Wine glossary: Styles

Styles terms

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Still wine

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.