Geneticists believe Gouais originated in the area that’s now northeastern France and southwestern Germany. It proliferated in France in the Middle Ages, planted principally by commoners who used it to make their own modest table wine. The vine was high-yielding, producing abundant pale green clusters. The wine was tart and featureless, but at least it was plentiful.

The monks and landed gentry were meanwhile cultivating Pinot noir, which they viewed as noble. As early as 1598 they began to encourage the removal of Gouais vines, an effort perhaps motivated more by classism than pragmatism. By the twentieth century, the grape had all but disappeared from cultivation.

Gouais blanc’s offspring

Grape vines are promiscuous, and given their proximity, Gouais and Pinot noir soon met across the fence. That union alone yielded 16 important new varieties, including white-fruited Chardonnay, Auxerrois, Aligoté, and Melon de Bourgogne, and black-fruited Gamay and Beaunoir.

Gouais also crossed with many other grapes, including Chenin blanc, Tressot, and Savagnin, to create myriad other new vines, like Colombard, Blaufränkisch, Muscadelle, and Jacquère. It has also contributed to the complex pedigree of modern interspecific hybrids like Regent, Prior, and Chardonel.

Gouais in the modern era

Today Gouais is grown in only a handful of sites, principally in Switzerland’s Haut-Valais (where it’s called Gwäss), having lingered there since the Middle Ages. It’s made its way into lone vineyards in Oregon and Australia. In France it survives in the heritage vine collection, dubbed “the Louvre of grapevines,” of the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, or INRA, and in a tiny private vineyard in the Haute-Savoie.

When held to low yields, Gouais can make a crisp white wine with flavors of green apple and lemon. Its natural acidity makes it a good candidate for sparkling wine.

Exploring the legacy of Gouais blanc

Given the grape’s extreme rarity, you’re unlikely to see it on shelves or wine lists, and even your favorite sommelier has probably never tasted one. But you can chase its legacy in the varietal wines of Gouais’s famous progeny: Gamay from Beaujolais, Aligoté from Burgundy, Melon de Bourgogne from Muscadet, and Chardonnay from just about anywhere.

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Fining removes protein, long-chain tannin, pigment, phenolics, and other soluble materials that could later cloud the wine. Most commercial white wines and many reds are fined one or more times.

Fining is not exclusive to the realm of winemaking; it’s also used in food processing, for example to make clear consommé. A chef stirs a slurry of egg white into cold stock, then gradually raises the temperature of the pot. Particles suspended in the stock stick to the egg white, forming a mass that can later be removed.

Fining agents

There are two main sources of fining agent, organic and inorganic. The organic substances are proteinaceous, historically made from animal products, but today non-animal substitutes are available. Inorganic substances include clay, carbon, and synthetics.

The following fining agents, listed with their source material, are broadly permitted:

• Albumen — animal (egg white)

• Casein, or potassium caseinate — animal (milk protein)

• Isinglass — animal (fish swim bladder)

• Gelatin — animal byproducts

• Chitosan — fungus (Aspergillus niger)

• Yeast protein extract — fungus (Saccharomyces)

• Alginate — algae (brown seaweed)

• Pea protein — plant

• Potato protein — plant

• Activated carbon — plant-derived charcoal (wood, coconut shell)

• Bentonite clay, or sodium bentonite — mineral

• Kaolin clay — mineral

• Silica gel, colloidal silicon dioxide — mineral-derived, synthesized

• Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone (PVPP) — synthesized polymer

Fining agents don’t remain in the wine and are therefore considered processing aids, not ingredients.

Fining pluses and minuses

Fining removes the precursors that can later cloud the wine. It is helpful for fixing the color in white wine, removing particles that can cause browning. It can similarly reduce color in a red.

Fining also removes some tannin, which smooths the texture of red wine. Even winemakers who forgo other manipulations may use a fining agent to create this silkiness.

Fining can compromise a wine’s delicate aromatics, so winemakers will often run trials to determine the absolute minimum fining agent to attain a balanced result.

Natural winemakers in particular regard the tactic as an unnecessary manipulation, as wine can be clarified simply by racking, or gently moving it off its sediment. This step may need to be repeated and can introduce oxidative faults if mishandled, but naturally clear wine is possible, if labor intensive.

Talking about Fining

You’ll rarely find a winery touting its fining process, since it may raise more questions than it answers. More often you’ll see a wine labeled un-fined, which signifies the wine was clarified and stabilized without a processing aid.

Animal-derived fining agents are a concern for vegetarians and vegans, so wineries that don’t fine, or that use only inorganic, plant, or fungal agents, may declare their wine “vegan friendly.”

Winemakers who avoid fining will likely also avoid filtration, a separate process in which the wine is passed through a membrane to remove additional particles and microbes. Such wines will be described as un-fined and unfiltered.

Further reading

Images of the Atelier des Découvertes in the Cité du Vin, Bordeaux ©2026 Meg Maker

Élevage refers to cellar maturation in vessel

In wine production, élevage is the period of cellar aging after primary alcoholic fermentation but before bottling. During this phase, the wine undergoes further biological and chemical conversion, plus integration, stabilization, and clarification.

Traditionally, wine was aged in wooden barrels or tanks, often made of oak, chestnut, or acacia, or in large terracotta vessels. These materials are still used alongside modern stainless steel and concrete.

The range of styles and materials now available offers creative latitude to the winemaker. One of the first considerations is about oxygen exposure:

• Porous materials like wood offer an oxidative élevage, which aids the development of desirable textural, aromatic, and flavor compounds, and also enhances stability.

• Impermeable materials like stainless steel offer a reductive élevage, limiting oxygen and preserving primary fruit flavors and aromas.

• Semi-permeable materials like concrete and terracotta split the difference, offering micro-oxygenation, to a greater or lesser degree depending on porosity. These environments preserve fruit while giving the wine modest experience with the oxygen it will encounter later in life.

Oxygen management during élevage is a delicate calculus involving grape, style, and target aesthetic expression. Too much oxygen can flatten a wine, muting its freshness and vibrancy and creating volatile acidity. Too little can hamper the wine’s evolution, creating off aromas, particularly sulfurous, and rendering the wine unstable.

Winemakers also need to consider whether the vessel itself imparts flavor to the wine:

• New oak contributes tannin, lactones, and, depending on species and barrel toast, flavors of caramel, chocolate, vanilla, and spice.

• Used oak loses its flavor over time until it’s considered neutral; large wood tanks, after years or decades of use, are always neutral.

• Concrete and terracotta are neutral, although sometimes the wine inherits a faint taste of clay or stone.

• Stainless steel is neutral.

The size of the vessel also matters. Smaller barrels have a high surface-to-volume ratio, exposing the wine to more oxygen and flavor. Winemakers often use a mix of vessels—large and small, reductive and oxidative, new and neutral—to yield a palette of options for producing the final blend.

Other transformations during élevage

Wine undergoes many chemical and biological transformations during cellar aging, and the winemaker may intervene to hasten, impede, or alter these aspects of the wine’s evolution:

• Malolactic conversion (ML): This bacterial process, which converts sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid, may occur spontaneously or the winemaker may inoculate. Nearly all red and amber wines go through ML; for white and rosé it’s a stylistic choice. ML must complete during élevage so it won’t create trapped gas and off flavors after bottling.

• Racking: Winemakers periodically decant the wine off its sediment into fresh vessels. This process clarifies the wine and introduces some oxygen, which can be beneficial during certain phases, especially for red wines.

• Topping up: Adding wine to porous vessels that have lost volume due to evaporation addresses excess oxygen exposure and prevents bacterial and other infections.

• Lees stirring, or bâtonnage: Winemakers may stir protein-rich spent yeast sediment, or lees, back into suspension to enhance the wine’s mouthfeel and flavor. Some vessels are designed to support this action without winemaker intervention; they’re usually ovoid or conical to encourage natural convective cycling.

Talking about élevage

We use the French élevage because it has no direct equivalent in English, although we also use aging, maturation, or just cellaring (although these terms can refer to storage of filled bottles before release). We also say a wine has been raised in oak or raised in a mix of vessels to identify the specifics.

Consumers are unlikely to need the term élevage when talking with a sommelier or shopkeeper, although they may encounter it in technical materials or on back labels. But it’s useful to become familiar with the variables in play during this period of the wine’s upbringing, given their decisive contributions to wine’s aroma, flavor, texture, structure, and longevity.

For example, if a Pinot noir made and aged in stainless steel tastes lightly spiced, that note originated in the fruit, not the vessel. The Pommard, Wädenswil, and 777 clones of Pinot are particularly spicy. Those spice flavors would be naturally amplified in a Pinot aged instead in toasty oak barrels.

On the other hand, if a Pinot grigio smells lightly sulfurous (like a struck match or cabbage), it was likely aged in steel, a reductive environment. This effect can be mitigated by swirling or decanting the wine, exposing it to the oxygen it didn’t get during élevage.

Further Reading

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Ripe grapes have abundant sugar, mostly fructose and glucose. During fermentation, yeasts eat the sugar and produce alcohol as a byproduct. Once these fermentable sugars run out, the yeasts die and fermentation stops. There remains a trace of residual sugar (RS), but not enough, and not of the right types, to support fermentation. The wine is now dry.

This is dryness as a laboratory metric, and it describes the vast majority of still wines on store shelves and wine lists. Think of technical dryness as the absence of sugar, much like cold is the absence of heat.

Dryness is also a perceived lack of sweetness

Wines with up to about 4 g/L RS taste dry. Above that, sugar starts to show itself to the palate, making the wine read as off-dry or sweet. High acidity can mask sweetness, even up to about 20 g/L RS, pulling the wine into balance. A handful of other confounding factors can make a technically dry wine seem sweet:

• Floral and fruit aromas. Wines made from highly perfumed grapes like Gewürztraminer or the Muscats trick the brain into anticipating sweetness.

• Vanilla, caramel, and warm spice aromas from oak aging. These feel extra prominent in white wines, but are also legible in reds treated to heavily toasted barrels.

• High alcohol. Our tongues read alcohol as sweet, so above 14% ABV a wine may seem sweet even if it’s technically dry.

Some classic wines and styles fall along a dry-sweet continuum

Even if you’ve had a dry one, you might also encounter a sweet one:

• Riesling can be bone dry or super sweet. The styles have legal names, but the alcohol percentage is a tell: dry Riesling is 12% to 14%, sweet is 7% to 9%.

• Sparkling wines have sugar to offset taut acidity. Sugarless wines are Brut Nature (literally “raw plain”). Wines with a bit of sweetness are Brut, and wines with more sugar, and readily perceived sweetness, are Sec (dry) to Doux (soft). Yes, Brut is dry and “dry” is sweet. It is what it is.

Talking about dryness in wine

Because some new wine drinkers start with sweeter wines, “dry” has come to signal sophistication. It’s a false hierarchy, but people often request a “dry wine” to telegraph authority in the category. This doesn’t give a retailer or sommelier much to go on, because most of their wines are technically dry.

If you want a wine you will perceive as dry, ask for any of the following:

• Crisp, refreshing white wines with good acidity;

• Savory, earthy red wines with firm tannins;

• Sparkling wines with low dosage, labeled Brut or Brut Nature;

• Wines lacking floral, fruity, vanilla, or oaky aromas and flavors;

• Lower alcohol wines.

Further reading

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The word connoisseur derives from the French word connaître, earlier connoistre, meaning “to be familiar with” or “to know about.” A connoisseur is someone who uses their knowledge about a subject to guide decision making, especially but not exclusively in matters of taste.

Connoisseurship in art history

In the late 19th century, the term came to refer to a class of art historians and theorists focused on attribution, the technique of identifying the artist who made a piece of work. Art connoisseurship required extensive study of specific artists as well as their social and political contexts, plus a familiarity with the artifacts of material culture which find their way into portraits, altar pieces, history paintings, and other genres.

The art connoisseur used analytical, critical, and intuitive methods to render pronouncements about an artwork’s provenance. They also authored catalogues raisonnés of artists’ complete oeuvres, in part to share their knowledge and in part to justify their analyses. Their work was crucial to the secondary art market, especially to auction houses and museums whose reputations, and income, required trustworthy authentications.

Art connoisseurship demanded extensive expertise, persuasive reasoning, and earned trust in order to render reliable pronouncements about artifacts of visual culture.

Making the leap to gastronomy and wine

Art connoisseurship persists, but in the mid-twentieth century the term connoisseur leapt into new domains, particularly into gastronomy and wine. It came to refer to a passionate amateur whose knowledge granted them authority to make declarative statements about wine quality. Such pronouncements were not principally about provenance, as had been the case with the art connoisseurs, but were more about typicity, collectability, and value.

A general public skeptical about claims of authority in matters of taste eyed such pronouncements with suspicion, and wine connoisseurship became associated with snobbism, elitism, and condescension. The terms connoisseur and connoisseurship have, as a consequence, mostly disappeared from modern texts about wine, replaced with mentions of the “wine enthusiast” or “wine lover.”

Resurrecting wine connoisseurship

It is newly necessary to resuscitate wine connoisseurship, stripping the negative associations to restore original connotations of human expertise, faithful opinion, and reliability.

In this new construction, a wine connoisseur is a person who has educated themselves about the domain in general and certain sectors in particular. They may or may not possess formal credentials, but they are considered authorities whose judgments are viewed with respect rather than skepticism.

In this reading, wine connoisseurship is the practice of discernment, and the wine connoisseur is a practitioner who arises from the general populace to apply their expertise toward our collective understanding of taste.

In an era where taste is increasingly influenced, even litigated, by artificial intelligence and machine simulation, we need wine connoisseurs, people with physical palates and the skills to use them, to share insights forged by human experience.

Further reading

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Bouquet is a derided term of wine speak, but it does useful work by summarizing complexity. Although often used interchangeably with aroma, many professionals reserve bouquet for the impression of development and maturity—the complex of aromas that arise as a result of cask and bottle aging.

Wine aromas are divided into three classes:

• Primary aromas arise from the fruit itself and reflect its varietal character.

• Secondary aromas develop when fermentation generates new aromatic esters.

• Tertiary aromas develop as a result of chemical maturation and exposure to oxygen.

Bouquet generally describes those tertiary aromas, the overall aromatic impact of a mature wine that has been aged in cask and bottle. You might see it mentioned specifically as bottle bouquet. The cutoff is not neatly agreed, however, as some commentators include fermentation aromas under the umbrella of bouquet. But the principal distinction is between youth and age.

The word is from French, and we use it also to refer to a bunch or bundle of assorted flowers. So think of bouquet as a bundle of assorted aromas whose overall impact is more than the sum of its parts.

Talking about bouquet in wine

Bouquet is generally used for favorable aromas that develop as the wine matures. Specific terms used for these positive tertiary or aging notes include:

• Red wine: truffle, leather, dried fruit, earth, tobacco, sandalwood, balsamic

• White wine: honey, dried fruit, nut, toast, beeswax, sherry

• Rosé wine: dried fruit, dried flowers, tea

• Orange wine: earth, tea, dried stone fruit, spice

• Sparkling wine: brioche, biscuit, nut, toast, caramel

• Sweet wine: honey, caramel, beeswax, nut, marmalade, sultana, marzipan

Bouquet is a useful short-hand to summarize these impressions, letting you simply name one or two that seem most prominent.

Homework: Use bouquet in a sentence this week without irony or embarrassment. Bonus points for bottle bouquet.

Read about some wines with bouquet

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Acidity is a key component of wine

Wine’s acidity originates in grapes, but acid is also created during winemaking and aging. Wine contains two types of acids: fixed and volatile. Fixed acids, also called stable acids, remain in a liquid when it’s boiled, while volatile acids readily evaporate.

Wine’s fixed acids are tartaric, malic, lactic, citric, and succinic. These acids give a wine structure, texture, and zing. Wine’s volatile acids are acetic, butyric, formic, isobutyric, propionic, hexanoic, sorbic, and sulfurous. These volatile acids are present in smaller quantities than the fixed acids.

We sense wine’s fixed acids texturally, and its volatile acids aromatically.

Tartaric, malic, and acetic acids play significant roles in wine

The most important fixed acids in wine are tartaric and malic. Grapes have an uncommon abundance of tartaric acid, which gives the wine tanginess and structure. Tartaric acid precipitates out of wine over time, forming tartrate crystals. Malic acid is abundant in grapes and survives primary yeast fermentation, but may undergo a change that weakens its potency during malolactic conversion, which transforms it into lactic acid.

The most important volatile acid in wine is acetic acid. Acetic acid is a byproduct of both yeast fermentation and oxidation. This is the same acid in vinegar, but there’s far less of it in wine. Below the perception threshold of about 1.2 g/L, acetic acid puts a shiny polish on the wine’s aromatic profile.

Aged wines have more acetic acid, and at end of a wine’s life the vinegar aroma and flavor are pronounced. When acetic is present at high concentrations, and especially in combination with another volatile compound, ethyl acetate, the wine is regarded as having elevated volatile acidity.

Talking about acidity in wine

Wine writers generally assess the combined impact of all of these acids, describing it broadly as low, medium, or high, although commentary may focus on the presence of tart, green-apple flavored malic versus smoother, softer lactic. Wines at the extreme ends of the acidity spectrum—too low, too high—are often described as unbalanced.

• Wines with low or insufficient acidity may be described as soft or flabby.

• Wines with medium acidity might be called fresh, crisp, bright, or lively. Those with a bit more may be described as racy, nervy, linear, zesty, or crunchy.

• Wines with excess or high acidity may be described as bracing, tart, or sour.

• Wines with elevated volatile acidity may be described as lifted or high-toned (if it’s pleasant), or simply volatile (if it’s not).

Read more on acidity in wine in these two features:

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