Wine 101: Wine, Explained Well

Moscato is the Italian name for the Muscat grape family and its wines; Moscato d'Asti, made from Moscato Bianco in Piedmont, is sweet and lightly sparkling, with 4.5 to 6.5% alcohol and up to 2.5 bar of pressure under its rules. Sweet wines get their sugar from stopped fermentation, late harvest, dried grapes, noble rot or added grape spirit, and Brachetto d'Acqui and Recioto della Valpolicella are red wines whose rules require a sweet taste.

Riesling is a white wine grape from Germany, where about 45% of the world's Riesling grows, and the wine made from it, which can be dry, off-dry or sweet. The label gives the sweetness: trocken or sec means dry, and German Prädikat levels from Kabinett to Trockenbeerenauslese name the ripeness of the grapes.

Primitivo di Manduria is a red DOC wine from the provinces of Taranto and Brindisi in Puglia, made from at least 85% Primitivo, the grape known in the US as Zinfandel. The rules require at least 13.5% alcohol, or 14% for the Riserva, and a separate DOCG covers the sweet Dolce Naturale.

Seedlip is a British brand of distilled non-alcoholic spirits: Grove 42 is citrus, Spice 94 is allspice and cardamom, Garden 108 is peas and garden herbs, and Notas de Agave is prickly pear, lime and agave. The brand's own serve is 50 ml over ice, topped with tonic and a garnish.

Terroir is the way a place shapes a wine: its climate, soil, landscape and living things, and the knowledge the people there built up about farming it and making wine from it. This guide checks seven common beliefs about terroir against published research, from soil and old vines to microbes, climate change and wine law.

Minerality is a word tasters use for wines that seem to taste of stone, chalk or salt. Wine experts do not agree on what it means. Studies link it to acidity, less fruit and sulfur compounds that form during winemaking, and the minerals in the soil are not the source.

Lambrusco is a family of red grape varieties from Emilia-Romagna, and the lightly sparkling wine made from them, mostly red and frizzante. This guide covers the grapes, the appellations, tank and bottle fermentation, the sweetness terms, the Riunite years and how to serve it.

Orange wine is white wine made the way red wine is made: white grapes ferment with their skins for days, weeks or months, which gives the wine an amber color and tannin. It is also called amber wine or skin-contact white, and it contains no oranges. This guide covers the official definitions, how it is made, its history in Georgia and Friuli, the grapes, and how to serve it.

Most wine is dry because yeast turns the sugar in grape juice into alcohol, and a fermentation left to finish usually keeps under about 2 grams of sugar per liter. This guide covers how wines keep their sugar, the EU scales for still and sparkling wine, the Riesling scales, Port and Tokaji, and which wines have added sugar.

Some natural wine has faults, and it has always depended on the producer. Many natural producers add little or no sulfur dioxide, which leaves their wine more exposed to oxidation, Brettanomyces and mousiness. Where a fault begins is also partly a matter of taste.

A wine fault is a smell or taste the winemaker did not intend, caused by a microbe, a chemical reaction or bad storage. The eight covered here are cork taint, volatile acidity, ethyl acetate, mousiness, Brettanomyces, oxidation, reduction and heat damage: what causes each one, how it smells and tastes, and which ones air can fix.

In the European Union, a wine sold under a protected name (DOCG and DOC in Italy, AOC in France, DO in Spain) has to pass a lab analysis before it reaches the market, and for most of these names a tasting panel too. Every lot of Italian DOCG and every lot of Rioja goes through both exams. Table wines such as Vin de France skip the exam but still have to meet EU limits. In the US, TTB does not require a lab test for an ordinary imported wine; it tests wines it buys from stores.