Vintner's Vocabulary

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Acidity

A component of wine, generally consisting of tartaric acid (a natural acid in grapes) and comprising approximately 0.5 to 0.7 percent of the wine by volume.

Aperitif

A broad term for nearly any drink taken before a meal to tease the palate and stimulate the appetite. Diverse flavored and fortified wines are generally used as aperitifs.

Appellation

The specific area that a wine comes from. It can refer to a region, such as Bordeaux or Burgundy in France, for example. It can refer to an even more tightly defined sub-region within, say, Bordeaux, such as The Medoc.