Words we may use on our website, say or just general wine talk that you may not have a clue about. In no particular order…

Battonage - A fancy French word for stirring. It refers to the stirring of lees. Read a better explanation here

Lees - The sediment that separates from the wine made up of dead yeast, solids and seeds. Keeping the wine in contact with the lees aids in extracting flavour, aromas and texture. Once the winemaker decides the wine tastes great and the lees are no longer needed, the wine will be racked and the lees will most likely be put down the drain.

Racked/racking - When the juice or wine has settled and the lees have fallen to the bottom of the tank or barrel the clear juice or wine will be pumped off the top, leaving the sediment behind.

Terroir - Refers to the soil, climate, topography of the specific area/region. This can be narrowed down to a small site within a vineyard or as broad as an entire region.

Skin Contact - Nothing to do with how long the winemaker is bathing in the grapes but refers to how long the juice has come in contact with the skin of the grapes. More commonly used in white wine especially with orange wine styles.

Maceration - Similar to skin contact but this is usually used when talking about the skin contact time of red wines, i.e our Cabernet usually undergoes 30 days of maceration before pressing where the DaBois Vin Ambre has 12 days of Skin Contact before pressing.

Pressing - This is as simple as it sounds, literally the process of pressing the grapes to extract the juice. Either before or after skin contact/maceration.

Must - This is unfermented, squished up grapes before they are pressed.

Marc - Not the fancy spanish Mark but the dried out grape skins post pressing, these are then composted and (hopefully) integrated back into a vineyard mulching scheme.

There are many more words out there, if you have one to add send it through here