Residual Sugar

Natural grape sugar that remains in wine because it has not been converted into ALCOHOL during FERMENTATION. Wines that taste dry can nonetheless have a tiny amount of residual sugar in them. Winemakers often leave small amounts of sugar in wine to make it seem rounder and more appealing (sweetness has a slight fat feeling to it). Wine producers are not required to list residual sugar content on labels.

What is tasseography?

A. The practice of determining the clarity of a wine by looking at it in a tastevin (shallow silver tasting cup).

B. The practice of reading tea leaves to divine a drinker’s future.

C. The historic Burgundian practice of smelling and tasting vineyard soils to determine their merit.

D. The 16th century practice of tracing important trade routes for ships that carried wine and goods (like coffee beans and cacao) that could be made into expensive beverages.

According to Atlas Obscura, the early 20th century was a time of great fascination with the occult. In particular, tasseography (the practice of reading tea leaves) became so popular that fortune-telling tea cups were manufactured. From the outside, these often looked like elegant, normal, porcelain tea cups. But on the inside, they contained arcane symbols. Depending on where your tea leaves landed and the symbols they touched, anyone so inclined could tell your fortune. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with wine. Nonetheless, we at WineSpeed are convinced that the appreciation of tea and the appreciation of wine are correlated, and that the two manifest enormous similarities in their dependencies on terroir.

“[Great Oregon pinot noir] … is about the complete power of gracefulness. When I’m drinking a pinot noir, I want it to taste like Grace Kelly just walked into the room.”

—Rollin Soles
Winemaker, Roco Winery
Founder and former winemaker, Argyle Winery

Get WineSpeed