More Wine WTFs

By TYLER BALLIET

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 Wine can be confusing as hell, but what do you expect? It's a beverage that's been made for thousands of years and was developed by hundreds of different cultures, and then organized, classified and popularized by the French. That's why we've decided to make our "Wine WTFs" a regular thing and help you, the wino, out with a little lingo.

Brut: This is a term that's thrown around a lot on wine labels, but that we've found few people actually understand. The word refers to the sweetness, or amount of sugar present, in Champagne and other types of bubbly. Without getting into all the gory details of how Champagne is made: The winemaker has the ability to make a wine anywhere on the spectrum, from liquid-of-the-sorority-girl-gods sweet to mega-bone-dry. This designation of sweetness, for one reason or another, is parlayed to you, the consumer, in French. "Sec" literally means "sweet" in French and is noted as so on wine labels. "Demi-sec" means "half sweet," so these wines contain a touch of sweetness and are often referred to by winos as "off dry." Brut, by far the most common type of bubbles, is the driest type of sparkling wine available. But just to confuse things, a Brut wine is drier and contains LESS sugar than wines labeled "Extra Dry." If you want the driest bubbly available, look for wines labeled "Brut Natural."

Finish: This is a term you can always hear winos muttering about at wine events. The "finish" is referring to the flavors a wine leaves in your mouth after you've swallowed the wine. Typically, winos will talk about how long it lasts or if there are any additional flavors present. Try this next time you're sipping a glass. Swish the wine around in your mouth a little, swallow and then note what happens. With many cheap or poorly made wines, the flavors drop off in a "now you taste them, now you don't" kind of way. With quality (but not necessarily expensive) wines, especially the older ones that are drinking incredibly well, these flavors will go on and on, and even change into new flavors for seconds and even minutes.

Punt: This is the dimple or indentation in the bottom of the wine bottle. Yes, it does have a name, but even more surprisingly, no one really knows why it's there. With sparkling wine bottles, the dimple increases the surface area of the bottle, thereby making it more resistant to the pressure of the carbonated wine inside. However, with regular, non-bubbly wine bottles, it really doesn't serve a purpose. One popular theory suggests that back in the day, when all bottles were hand blown, the dimple was elongated so the wine could sit level and the seam, directly on the bottom, wouldn't scratch the table. But we've come along way since the 1800s and can obviously create a glass bottle that doesn't muck up the furniture. Another theory guesses that the indentation was used to gather sediment, or the gritty tannins that settle in heavy red wines. Again, most modern wines contain little or no sediment, so this theory is also dated. Let's chalk this one up to tradition.

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