It’s easy to fall in love with French wine, but it can be difficult to fall in love with French wine terms. And, while French wine regions from the Champagne region to the Loire Valley and Burgundy to Bordeaux may make some of the best wine made anywhere in the world, they can be the most challenging to understand. Champagne has some of the most frequently used terms, so these terms will focus there.
We’ve all been there. A wine tasting, a wine dinner, or even a blind tasting featuring French wines. Corks pop, and our glass fills with sparkling wine, white wine, rosé wine, or red wine. That’s the easy part! We can all get an A for color! But after that, it can feel more like a French language lesson than a wine tasting.
French wine terms in the vineyard
So let’s start in the vineyard with a few terms that relate to grapes, grape varieties, and vineyards.
Cépage: This term is rarely used, it’s good to know it translates to grape variety should you see it on a wine label/
Blanc de Blanc: This term is related to sparkling wine made in Champagne or anywhere in the world. These wines use only white grapes or white grape varieties. An example is Champagne where Chardonnay is the only approved white grape allowed in Champagne. Therefore, a Blanc de Blanc would be 100% Chardonnay. The easiest way to remember this is that “blanc” means white in French!
Blanc de Noir: This is white wine or sparkling wine made exclusively from red grapes, such as Pinot Noir. To achieve a white wine, the grape juice presses off the grape skins quickly and carefully to avoid any pigmentation from the skins. My memory trick for this term is that “noir” is night in French and it’s dark at night. Thus dark-skinned grapes!
Cru: While technically this translates to “growth”, this term relates to defined and regulated wine regions across France. Premier Cru, or first growth, are wine-growing locations of noted quality. Grand Cru, or great growth, defines even higher quality locations within defined wine regions such as Burgundy. Premier Grand Cru is an even more specific term for the Right Bank of Bordeaux. Bottom line, when you see Cru in any of these forms on a label, the wine represents a quality or designation for its particular region.
French wine-making terms
Let’s move into French wine terms relating to the wine-making process.
Cuvée: The generic definition is a blend. While Téte de Cuvée refers to a winery’s best, or most prestigious wine, particularly for Champagne houses. This term is not frequently used for wines outside of France.
Assemblage: Similar to cuvée, an assemblage defines a blended wine. The blend may be from different varieties, different vineyard plots, different vineyards, or even different regions altogether. While mostly referencing Champagne, this term is used in other French wine regions.
Supérieur: Notably used in Bordeaux, wines labeled supérieur require a higher level of alcohol. This may mean the grapes were left to ripen a bit longer building higher sugar, or brix, levels. Additionally, these wines require longer aging before release to the market. Similar terms are used throughout the wine world, often without specific definition. Instead, the term is more of an indication of the specific wine maker’s designation of quality.
And a few more French wine terms to go…
Sur Lie: After fermentation completes and all the yeast cells have died off, many wines are left in contact with these cells, or lees, to extract additional flavors, aromas, and textures. This period of exposure is referred to as time on the lees, or “sur lie” in French. Yeast is most commonly thought of as the rising agent for bread making. Why do I even mention this? The flavor and aroma influence lees, or sur lie aging, has on wine is it imparts yeasty, bready, brioche flavors and aromas to the wine. There you go, another memory trick!
Battonage: This defines the process of stirring the lees we just learned about to impart more flavor influence into the wine. It can be done by hand, or some winemaking vessels such as stainless steel tanks, have rotary paddles which periodically turn on to stir the lees within the vessels. Here’s a great YouTube video to see how it works!
Dosage: Specific to sparkling wine or Champagne made in either the traditional method or the transfer method, this loosely translates to the addition of sugar. Simply put, this is the sugar and wine mixture added once the lees (you know this term now!) expel from the bottle. The sparkling wine bottle closes with the final mushroom cork and cage. The French term is liqueur d’expedition and the amount of sugar can be extremely minimal or quite high.
Fear no more!
There are numerous other French wine terms to explore! These, however, are the ones I frequently get asked about when tasting or teaching sparkling wine. So you are now an expert in French wine terms, and I hope you’ll test your skills by popping a few corks over the summer!
Cheers!
Here are a few great links to check out:
Vinportequoi
Wine Folly
From driest to sweetest, they are Brut Nature, Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Sec, Sec, Demi-Sec, and Doux.
In France, Crémant is used in Alsace, the Loire Valley, and other wine regions. Labeling terms include Classic Method, Champagne Method, Méthode Traditionnelle, Méthode Champenoise, and Méthode Classique.
