the wino's alphabet: c

The third letter in our alphabet comes to us via the hand of an Etruscan. It was written not much dissimilar to modern day C in the shape of a crescent, but it wasn't until 1066 and the Norman invasion of England that it got any regular use. There is a rumour that C is related to G in a linear kind of way: that both letters were derived from 'gamma' and used interchangeably at one time. But never mind all that, what we really want to know is what does this have to do with wine?

Well, the letter C gives us winos words like:

Carbonic Maceration: sounds like a big word, but it's just a type of fermentation process that differs from the way most grapes are fermented. If you've ever had a Beaujolais Nouveau, then you've been intimately acquainted with carbonic maceration. Grape clusters are placed in a stainless steel vat, uncrushed and whole, and left to ferment in a carbon dioxide environment. What happens is that the juice inside each wee berry ferments and the result is a light, and fruity wine.

Crianza: is one of the terms used on Spanish wine bottles (the others are Joven, Reserva, Gran Reserva, but those are for a different day) to indicate how long the wine has been aged and how much time it has spent in a barrel. In this case whites must be six months old, and reds must be two years old having spent at least one year in oak.

Classification: is mostly a French thing. The most famous classification process happened in Bordeaux, in 1855 when estates were rated in classes from Premier Crus down to Cinquièmes Crus. In Burgundy the top rated estates are called Grand Crus; in Alsace top vineyards also receive a Grand Cru classification. The only way to know these is to memorize them, not that any of us are ever going to get our hands on much of the wine from classed estates, but it can be a nice party trick. Wines are classified today, in the modern sense, by wine critics, awards, competitive tastings, and shows.

Cru: literally means 'growth', or 'vineyard' and is used in French quality classification systems (but we already know that).

Charmat: is the name of a process used to make sparkling wine (not Champagne) whereby the secondary fermentation happens in a pressure tank.

Now, pour yourself a glass of wine and give thanks to the letter C, and G for that matter, because otherwise you'd be drinking wine from a  lass that was perhaps rated by a lassification system.