If you want to buy wine, sometimes it can be difficult to know what to look for if you’re not sure how it’s going to taste. People will need to rely on descriptions and sometimes those leave us a little in the dark. For an Online wine merchants in Northern Ireland, visit http://thewinecompanyni.com/. Let’s take a look at some of the terminology you might come across and what it really means:
ACIDITY
Tart and zesty best describe the use of the word acid when it refers to wine. Red wines generally have a lighter color and more tart characteristics. White wines are often described with characteristics similar to lemon or lime juice.
ANGULAR
Imagine putting a triangle in your mouth – it hits you in specific places with high impact and not elsewhere. An angular wine also has high acidity.
BIG
Big is used to describe a wine with massive flavour in your mouth that you can experience in all sections of your mouth and tongue. A big wine is not necessarily a fruit-forward wine, it can also mean that it has big tannins.
BRIGHT
Bright wines are higher in acidity and have the same feel and flavour to those in the acid section.
BUTTERY
A wine with buttery characteristics has been aged in oak and generally is rich and flat (less Acidity). A buttery wine often has a cream-like texture and a smooth finish that hits the middle of your tongue.
CHARCOAL
A wine that is described as tasting like charcoal means it tastes gritty, it’s usually dry with higher tannins and has a distinctive rustic flavour.
CHEWY TANNINS
When you take a sip of wine with chewy tannins, it dries out the interior of your mouth so that you “chew” or clean the tannins out of the insides of your mouth.
CREAMY
Creamy is a popular description for white wines and sparkling wines fermented or aged in oak. In Champagne, creamy is a desirable characteristic that is associated with the famous bottles of bubbly such as Krug. If you like creamy and buttery then look for a chardonnay and if you like smooth then look for a cabernet sauvignon.
FAT
Otherwise listed as wide, big, opulent or massive. Fat is the least desirable of all of them because it’s flabby. A fat wine comes in and takes up all the room in your mouth.
FOOD FRIENDLY
This wine isn’t up to much unless you have it with food. It’s lacking something that only eating will make up for.
HINT OF..
You are likely to read things like oak, fruits, herbs or even earthy.
JUICY
Juicy like the wine was grape juice just a moment ago.
OAKED
If wine is matured in oak barrels then this has a considerable effect on the taste. In whites it adds butter, vanilla and sometimes coconut. In reds it adds flavours often referred to as baking.
VELVETLY
Could also be described as smooth and silky. To imagine velvety, imagine watching perfectly smooth chocolate being poured into a mould.
Hopefully now you should have a slightly better understanding of some of things you may read when choosing wine.
