Balsam
Balsams are plant secretions or viscous solutions of resin and essential oils from plants such as the balsam poplar, balsam fir and balsam herb. These tertiary substances are used in medicine and perfumery and have a resinous, slightly bitter and noble effect. In wines, these flavors are highly regarded. They often arise in connection with barrique aging. The spectrum of balsamic aromas includes nuances of vanilla, sandalwood, myrrh, frankincense, pine resin, camphor, beeswax, oak, pine, eucalyptus, honey, fir, juniper berries and cedar.
Barbaresco wines
The Barbaresco comes from the Langhe region in Piedmont, Italy. As the "wine of the queen", it is often compared to Barolo, which in turn, as a "male" wine, has the title "wine of kings". Like the Barolo, the Barbaresco is made from the Nebbiolo grape variety. Although the towns of the same name are less than 20 km apart as the crow flies, the lower slopes and different soil conditions in Barbaresco ensure a different taste. Compared to the Barolo, the Barbaresco is less powerful and velvety, but has similarly strong tannins, alcohol and acidity that are harmoniously interwoven. The wine has a high aging potential. It only develops its full potential after around five years of storage.
The Barbaresco is garnet red and has an intense scent of roses and violets as well as notes of cherries, fennel, liquorice and truffles. Its taste is reminiscent of wood, kitchen herbs, violets, berries and cherries. It tastes fruity and combines a strong taste with a mild elegance. It took a long time and intensive refinement measures before such a full-bodied wine could develop from the difficult-to-access Nebbiolo grape, which originally tasted unpleasantly bitter. In 1964 it was promoted to the DOC category and in 1980 to the DOCG category. The red wine goes well with stews, beef and pasta with truffles.
Barolo is one of the finest wines in Italy, which is also indicated by its nickname as the wine of kings. It is grown in designated growing areas in Barolo, northern Italy, and ten neighboring communities on the Langhe slopes in Piedmont. Its fruit is obtained from the Nebbiolo grape, characterized by an intense and tannic flavor. In order for the wine to thrive, it must grow on calcareous marl soil.
Barolo has had a tradition since the mid-18th century. Its production includes barreling, which also contributes to its noble taste. The fruity taste is characterized by a wide variety of berries, with hints of tobacco, tar, truffles, mocha, dark chocolate and ethereal herbs. The taste experience is enriched by a rose and violet scent. Connoisseurs appreciate the intensive and complex taste of the wine. The red wine is characterized by its heaviness, which it knows how to combine with elegance and harmony. A unique selling point is its color in a shimmering and intense light red. The wine has a high tannin, acidity and alcohol content, which can easily reach 15 parts per thousand. Since it otherwise tastes harsh, it should be stored for a long time, after which its taste increasingly takes on an insistent velvety quality. Storage times of 15 to 20 years are not uncommon for Barolo wine.
Spawn
The term brut comes from the French and means tart. It is not used for normal wines, but for sparkling wines.A sparkling wine with the brut classification has a residual sugar content of up to 6 g/l. It tastes intensely fruity, flowery and rather tart in the finish and has hardly any residual sweetness in the taste.
Barrique
The barrique is a wooden barrel made from certain types of oak. The barrel not only serves to store and transport wines, but also to enhance the aromatic taste. This change in aroma occurs due to the low level of oxygen exchange through the wooden walls, so that barrique aging is referred to as an oxidative aging of the wine. The taste of the wine is refined due to the low oxygen exchange.
Further reasons for the flavor enhancement through barrique-making are the tannins released by the oak wood into the wine. The bitter tannins combine to form molecular chains and finally sink to the bottom of the barrel as lees. The long contact with the yeast also leads to a change in the taste of the wine, which contains a more intense, full-bodied, melty, creamy and concentrated taste. The connoisseur perceives delicate vanilla tones, coconut flavor or also smoky and strong tones reminiscent of tobacco, for example, which are obtained by toasting (flambéing the inner walls). The shelf life of a barriqued wine is also supported. Since the wine was already able to get used to oxygen during its maturation, it subsequently reacts less allergically to oxygen.
A total of three oak barrels are distinguished: the American, the French and the Slavonian oak, named after a historical region in Croatia. French sessile oaks shine with intense vanilla tones, while French pedunculate oaks in turn have high tannin levels. If you drink a wine that was made in American oak barrels, you will notice a more intensive proportion of the wine's own wood. The wood is somewhat coarser than that of French oak, and the taste is more neutral.
A barrique usually has a capacity of 225 litres, which at 45 kg corresponds to an empty weight that a dock worker can transport without tools. In addition, this size is also important because it is the only way for the wine to absorb the flavor enhancement during the aging process. While the barrique of wines is generally popular, the red wines from Rioja, red wines from Bordeaux and wines from Piedmont and Tuscany are particularly popular barrique wines.
Bianco
Many Italian wines have the name suffix Bianco. A wine labeled in this way usually stands for a white wine, because bianco stands for the color white in Italian. White wines are always a Riesling, a Curtefranca, a Cuvée, a Langhe from Piedmont, as well as for wineries branded Tignanello and Ommellaia.
Blind tasting
A blind tasting is the most objective method for a wine tasting, which is organized professionally to determine the value of wines and in consumer tests, for example by selected wine magazines, and a private wine tasting Frame. A wine tasting in a private setting can be both training, to sharpen your senses as a fine taster, and done for pleasure.
Another variant of a blind tasting is the test procedure to determine which tasters for a professionally led Wine tasting have the necessary qualifications. Wine tasting is an art, because wine is the most complex luxury food in the world and contains, among other things, 23 different alcohols, 27 acids, 80 esters and aldehydes as well as hundreds of aromatic substances that have a balanced ratio, i.e. they should be consistent.The triangle test is one of many such tests in which two identical wines and one other wine are offered. The test for the wine taster now consists of finding out which wine is different.
In the blind test, the bottles are covered, so that the taster knows nothing about the wine being tasted. This ensures that the wine tasting does not lead to cognitive distortions caused by subjective expectations of a specific wine or a specific grape variety. There are horizontal and vertical methods for the blank test. In a horizontal process, only wines from the same growing area and vintage are tasted. In a vertical blind test, a product from different vintages is tasted.
Botrytis cinerea
Botrytis cinerea is a so-called noble rot and therefore a rot that, as the name suggests, can bring desirable properties to the wine. The rot is caused by the gray mold fungus, which infects the grapes preferably in warm temperatures and high humidity, such as in autumn, and quickly passes from berry to berry. Early fog and nearby bodies of water further promote the spread of mold. Such fog-loving areas can only be found in a few wine-growing regions. For example, Souternes, Anjou and Monbazzilac in France, the Moselle and the Rheingau in Germany, Wallis in Switzerland, Lake Neusiedl in Austria, the Tokaj in Hungary and Slovakia as well as the Cotnari in Romania are known for the Botrytis cinerea.
Once the gray mold fungus has infected a grape, it breaks down the cell walls of the berry skin so that the berry loses moisture, which escapes to the outside. In addition, there is a change in the metabolism of the berry. The berry now consumes more acid than sugar, giving the berry an extra sweet taste. In extreme cases, the sugar content of the berry can be up to 45% and thus reach a level that is so high that only parts of the sugar can be fermented into alcohol. The wine gets the special botrytis tone with breathtaking saffron aromas and hints of an oriental spice bazaar.
Noble rot can be a blessing or a curse, because not all wines benefit from the infestation. In dry white wines, rotting leads to early aging and a rather off-putting taste. In the case of red grapes, the enzyme laccase is released, which unfavorably changes the color of the red wine. He gains an unnatural orange-brown tint. If the rot sets in during maturation, raw rot begins a process that would eventually make the wine undrinkable.
Dregs
The dregs (also: depot) of a wine are initially formed by the excretion of dead yeast cells and later by the polymerisation of tannins (especially tannins) and colorings. These combine to form long chains of molecules and some of them sink to the ground in a solid state as lees. The trub is by no means to be understood as a wine defect, but gives the wine part of its content and aroma.
Therefore, decanting must be done carefully so that the solid molecular chains are sieved out of the wine, but not too many of the valuable tannins and coloring are lost. Decanting is therefore a labor-intensive process that requires a lot of practice and a skilled hand. Decanting machines are available to make things easier.
The sediment is mainly found in heavy and full-bodied red wines. There he forms after eight years at the earliest. If the depot has formed, this is a sign that the wine is now ripe.
Bush education
Bush training is a specific form of vine training. The quality and quantity of the grapes are positively influenced. When training the bush, the winegrower takes advantage of the peculiarity of grape varieties that climb remarkably slowly in barren locations in southern Europe. With regular pruning, these vines can grow as a bush and, unlike ordinary vines, do not require any proppants. The advantages of this method lie in the savings in costs and effort. It has been known since ancient times.
Battleage
Battonage is a wine refinement process. It comes from the French and is named after the stick, the baton, with which the procedure is performed. Battonage stirs up the yeast that remains in the wine after alcoholic fermentation. This protects the yeast from decomposition. At the same time, the yeast effect is intensified. In the case of barrique wines, this is done, among other things, to free the wine from its woody taste. Instead, the wine gets aromas reminiscent of cream, nuts and butter. The treated wine has the greatest fullness, a better mouthfeel and a longer shelf life.
Chardonnay is particularly well-known for its battonage. The phrase indicative of this practice is "sur lie" or "tirage sur lie" on a French label. The five Viennese Markus Altenburger, Gerhard Kracher, Christian Tschida, Florian Geyer and Erich Scheiblhofer also caused a sensation with this technique, creating a perfect red wine with the “Battonage”, which, as the name indicates, is entirely dedicated to battonage. When their wine was decorated with the highest score of 100 by the Falstatt magazine after 15 years, this was an event of national importance in Austria.
Blind tasting
A blind tasting is the most objective method for a wine tasting, which is organized professionally to determine the value of wines and in consumer tests, for example by selected wine magazines, and a private wine tasting Frame. A wine tasting in a private setting can be both training, to sharpen your senses as a fine taster, and done for pleasure.
Another variant of a blind tasting is the test procedure to determine which tasters for a professionally led Wine tasting have the necessary qualifications. Wine tasting is an art, because wine is the most complex luxury food in the world and contains, among other things, 23 different alcohols, 27 acids, 80 esters and aldehydes as well as hundreds of aromatic substances that have a balanced ratio, i.e. they should be consistent. The triangle test is one of many such tests in which two identical wines and one different wine are offered. The test for the wine taster is now to find out the deviating wine.
During the blind tasting, the bottles are covered so that the taster knows nothing about the wine tasted. This ensures that the wine tasting does not lead to cognitive distortions caused by subjective expectations of a specific wine or a specific grape variety. There are horizontal and vertical methods for the blank test. In a horizontal process, only wines from the same growing area and vintage are tasted. In a vertical blind test, a product from different vintages is tasted.
