Wine glossary: Styles

Styles terms

Amber wine

Another name for orange wine, used especially in Georgia, where white grapes are fermented on their skins in clay qvevri.

Biodynamic

Organic farming plus ideas from Rudolf Steiner: the vineyard as one living system, work timed by a lunar calendar, herbal preparations. Certification is stricter than organic, though the mystical side is debated.

Blanc de Blancs

“White from whites”: white wine, usually sparkling, made only from white grapes. In Champagne that usually means Chardonnay.

Blanc de Noirs

“White from blacks”: white wine, usually sparkling, made from black grapes such as Pinot Noir and Meunier, pressed gently so the juice stays pale.

Brut

The most common sweetness level for sparkling wine: dry, with less than 12 grams of sugar per litre.

Brut Nature

Sparkling wine with no sugar added at dosage and less than 3 grams per litre in total. The driest style there is.

Cava

Spain’s traditional-method sparkling wine, made mostly in Catalonia.

Champagne

Sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France, where the bubbles come from a second fermentation inside the bottle. In the EU, the UK and most of the world the name is legally protected for that region alone.

Claret

The traditional British name for red Bordeaux.

Crémant

French sparkling wine made by the traditional (Champagne) method outside Champagne, such as Crémant de Loire or Crémant d’Alsace.

Demi-sec

On sparkling wine, a medium-sweet style with 32–50 grams of sugar per litre, good with desserts.

Dessert wine

A sweet wine, usually served in small glasses with or as pudding. The sweetness comes from grapes with concentrated sugar, through drying, late-picking or noble rot.

Extra Dry

A confusing label term: sparkling wine marked Extra Dry is slightly sweeter than Brut, with 12–17 grams of sugar per litre. Common on Prosecco.

Fortified

Wine with a spirit added to raise its strength, such as Port, Sherry or Madeira. It can be dry or sweet and is often sipped in smaller measures.

Frizzante

Italian for lightly sparkling, with softer bubbles than a fully sparkling spumante.

Ice wine

A sweet wine made from grapes left to freeze on the vine, then pressed while frozen. The ice stays behind, leaving very concentrated, sugary juice.

Madeira

Fortified wine from the Portuguese island of Madeira, deliberately heated as it ages, which makes it remarkably long-lived even after opening.

Natural wine

Wine made with minimal intervention: organic grapes, wild yeast, and few or no additives or chemicals. There is no strict legal definition, so styles vary widely.

Orange wine

White wine made like a red, with the juice left on the grape skins, giving an amber colour and more grip and texture. Also called skin-contact wine.

Port

A sweet fortified wine from Portugal’s Douro Valley. Grape spirit is added during fermentation, which stops it while plenty of sugar remains.

Prosecco

Italy’s best-known sparkling wine, made from the Glera grape in north-east Italy, usually by the tank method: light, fruity and fresh.

Qvevri

Large egg-shaped clay vessels buried in the ground, used in Georgia for thousands of years to ferment and age wine.

Rosé

Pink wine made from red grapes with only brief contact between juice and skins, giving colour without heavy tannin. Usually light, fresh and easy-drinking.

Sherry

Fortified wine from around Jerez in southern Spain, ranging from bone-dry Fino to sweet Pedro Ximénez.

Sparkling

Wine with bubbles, from lightly fizzy to fully effervescent, created by trapping carbon dioxide from a second fermentation. Champagne, Prosecco and Cava are all sparkling wines.

Still wine

Ordinary, non-sparkling wine — the everyday reds, whites and rosés without bubbles. The term simply distinguishes them from sparkling wine.

Table wine

Ordinary still wine, neither sparkling nor fortified. In some countries it is also the most basic quality level on a label.

Traditional method

How Champagne, Cava, Crémant and English sparkling get their fizz: a little yeast and sugar go into the base wine, which ferments a second time inside the sealed bottle, trapping fine, lasting bubbles.

Vermouth

Wine flavoured with herbs and spices, classically wormwood, and fortified. Made sweet or dry, red or white, and much used in cocktails.