Cellar

Oenological practice

Any permitted intervention on the wine that has to be recorded — from deacidification to filtration.

Wine law sets out exhaustively what is permitted. Everything permitted also has to be recorded: enrichment, acidification and deacidification, fining, filtration, the addition of sulphur dioxide.

The difference between a well-kept cellar and a patchy one rarely lies in the practices themselves, but in whether they are written down while doing or while remembering.

Related terms

Cellar book The record of every movement and every treatment in the cellar that wine law requires. Racking Moving the clear wine off the lees into a clean vessel. Fining A treatment that binds cloudy matter and clarifies the wine — with bentonite, gelatine or… Enrichment Raising the natural alcohol content by adding sugar or concentrated grape must.

These terms in daily use, not in a glossary. The tour shows where each of them turns up in VINORUM — in sixteen units at your own pace.

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