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Backbone: Capable of aging well.
Backward: A wine that is slow in maturing.
Balance: Wine whose sugar, acidity and many odour and taste elements are present in such proportions as to produce a harmonious and pleasant sensation.
Barrel Aging: The process of holding wine in oak containers to allow flavour and aromatic compounds to mature and change beneficially.
Barrel Character: The flavour and aromatic compounds an oak barrel contributes to the wine.
Barrel Fermentation: The conversion of grape juice into white wine by yeast in an oak barrel. Barrel fermentation gives Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc more complexity and integrated oak flavour.
Bentonite: Fine clay containing a volcanic ash derivative called montromillonite, a hydrated silicate of magnesium that activates a precipitation in wine when used as a fining agent.
Berry fruit: A character found mainly in younger red wines. Reminiscent of fruits such as blackberry, raspberry, black currant.
Big Wine: Full bodied, powerful flavours and aromas.
Bite: Sharp, high acidity.
Bitter: Dries out the mouth.
Blanc de Blanc: Usually applied to an outstanding pale green, gold champagne of great delicacy and finesse.
Blanc de Noirs: A white wine made from black grapes, primarily pinot noir.
Blending: The specialized craft of combining wines to achieve a batch of wine of high standard and uniform quality.
Blind Tasting: A tasting where the identity of wines is unknown to the taster.
Bloom: Flowering of the grapevines. Bloom is also a waxy substance found on the skins of grapes.
Blush: Wines made by fermenting red grapes in contact with their skins for only a matter of hours until the winemaker judges he has obtained the degree of pink colour which gives the wine its name (Rose).
Body: The taste sensation of substance in a wine, which can be related to alcohol content. Wine may have a heavy body or a light body. The weight of the wine in the mouth, texture.
Bone Dry: Very dry with no perception of sweetness.
Botrytis Cinera: Mould which forms naturally on the skins of white grapes and occasionally red grapes and shrivels them. This dehydration causes an increase in sugar levels and intensity of fruit flavour - bouquet in the resulting wine.
Bottle Age: How long the wine has been in the bottle as opposed to vintage which indicates the overall age of the wine, including time in the cask.
Bouquet: The fragrance given off by a mature wine when it is opened. Directly attributable to wines maturity in the bottle.
Breathing: Opening the bottle a period of time before pouring. This process enhances the bouquet by allowing air to come in contact with the wine by removing the cork and decanting it prior to serving. A young red wine will benefit from being given at least an hour to breathe. Older wines will benefit less.
Brettanomyces: A wild yeast strain that can taint wine and or wood barrels if the winery is not very careful about cleanliness. It is considered a major flaw when the flavour is over pronounced.
Brix: The measurement of soluble sugar content in grapes at harvest, taken with a refractometer and expressed in degrees. Most grapes are harvested between 10 and 24 degrees brix.
Brut: Normally reserved for sparkling wine, it literally means raw or bone-dry.
Bung: The wooden or silicone rubber stopper in a wine cask.
Burnt: Hot country smell, as if the wines have been given too much heat.
Buttery: A developed fruit character detected mainly on the nose of mature Chardonnay. A rich, fat and delicious character.
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