The A to Zs of Wine: Letters S, T, U & V

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about wine terminology from A to Z.

AS WE CLOSE IN ON the home stretch, there are still quite a few more interesting wine-related words, including sediment, tannin and vinification. Well, interesting if you’re a wine nerd like me. So let’s get right to them and hope you’re enjoying this series. Only one more story to go!

Letter S below. The bottom line? Sediment in certain older red wines often means you have a great bottle of wine. Don’t be scared by the dirt. Simply filter out the sediment (a clean coffee filter can do the trick) before pouring the wine into a glass.

• Sauterne: Elegant, delicious dessert wine from the Sauterne region in France’s Bordeaux region.

• Sherry: Fortified wine (meaning alcohol is added to it) from the Sherry region in Spain that’s a classic dessert wine.

• Sommelier: French word used to describe someone who works in a restaurant who knows a lot about wine and helps people decide which wine to have with their meal.

Ken Ross Wine Press

Popular wine grapes that start with S

There aren’t a lot of wine grapes that start with the letter S. But the ones that do make some of the best-loved wines around the world.

The only question was who would slide into Steve’s slot as assistant brewer. As I wrote back then, the powers that be decided to take a chance on an unknown quantity and hired a staff member, Meghan Leahy, who had no brewing experience. Although the brewery could have hired an outsider who had some brewing acumen, the brain trust, including Steve, decided Meghan’s energy, enthusiasm and willingness to learn was enough to give her a shot. Man, were they ever right. And clearly Steve is a great teacher, judging by Meghan’s recent results. Meghan just brewed her first beer, (that is, one she created the recipe for), Seal Point Porter, and she knocked it out of the park (to use an apt metaphor for the new baseball season).

It’s a delightfully smooth porter underpinned with chocolate notes and featuring subtle hints of vanilla and blackberry. The body is right down the middle for a porter and the mouthfeel is just creamy enough. It’s comes in at 5.4% ABV.

I was thrilled to see Meghan tackle a porter, a style that often gets somewhat ignored in this heyday of juicy IPAs and imperial stouts.

“Porters are my favorites,” Meghan said after she served me the first-ever pint of the stuff ever pulled. (Hey, this job has some perks.) “I love IPAs, but there are so many of them, and there aren’t that many porters.”

The Northampton Brewery has another somewhat recent porter named Some More Porter — a slightly smoky beer brewed with vanilla beans — and that porter served as an inspiration for Meghan.

“It’s my favorite beer, but I wanted to make my own,” she said.

The beer is named after Meghan’s seal point Siamese cat and it is just as pretty as that breed. It’s brewed with chocolate and German black wheat malts, a blend that works splendidly in this brew. Chocolate is the flavor that lingers on the palate, but who can complain about that? Not me.

Meghan told me there was

• Sec: French word for dry, which is often used when describing the sweetness levels in sparkling wine.

• Sediment: Tiny, dirt-like particles that sometimes form in the bottom of certain bottles of wine over time. This is especially common in some great red wines with a lot of tannins, which you can read more about

• Sulfites: A byproduct of the fermentation process, sulfites can be found in every wine. But you wouldn’t know it from some of the talk about the evils of sulfites in wine. That said, some winemakers add extra sulfites in an effort to keep the wine tasting fresh and alive. Either way, don’t worry about sulfites. They’re perfectly natural and don’t harm the taste of the wine.

• Sangiovese: One of the most widely-planted red wine grapes in Italy, Sangiovese can often be found in many great wines from Tuscany, one of Italy’s best and most famous wine regions.

• Sauvignon blanc: Outstanding white wine grape used to make crisp, dry wines throughout the world, including in New Zealand, which makes delicious, affordable sauvignon blanc wines that have a distinct fresh cut grass aroma and flavor.

SEE WINE, PAGE E7