you perceive once the wine is in your mouth. It’s closely tied with “nose”, but it also covers things like tastes and textures. And here a quick parenthesis to mention the difference between taste and flavor: the latter is “orange”, and the former is “sweet, acid, and a little bitter”. Remember, taste refers to sensations like sweet or sour, while flavor describes specifics like orange or chocolate.

So, for wine you’re looking for differences or confirmations to what your nose told you, but also if the wine is acid, sweet, savory, mineral. And what about texture? You’re looking for astringent, silky, medium-body, or smooth. “In my mouth that wine had more of that red fruit, and I could taste some chocolate. It was smooth and left me salivating[3]”.

Acidity

A lot of wines are acidic. It has to do with the fruit. You want to harvest wine grapes when balance is reached between ripe sweetness and still high acidity. Here is where we start getting into land and climate. Colder weather helps because it keeps grapes acid longer. Acidity is important in wine because of how it interacts with food, and because a balanced acidity is a sign of high quality in wine.

Acid in wine helps counter fatty foods, and it pairs well with almost anything you want to eat. A crisp white with salty oysters or lemony ceviche, as well as a medium-acid red with fatty grilled steak or tomato pasta sauce.

Wines need acidity and tannins to age well. We’ll talk tannins next, so you’ll get a fuller picture. As for acidity, it serves as a preservative—think pickles in vinegar—and as a guard against oxygen[4].

Tannins

A naturally occurring chemical substance commonly found in tree barks, roots, leaves, and fruit. It’s bitter, and it’s there to protect the plant. For wine making, we’re interested in the tannins found in the skin and seeds of the grape[5]. In nature, they’re there because they make the fruit bitter and astringent when the fruit is not yet ripe, in the hopes of discouraging animals from eating it until ready. Grapes with thick skins have more tannins than thin-skinned varieties.

We’re talking about your Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Syrah, Sangiovese, and many other of the usual suspects.

Tannins in wine contribute to its color, flavor, and mouthfeel. Tannins are brownish in color, so the longer the grape juice is in contact with the skins, the deeper the color will be. Of course, this also depends on the color of the grapes themselves, but it’s the reason for the difference in colors you’ll find between a red and a rosé made with the same varietal[6].

As for flavor, tannins are bitter in the way a cup of black coffee is bitter. That is, not unpalatable, but still noticeable. And then we come to mouthfeel. If you’ve ever drank a deep, strong, heavy red, you will know the sensation of your mouth feeling smaller and dryer. Think of the dry, puckery sensation you get from black tea or underripe fruit.

Tannins will soften with age. Young wines with high tannins will smooth out after some time has passed. This is why some age-worthy wines taste bitter and feel very astringent soon after bottling but feel silky and balanced after proper storage.

Oaked

Also known as Aged. Simply put, wine can be aged or not. And if it’s aged, the more common method is to do so in oak barrels, and though I will be talking about oak aging in this paragraph, wine can be aged in other containers made with clay, concrete, or stainless steel. But let’s get back to oak barrels. Why should you care? You will feel it in the wine. Above, I mentioned leather as an aroma, and chocolate as a flavor. Both are a consequence of aging. As are smoke, vanilla, and coconut.

Aging is also important because it can balance the wine and smooth its tannins. Lastly, the longer the producer waits to sell its wine, the higher the price will be. “Ah, that touch of oak—bringing all those vanilla, leather, and smoke aromas”, said while swirling the glass like a pro. Aged wines are the ones you might want to keep safely stored long term.

Terroir

And so, we’ve come to the big one. Broadly defined, terroir is a combination of the place the vines are planted, what’s the soil like in that place, and its climate—how temperature differs from day to night, rainfall, and sunlight. Vines are typically planted in hills, so different terroirs can be found in the same valley depending on how high the vines are planted, or what direction the slopes are facing. Also, maybe the hill up ahead has a soil consisting mostly of clay, but the one on you left has more limestone.

Timeout! Clay … limestone … does it really matter? Yes. Minerals absorbed by the plant will be different depending on the soil, but more importantly, water drainage and retention, and how the soil affects how roots transfer nutrients to the grapes will make the same grape taste different depending on which soil the vine was planted in. For example, clay soils retain water, while limestone drains well—both influencing the grapes’ flavor.

Terroir is more than that, though. A great wine will be an expression of where it was planted, and in that, Terroir is also the hands that cultivated the grapes, and the ones that made the wine. Terroir is the soul of the wine.

Dry / Sweet

Real quick, when wine is made, sugars are turned into alcohol by fermentation. When the wine is ready, depending on the amount of residual sugar, the wine will be sweet or dry. Technically, a wine is “dry” when it has up to 10 grams of sugar per liter. However, most dry reds will have less that 2 grams per liter. Wine with over 20 grams per liter is a sweet wine, and anything in between would be called off-dry.

Sulfites

You might have seen in in wine labels: “contains sulfites”. What does that mean? Why the warning? Are sulfites bad for you? Sulfites, sulfur dioxide, are a chemical compound added to wine to prevent bacteria and to retard oxidation. So far so good. Furthermore, they are considered safe, and most people have no problem with sulfites, but those with liver or kidney issues might want to avoid them. And it’s to them that the warnings in the labels are directed to. So, consult your doctor, but it’s unlikely that they will affect you.

Corked

When we talk about a bad wine, we mean a faulty wine, not one we just didn’t like. We say the wine is corked when we detect one of those defects. One of them—corked wine—is typically associated with the cork itself. It’s uncommon, so you might never have to worry about this, but it still can happen.

Corks can become contaminated with a compound called TCA[7], which will taint the wine. It will still be safe to drink, but it will also be unpleasant. You can detect a corked wine because it will smell musty, almost the aroma of wet cardboard. Corked wine, defective wine in general, is the only valid reason to return the wine you’ve ordered in a restaurant. It’s rare, but if you end up sipping what tastes like wet dog, send it back!

The Last Drop

Chile’s flagship wine is Carménère, a dry Bordeaux varietal with moderate tannins. This grape has adapted well to the terroir of Colchagua, where hot summer days are tempered by cool ocean breezes at night. The region also boasts diverse soils, such as volcanic, clay, and silt, which contribute to the wine’s unique characteristics.

I grabbed a bottle labeled as a Gran Reserva, expecting some oak influence. The label warned about sulfites, but luckily, I’m not at risk. I poured myself a glass and admired its dark ruby color—on the eyes, it looked fantastic!

On the nose, I hoped to find berries, leather, and a hint of something herbaceous. Sadly, the aroma reminded me of moldy clothes instead. I tasted it to confirm my suspicions. On the palate, the wine’s expected acidity was present, but the other flavors were muted. My wine was corked. Just my luck.

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Footnotes

[1] Burgundy is a good example for this. The label will not mention grapes anywhere, but it will be Pinot Noir if red, and Chardonnay in white.

[2] There are some exceptions. Some German sweet wines and Moscatel tend to smell like grapes.

[3] A sign of high acidity in your wine.

[4] Oxidation damages the wine, spoiling its aromas and flavors.

[5] Wood aging also contributes to the tannins in the finished wine, as oak—and other woods—have tannins that will seep into the wine during the process.

[6] The increasingly popular orange wines, by the way, are white wines made with some skin contact. Tannins in them are responsible for their interesting color.

[7] 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, if you were wondering.

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Cover Image: Showing off some recently harvested grapes. Photo by Maja Petric.