Back to Wine Basics: Understanding Key Tasting Terms

Ep 132

Do you ever feel lost when people start throwing around fancy wine terms like “tannin” or “terroir”? You’re not alone.

In this episode, we’re going back to the basics with 15 essential wine words that will instantly boost your confidence when talking about wine. You’ll learn how to describe what you’re tasting, from acidity to body, and finally understand what those mysterious words like “minerality,” “dry,” and “complex” actually mean.

This is your chance to learn how to speak like a sommelier (aka a wine expert!)

If you’ve ever felt unsure about how to describe what’s in your glass or want to understand what others mean when they talk about wine, this episode is the perfect place to start.

Thank you to the following brands for sponsoring this podcast:

• Vacu Vin: Go to us.vacuvin.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 20% off your order!
• VoChill: Go to vochill.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 15% off your order!
• Wine Wash Co: Go to winewashco.com and use code CORK for 20% off your order, plus free U.S. shipping on orders over $35!

Resources:

• What makes wine taste the way it does? Tannin, acidity and body - https://www.corkandfizz.com/blog/guide-to-wine-podcast-episode-125
• The light, crisp French white wine you’re missing out on - https://www.corkandfizz.com/blog/guide-to-wine-podcast-episode-75

Episode Highlights:

• The difference between “variety” and “varietal” (and why even experts mix them up)
  
  
• What a “vintage” really tells you about your wine
  
  
• How to identify acidity, body, tannin, and finish
  
  
• Why “dry” doesn’t always mean what you think it does
  
  
• Understanding terroir and minerality
  
  
• How to use words like “crisp,” “complex,” and “silky” to describe wine
  
  
• What “Lees,” “Brett,” and “mouthfeel” actually mean
  
  
• The truth about when a wine is “tight” or “closed off”
  
  
• How to tell if your wine is ready to drink or needs time to open up
  
  

Transcript

0:09

Interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start? You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. I'm your host, Hayley Bowlman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle based wine tasting business, Corporate Cork and Fizz. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight, and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in foreign. Welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. Today's episode, I am going to be going through basically a bunch of wine words. I've found that I feel like one of the things that keeps people from feeling confident about wine and talking about wine is just feeling like they don't know the words to talk about. And first of all, if that's you, don't even worry about it. Like, anybody who loves wine wants to talk about wine. They don't care what words you use. Like, you use anything and it'll, you know, you'll be able to have a conversation. That said, I thought it would be helpful to kind of go through. I have 15 words. They're kind of like, I've organized them as like the basics, the next level, and then some more advanced terms that all have to do with wine and will help you talk about it a little bit more and feel more confident talking about wine with other wine lovers. And especially, you know, when you're at the wine shop, at a tasting room, at a restaurant, hopefully this will help you. Yeah. Feel confident talking about wine a little bit more. So a bit of a Back to the Basics episode with a few special fancier words in there as well that will help you. Yeah. Speak like a sommelier. As, as I've said before. So let's dive into it. Okay, starting off, like I said, we're going to start with the basics. You've probably heard these before. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've definitely heard these terms before. But I figured we might as well start at the beginning, Right? So the first word is variety. Now, technically, variety refers to the grape. So for example, Chardonnay is a grape variety. Cabernet Sauvignon is a grape variety. Sometimes wines are named by the variety. And when that's the case, it's a varietal wine. Now, I'll be honest, I get these mixed up literally all the time. And I don't think it's a big deal, variety versus varietal. But if you really, really cared about it, variety refers to the grape and varietal refers to the wine. A varietal is basically a wine that is labeled as being made from one grape variety. Makes sense. And so all these, the variety is basically just what grape was it made out of? Like Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, I don't know, Riesling. Right. All of those are grape varieties. And some wines are made out of a single variety. They are varietal wines. And then they can be made out of a blend of multiple varieties. Hopefully that made sense. Next term we're going to talk about is vintage. So the vintage of a wine is the year that the grapes were harvested to make the wine. And I specify this because a lot of times the year that the grapes are harvested is not the same year that the wine is released. Because a lot of times we need to harvest the grapes, make the wine, age the wine, and then it is available for purchase. And so vintage has to do with the year that the grapes were harvested. And the reason why this matters, because, right, you're thinking about, like, we're making apple juice. We don't put the vintage on apple juice. We don't care what year the grapes were harvested. But with wine, this matters because we care about what was the weather that year, you know, how did that affect the grapes? And it can end up affecting the wine, which is a really cool thing. And we'll talk more about why that is with a few of our other terms. So vintage, you will see it on a bottle. So technically, not every bottle has a vintage because they can be made from a blend of multiple different years. We call that a non vintage wine, but most, and that's typically with sparkling wine. To be honest, non sparkling wine is almost always vintage. And you'll see it as a year written somewhere on the label. That is the year that the grapes were harvested. Okay. The next four terms have to do with wine tasting. And again, if you listen to the episode probably like what, like five or so episodes ago, we kind of, we went into these in length. So if you want to learn more about them, go check that out. It was like the three components of wine that will have, you know, have you feeling like an expert when you're tasting wine, but I feel like they fit well for this episode as well. So the first one is acidity. If someone's talking about the acidity in their wine, they're talking about the aspect of it that makes them salivate. Like I always associate acidity with like, how much does it make you like pucker up, like you just sucked on a lemon or that feeling of like when you start to like gather saliva in your mouth. Just thinking about a sour candy. That is the acidity in the wine. The next term is the body of the wine. And I feel like this term is used a lot when talking about wine and it's not always explained what it means. A lot of times someone will refer to it, oh, I, I like light bodied wines or this is a really full bodied red. And if you have no idea what body is that, that tells you pretty much nothing. So the body of a wine is the weight of, of the wine. So how heavy does it feel in your mouth? And I know that sounds kind of funny, but the, what I compare this to is different types of milk because I think this makes more sense to people. So a light bodied wine is like a skim milk. It just doesn't have a lot of weight to it. It's watery, but not in a bad way. Right. It's just, it's very light, it's very refreshing. A lot of times lighter bodied wines have higher acidity. So they're light in your mouth and then they make you salivate and they have that really light freshness to them. Then if we go to a medium bodied wine, this is like a 2% milk. It's got a little more oomph to it. It's, you know, middle of the road there. So you've definitely got a little more to it. But it doesn't like coat your mouth, it doesn't feel super heavy. And then you go to a full bodied wine, this is like a whole milk. So it's viscous, it coats your mouth and you just like feel the weight of it. That is the body of the wine. And I think body is such an important term to understand when you're interested in wine because it's such a great way to categorize wines. A lot of times we have the pattern, especially in the US to categorize wines by the variety or what grape it's made out of, right. We're like, oh, these are the Chardonnays, these are the Cabernet Sauvignons, these are the Sauvignon Blancs. But the thing is that just the, like, what grape the wine is made out of doesn't tell you enough about the wine. You know, there, there are so many more things to it. And I could give you three Chardonnays. They're all three made with the Chardonnay. All three wines are made with the Chardonnay grape. And they will taste totally different. Like you would not even believe they were all the same grape. Instead, I feel like it's better to kind of group the wines by the body of the wine. And this at least tells you a little bit more of what to expect. Right? Because I could give you a light bodied Chardonnay that is like bright and fresh and honestly might remind you more of like a Sauvignon Blanc or a just really fresh, light bodied wine. And then I could give you a medium bodied Chardonnay, something that's just like nice middle of the road, nothing crazy, perfect with food. Right. And then I could give you a really rich, intense, full body Chardonnay. And those are all the same grape, but they all have different bodies. And you will probably like one of those more than the other. So understanding the body of the wine, I, I just think is so important. Okay, Next term is tannin. And again, I talked about this in length in a previous episode, but I just feel like it's important to have it for basics. Tannin is one of those components in wine that is probably one of the most confusing because there's not a lot of other things out there that have tannin. So tannin in wine is what makes your mouth feel dry after you've had a sip, particularly of red wine, because that tannin actually comes from the seeds of the grape, the stems of the grape and the skins of the grape. And generally when we are making a white wine, we don't have the grape juice in contact with the skins and the seeds and the stems. But when we make a red wine, we do. And so it gives it these tannins which basically make your mouth feel like you had cotton balls in it. It's that drying sensation which we will talk in a little bit about the difference between tannin and dry. When we talk about dry, those are different. Tannin just gives you a drying sensation. So if you have a red wine that makes it feel like all the saliva has disappeared from your mouth, we would call that a tannic wine. All right? And it's different. We wouldn't call it necessarily dry. That means something different. A dry wine is different. And we'll get there. That's the next level. Okay. Tannic wine makes your mouth feel dry. Hopefully that makes sense. Okay. The last term is. Well, it's kind of two terms in one. They basically mean the same thing. So if you've ever heard somebody talk about the finish, especially if a wine has a long finish or the length of. Of the wine, this is basically like the aftertaste. Like, how long do the good flavors of the wine linger after you've taken a sip of wine? And this is really important because it's actually a great key in judging the quality of a wine. I find a lot of people ask, you know, how do you know if something. You know if a wine's a good wine? Because it is subjective. Like, I'm going to like something more than you're going to like something. Right. And then vice versa with a different wine. The thing is, if we're looking for quality wine, one of the things we're gonna look for is that length or the finish. And we want all of the good flavors to linger after we've taken a sip. And, you know, anything past, like, 10 seconds is usually considered a long finish on the wine. It's really giving us a lot of good flavor, and we don't have to take another sip right away. So that is the finish or the length of the wine. Okay, moving on. Let's go to the next level. These are kind of. I feel like once you've. Once you've tasted a lot of wine, you want to be more involved in the conversation at tasting rooms and understand a little bit more on what people mean when they talk about their wine. These are the terms to know. So the first one sounds even fancier. But don't worry. I mean, you'll sound super fancy when you use this word, but it's not too complicated. The word is terroir, and it actually looks like terror, but with an I. It's T E R R O I R. Terroir. It is a French word, and it essentially means sense of place. It's the idea that where the grapes are grown has an effect on the resulting wine. Basically, if I took the same Chardonnay grapes and planted them here in Washington, and then took those Chardonnay grapes and planted them over in Burgundy, France, they are going to taste. If I did everything the same about how I grew them, you know, how I harvested them, what I did in the winery and making the wine, if I did all of that the same, the wines would still taste different. And that's because where they were grown, the weather and the Climate and the geography of that area has an effect on those grapes. And this goes back to that idea of vintage and why the vintage matters. Because every year the weather is different. So each year the terroir is going to be a little different and have a little different effect on the wine. But my favorite thing about terroir is whenever I'm telling people about it, I always suggest, you know, if you're in. In a winery, if you're in a restaurant and someone's trying to, like, you know, really show off how fancy they know wine, if you want to be like, hey, I can also be fancy about wine too. Just like, give your wine a swirl and sniff and then give it a taste. You know, be like, ah, I really taste the terroir in this wine. And then just walk away. I feel like you would just be like, oh, they know what they're talking about. Even if you're still not totally sure what terroir means. Okay, the next term is one of the very confusing tasting notes when it comes to wine, and that is minerality. This is a favorite of mine. Whenever I. I have a, you know, a little tasting guide, and you can get one as well. If you've never seen my tasting guide before, I always link it in the show notes. It's a free tasting guide, and you can take it with you when you go wine tasting. But on it, I have, like, a list of aromas just to get you started. You can pick whatever you want when you're, you know, naming aromas and wine. But if you want to get started somewhere, this list is a good place to start. And one of them on there is like, I think I have gravel, and I think I might have wet rock on there as well. And I get a lot of people that are like, what do you mean my wine tastes like gravel? Like, have you licked a wet rock? Should I lick a wet rock? And that is not at all what that means. Again, those are aromas, not tastes. Right? So I'm pretty sure you know the smell of wet rock and you know the smell of gravel, and thus you know the smell of minerality. And so I always describe minerality as either the smell of, like, a waterfall when you're on a hike, and you know the smell of the water hitting the rocks, and it's just. It's very fresh and it's just very unique. It's not. There aren't a lot of other aromas that can replicate it. Or if you're more of a city person, you're like, I Don't go on hikes to waterfalls. Also, the smell of the pavement after it's just rained, which there's actually a word for that. It's called petrichor. And it is just the smell of the pavement after, after it's rained when it's wet like that. And so that, to me, is minerality in the wine. Honestly, you could probably ask 10 wine experts what minerality is and they'd all probably give you a different definition. So I wouldn't worry too much. But hopefully that gives you an idea. If somebody describes something as having minerality, this will hopefully kind of give you an idea of, like, what to expect from that wine. Okay, our next term, we are diving straight into one of the most confusing wine words in my opinion, and that is dry. A dry wine. What does that mean if I call something a dry wine? I love producing this podcast for you every week, but here's the truth. It's not free. That's why I'm so grateful for sponsors like the following brands supporting me so that I can share everything I love about wine with you. If you're able, show them some support back. Thank you to Vocill for sponsoring this episode. Nothing ruins the perfect afternoon out on the sunny patio like a glass of warm wine and ice might seem like the only option, but it just waters down your wine. That's where Vochil comes in. Vocill is one of my favorite wine gadgets. It keeps your wine perfectly chilled in your own glass. No clunky metal tumblers, no ice cubes, just beautifully chilled wine, sip after sip. I don't drink wine in the summer without mine, and I've gotten all of my family and friends hooked as well. My mom used hers so much last year that one of her friends ended up getting one of her own as a Christmas gift. Vochill comes in stemmed and stemless styles and tons of colors and will seriously make the perfect gift this holiday. 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This episode is sponsored by Wine Wash Company, the brand that makes fun, functional gifts designed by a wine lover for wine lovers. I'm constantly using their silicone clips to keep my wine glasses safe in the dishwasher. And I can't get enough of their wine themed sponges with sayings like let it merlot and I like big pours and I cannot lie. Winewashco products are great for stocking stuffers, unique gifts or a little treat for yourself any time of year. Get 20% off your order at winewashco.com with code CORK at checkout plus free US Shipp on orders over$35. What I mean is that wine has little to no residual sugar. If you're like, great, thank you for describing that using another term that I don't know, what is residual sugar? Residual sugar is the sugar that's left behind after fermentation. So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, my favorite way to describe fermentation is to describe it using Pac Man. So think about the little Pac man video game guy, okay? He's gonna be our yeast. The yeast goes around and eats all of the sugar in the grape juice when we're making our wine. So we start with grape juice, we add yeast, or there's just yeast in the air. And so little Pacman is our yeast. He's gonna go around and eat all the sugar. Those are the little dots, all right? And as he does this, he's gonna produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, which is less important to us right now. Now, there's an option to stop Pac man before he eats all of the sugar. If we do that, the sugar that's left over, those dots that are left over that Pac man has not eaten, that the yeast has not consumed that sugar, is what we would call residual sugar. It's sugar that's left over from the natural grape juice during fermentation. And so a dry wine means that Pac man has eaten all of the dots. Yeast has eaten all of the sugar. There Is little to no residual sugar left. In fact, if there's zero grams of sugar, you would call it bone dry, meaning there is no sugar at all. And if it's just, like, I don't know, 1 to 2 grams, I think maybe. Maybe if it's less than 3 grams per liter of sugar, you call it a dry wine. It has little to no residual sugar. There's a good chance the wine might still taste sweet. And the reason for that is because so much of taste comes from our nose and what we're smelling. And so if a wine smells fruity, even if there is no sugar in it at all, our brains will go, oh, that's fruit. I know that fruit's sweet. This wine must have some sweetness to it, even if it doesn't. And so that is where that term dry gets really confusing. And because the tannin, remember, gives us a drying sensation, botanic does not equal dry. Those are two totally different things. All right, I want you to, like, put those in two different parts of your brain. Dry simply has to do with the amount of sugar, and by amount of sugar, I mean little to no sugar. It is not a sweet wine. Dry is the opposite of sweet. I don't know who decided that, but somebody did, and that's what we have to deal with now. So when you're asking for a dry wine at a restaurant, probably about 90% of the wine list is dry. So you're not actually really telling the sommelier what you're looking for or your waitress or whoever it happens to be. What instead you should be saying is what you're looking for. Right? If you're looking for that drying sensation, you want a tannic wine. If you're wanting a wine without a lot of fruit flavor, say that right? The. The dry simply says, I don't want any sugar in my wine. Now, if you're ready to take this to the advanced level, I have one more thing to tell you. But if you're already, like, that was a lot of information, Haley, and I'm still trying to. To think about that. Go ahead and plug your ears and go la, la, la for, like, the next 10 seconds. Because the only time when a wine is labeled dry and it doesn't mean no sugar is if it's a sparkling wine. I know. Isn't that just so mean? In that case, a dry wine or a dry sparkling wine does have sugar, and those without are called brut. I don't know who decided that this is what they should do. It's very confusing. But, yeah, a Dry wine, if it has no bubbles, means no sugar. A dry wine, if it is a sparkling wine, means that it does have sugar. Hopefully you're okay with that. All right, if you're, if you're plugging your ears and going la, la, la, you can come back now. All right, let's go to an easier word. Even if we are still in the next level. Let's talk about if we describe a wine as crisp, this term is often used to describe a. Usually a white wine, honestly. And a white wine with high levels of acidity and it generally has not had any oak contact. So it's just really light, bright, fruity. Think like the perfect glass of lemonade on a hot day. It's more about texture than flavor. So when we're talking about crisp, like in my mind, I almost picture this like straight line, like when I'm having a sip of this wine. Like it is just a straight line back versus like something that's more full bodied or more unctuous with lower acidity, is kind of more of like a circle that might make no sense to you. I'm a very visual person, so I'm like, that's the perfect way to describe it. But if you're not visual, just think crisp means high levels of acidity, usually a white wine, generally unoaked, like a glass of lemonade on a hot day. Okay, and the last word in our next level category is complexity. So if you've ever heard someone say that, oh, this wine, it's. It's just really good because it's really complex. What they mean is when you taste that wine, the flavor changes from the moment you taste it to the moment that you swallow the wine. It doesn't just have a singular flavor. And in fact, the wine has multiple layers of aromas and flavors. And so one of the ways that you can find complexity is what I tell people is, you know, when you're smelling the wine and you're picking out aromas, if you could pick out aromas from like multiple different categories. Like let's say it has red fruit, black fruit, herbs, spices, and oak. Right. If you can get to at least three different categories, that is very likely a complex wine. And again, think about how it tastes initially to after you swallowed the wine. What are the tastes that you're getting? If those change, that is likely a sign of complexity in the wine. And this one, similar to length or finish, is another great sign of a high quality wine. You know, even if you don't like the wine, you can appreciate the Quality of it because of how much the flavor changes. Okay, we are on to our last four words. Though I'll be honest, one of them is kind of cheating because I give you four other words. But we're onto our last category. These are the advanced terms, so you can feel like quite the wine smarty once you understand these terms. The first one is lees. L, E E S Lees. These are simply dead yeast cells. So after the wine, the wine fermentation has happened. Like, again, let's go back to our Pac man analogy. Pac man has gone around, eaten all the sugar that it wants to eat, and once there's no more sugar, the yeast dies and they become lees. You may hear the term aging on the lees or even surly. And what this means is the winemaker has left the wine in contact with those dead yeast cells instead of. The other option is to just transfer the wine into a different container of sorts of. So that it's not in contact with the. The dead yeast cells. But if you do it and you do it with the right grape variety, it can add this really nice creamy texture and these notes of brioche and yogurt and fresh bread. The other thing you can do, and typically these are done together. So if you're going to age it on the lees, the wine maker is also going to stir the lees. So they don't just want all the lees hanging out at the bottom of whatever container they're in. They want to give them a good mix and have them in contact with all of the wine. And again, it gives the wine that thicker, creamier texture. One of the wines that does this, the most frequent that you will see is a wine from France. I think we've talked about it on this podcast before. It's called Muscade. And it is a, like, bright, crisp white wine. And it can be. It has a lot of mineral, that minerality that we talked about. But the winemakers often choose to age the wine on the lees or stir the lees in. It's actually typically called muscade surli. And it just gives the wine this little more creaminess to balance out that really crisp acidity. Okay. The next term is called Brett, which is short for Bretanomyces. This term is used to describe a wine. You might hear that the wine has a lot of Brett, or it's very Bretty, um, which sounds like bread. Y. I know it's not. Not helpful. But if the Brett comes from this term called Brettanomyces, these are these funky yeast that are either present in the winery or. Or in oak barrels, and they add this, like, barnyard leather aroma. The thing is, Brett can also be a wine fault. It's one of those things where, like, a little bit is good, but a lot is bad. If you have too much Brett in your wine, you go from like, hints of earthy to, like, oh, dear God. Why does this smell like a sweaty leather saddle? You do not want to drink it. I've actually returned a bottle because it had too high of Brett that, like, just the. Like, the barnyard, sweaty, musty band aid smell was too strong for me. Um, and so that is where you have too much Brett. And it can be a flaw in the wine, but it's also one of those personal choices where some people like a little bit of Brett, some people can't handle any at all. But generally, it's not a flaw if there's only a little bit, but it can be a flaw if it's overwhelming. Okay, our next term, I've technically kind of split into a few different terms, but the mouth feel. If you've ever heard someone talk about the mouth feel of the wine, they are referring to the texture of the wine. And a lot of times, especially if it's a red wine, we're referring to how the tannins feel. So remember, tannins give you that drying sensation. They make your mouth feel kind of dry. But the thing is that the tannins can produce different types of dry feeling. Hopefully that makes sense. Once I go through these, the four examples I have, hopefully it'll make a little sense. So, for example, the tannins might make your. Make your mouth feel grippy. We might call the wine grippy. And what this means is that with each subsequent sip. So you have one sip and you're like, huh, I get a little bit there. But then you have a second sip, and you're like, okay, there's a lot of tannin. And then your third sip, you're like, wow, that's a lot of tannin. So a lot of times, grippy is a negative thing to say about the mouthfeel of a wine because it makes it harder to drink the wine, though. It does. It makes itself more. The wine is better to sip and have some food in between, because otherwise, if you just keep sipping the wine or keep drinking the wine without food in between, it. It just makes your mouth feel more and more dry. The next term is chewy. So when you take a sip of a wine with chewy tannins it really dries out the interior of your mouth. So much so that you need to almost, like, chew or clean the tannins out of the inside of your mouth. So if you find yourself, like. I don't know how to describe it, but hopefully you're picturing the thing that I'm doing where I'm just, like, moving my tongue all over my teeth, and you're just, like, really trying to, like, get that saliva back in your mouth. If the tannins cause this, we would call them chewy tannins. And we might even say the wine is a bit chewy. Again, a little bit more on the negative side. We don't really necessarily want a wine that's chewy, unless that's your thing. The next two are more of the positive mouthfeels. So the next word is silky. And this is like the red wine equivalent to describing a white wine as creamy. So hopefully that kind of gives you an idea. It's like a creamy red wine. They're very smooth. They don't grip. You notice a little bit of the drying. But more than anything, it just gives the wine structure. And I always like to imagine. And this is going to go into our next wine. I mean, silky. It's like silk. Like, it's smooth, and it's just not overwhelming. And the next one is very similar. It's velvety. So if you have velvety tannins or your wine is velvety, you're thinking lush, smooth, silky. Right. Those are all synonyms for a velvety wine. And so a lot of times, too, when I imagine a velvety wine, I'm picturing, like, smooth chocolate being poured into a mold. Or honestly, you can also just picture running your hand over, like, a velvet couch. Right. That is the smoothness with the. That the tannins feel like when you're having a drink of wine. And so those are all examples of terms that we use to describe the mouthfeel of the wine. Okay. The last term we will talk about is when describing a wine as tight or closed off. And this is generally a negative term when we're talking about our wine. What this means is that the wine has very high tannins. So it's going to primarily happen in red wines. It's hard to identify the fruit characteristics. It's just kind of hard to drink. And it's like you take a sip of the wine, you go, something just feels missing. Like it's just not quite there yet. Like, it's. It's. It's like there's some components that it's like trying to do something, but it's just missing the mark. And a lot of times that can be because the wine is closed off or it's tight. And this can be a sign that the wine is actually not ready to drink yet. So if you're, you know, trying to figure out, like, should I decant a wine or should I age if I have a few bottles of this, should I wait to open the other bottles? If you notice that it is very, you know, it's just hard to identify the fruit. There's so many high tannins. The tannins are grippy or chewy, and the wine is kind of hard to drink. There's a good chance that that wine could benefit from decanting. So putting that in a decanter, which kind of looks like a vase, and letting the wine be in contact with oxygen for a little bit, then it will do the opposite of being closed off. It'll open up. And so we will get, you know, you can get some more of those fruit flavors and aromas, or if you happen to have other bottles of the wine or you're trying it in a tasting room, it's a sign that the wine can age for a while longer and you don't need to open the bottle up right away or really, you shouldn't. Okay, Those are our 15 wine words. I probably ended up sharing more than 15. I have a hard time sticking to my numbers. But hopefully now you have these terms, you feel a little more confident talking about wine. And like I said, you really shouldn't worry about having the exact correct terminology. But I think it just helps with confidence and kind of having an idea of what these wine words mean when other people use them and then having the confidence to use them yourself. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. If you loved it as much as I did, I would so appreciate it if you could take a quick second rate it and leave a review. And if you know a wine lover in your life that would enjoy it, please, please share with them. It would mean the world to me. In next week's episode, we'll be learning more about oak barrels and their impact on the wine in them. You'll learn what flavors they actually impart on the wine. And I'll tell you now, it's not butter. I know an oaky wine doesn't mean it's going to be buttery. We'll also talk about how new versus old oak affects the wine, how the size of the barrel affects the wine and how they even make the barrels and why that's important. Thanks again for listening. And if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at Cork and Fizz on Instagram. Cheers.