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No-Fuss Guide · No. 24

The wine list in English (and in Spanish, French and Italian): how to read it and order abroad

On a wine list in English, by the glass means one glass at a time, house wine is the restaurant's own pick, vintage is the harvest year and corkage is the fee for opening a bottle you brought. Here is the wine-list dictionary in the four languages Brazilian travelers run into most, and how to order without fear.

In English

• Wine list: the menu of wines. By the glass, one glass at a time; by the bottle, the whole bottle; half bottle, the 375 ml one; carafe, a serving jug; magnum, the 1.5-liter bottle.
• Pour: the amount served. “A 5-oz pour” is about 5 ounces, close to 150 ml. In England, a glass is 125 ml, 175 ml or multiples of those (the large 250 ml one is common), and the bar has to let you know the 125 exists.
• House wine: the restaurant's own wine, usually the most affordable on the list. Don't turn your nose up: a Master Sommelier told Decanter that a good restaurant lives or dies by the quality of its house wine.
• Vintage: the harvest year. NV (non-vintage) has no vintage: it doesn't come from a single year.
• Dry: no sugar you can taste; off-dry, almost dry, with a touch of sugar; medium-sweet, halfway to sweet; sweet, the end of the scale. With sparkling wine, watch out: extra dry is sweeter than brut (the scale is in the sweet sparkling wine guide).
• Sparkling, with bubbles; still, without; fortified, with spirit added, like Port and Sherry; dessert wine, a sweet wine for the end of the meal.
• Light-, medium- and full-bodied: light, medium and full body. Oaked means it saw oak; unoaked, it didn't.
• Varietal: a wine named after its grape (in the United States, at least 75% of it). Blend: a mix of grapes.
• Reserve: in the United States, it has no legal definition; it's the producer's word. (For the rest of the world, the Reserva guide explains it country by country.)
• Sommelier: the person who looks after the wine in the restaurant and helps you choose. Corkage: the fee for drinking a bottle you brought yourself. BYO or BYOB: “bring your own bottle”.
• Corked: tasting of cork, a musty smell that comes from TCA, a molecule that can come from the cork or even from the barrel.

In Spanish

• Copa, the glass; vino de la casa, the house wine; sumiller, the sommelier; añada or cosecha, the vintage.
• Seco, semiseco, semidulce and dulce, from dry to sweet. Espumoso is sparkling; vino de aguja, lightly sparkling; vino de licor, fortified. Cava is Spain's sparkling wine made by the traditional method.
• Crianza, reserva and gran reserva, in Spain, are law: the red spends at least 24, 36 and 60 months aging, 6, 12 and 18 of them in barrel.
• Descorche: corkage in parts of Latin America (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama). In Spain, the dictionary only lists the word as the act of pulling the cork, not as a fee.

In French

• Carte des vins, the wine list; verre, the glass; bouteille, the bottle; demi-bouteille, the half bottle; pichet and carafe, serving jugs.
• Millésime, the vintage; cuvée, a producer's batch or blend.
• Sec, dry; demi-sec, medium-dry in still wine, but sweet in sparkling; moelleux, medium-sweet; liquoreux, a sweet dessert wine.
• Mousseux, sparkling; crémant, traditional-method sparkling made from appellation wines; pétillant, lightly sparkling. Bouchonné: corked.

In Italian

• Calice, the glass; bottiglia, the bottle; caraffa, the carafe; vino della casa, the house wine; annata, the vintage.
• Riserva, under Italian law: at least 2 years of aging for reds, 1 for whites.
• Secco, dry; abboccato, medium-dry; amabile, medium-sweet; dolce, sweet. Spumante, sparkling; frizzante, lightly sparkling.
• Sa di tappo: it's corked.

How to order without fear

• Ask for help. Say what you like and how much you want to spend. If you'd rather not say the price out loud, point to two or three wines in that range on the list: that's the tip from a former sommelier in Decanter. And it's worth looking at the list on the restaurant's website before you go.
• The ritual. The sommelier shows you the bottle, label up: check the producer and the vintage. Then they pour a little for whoever ordered to taste and, once it's approved, serve the table.
• Smells odd? Say so and let the sommelier taste it. If the wine is corked, the norm is for the restaurant to replace the bottle, with the same wine or another one.
• Bringing your own wine. Where it's allowed, you pay corkage: in the United States, award-winning restaurants interviewed by Wine Spectator charge US$ 30 to 55 a bottle, and some states don't allow it at all. Etiquette: don't bring a wine that's already on the list.
• Tipping in the United States. Wine Spectator's columnist suggests 20% on the whole bill, wine included; when the wine costs much more than the food, about 10% on the wine. It's custom, not law.