Term entries

• Age statementSpirits · StartAn age statement is the age of the youngest spirit in the bottle. In a whisky blended from casks of different ages, the number on the label is the youngest of them — never an average.
• PeatSpirits · StartPeat is partly decayed vegetation, cut and dried as fuel. When it is burned to dry malted barley, its smoke deposits phenolic compounds on the grain, and those carry through fermentation and distillation into the whisky.
• The angels' shareSpirits · StartThe angels' share is the spirit lost to evaporation through the cask during maturation. It is unavoidable, it compounds every year, and it is most of why old whisky is expensive.
• ProofSpirits · StartProof is a way of stating alcoholic strength. In the United States it is exactly twice the alcohol by volume, so 100 proof is 50% ABV. The historical British proof scale was a different number entirely and is no longer in use.
• Cask strengthSpirits · StartCask strength means bottled at or near the strength the spirit came out of the cask, without dilution to a standard bottling figure — typically somewhere in the fifties or sixties percent ABV rather than the usual 40 to 46.
• BourbonSpirits · StartBourbon is defined by US federal regulation rather than by tradition or geography: a mash of at least 51% corn, distilled to no more than 160 proof, put into new charred oak containers at no more than 125 proof, bottled at no less than 80 proof, and made in the United States.
• Single maltSpirits · StartA single malt is a whisky made from malted barley at one distillery. "Single" refers to the single distillery — not to a single barrel or a single batch. Almost every single malt on a shelf is a blend of many casks.
• VintageWine · StartA vintage is the year the grapes were harvested. It matters because a vineyard's weather is different every year and a wine can only reflect the season it came from — and it matters far less in reliably warm regions than in marginal ones.
• ReservaWine · StartReserva is a legally defined ageing category in Spain and Portugal, and Riserva is one in Italy. Almost everywhere else, "Reserve" on a label is an unregulated marketing word that promises nothing.
• AppellationWine · StartAn appellation is a legally defined growing area whose name may be used only by wine from within it that meets its rules — and those rules usually cover permitted grapes, yields and methods, not merely the boundary.
• TanninWine · StartTannins are polyphenols from grape skins, seeds and stems — and from oak — that bind to proteins in saliva. The drying, grippy feeling they produce is a tactile sensation rather than a taste.
• TerroirWine · StartTerroir is the claim that a wine tastes of where it was grown — the combined effect of soil, slope, climate and local practice on the wine of a particular place. It has no single agreed definition, and it is the organising idea behind European wine law.
• RetrohaleCigars · StartTo retrohale is to push smoke out through the nose rather than the mouth. It is done because most of what is loosely called flavour is smelled rather than tasted, and the nose reaches aromas the tongue cannot register at all.
• Long fillerCigars · StartLong filler means whole leaves running the length of the cigar. Short filler is chopped offcuts. It is the clearest single line between premium and machine-made production.
• Box pressCigars · StubA box-pressed cigar is square-sided rather than round, a shape produced by pressing after rolling — traditionally by the pressure of a tightly packed box, and today usually deliberately, in a press.
• DrawCigars · StartDraw is the resistance a cigar offers when air is pulled through it. Too tight and it is hard work and burns hot; too loose and it burns fast and unevenly. It is set at rolling, by how the filler is bunched.
• Wrapper shadesCigars · StartWrapper shades run from the pale claro to the near-black oscuro. They describe colour and nothing else — the shade says something real about how a leaf was grown and fermented, and remarkably little about how strong the cigar will be.
• VitolaCigars · StartVitola is the Spanish term for a cigar's shape and size. It is used in two distinct senses: the vitola de galera is the factory's internal name for a size, and the vitola de salida is the commercial name a brand sells it under.
• Ring gaugeCigars · StartRing gauge is a cigar's diameter in 64ths of an inch. A 50 ring gauge is 50/64 of an inch — just under 20 millimetres.
• CellophaneCigars · StartThe clear sleeve on many cigars is cellophane, a film made from wood pulp. It is slightly permeable, so a cigar inside one still exchanges moisture with the humidor — leaving it on does not seal the cigar off.
• Tobacco beetleCigars · StartThe tobacco beetle, Lasioderma serricorne, is a small insect whose larvae bore through cured tobacco. Round pinholes in a wrapper and fine dust in the box are the signs, and warmth is what triggers a hatch.
• Relative humidityCigars · StartCigars are kept at roughly 62–70% relative humidity and around 18–21 °C (65–70 °F). The familiar "70/70" is a convention rather than a specification, and the lower half of that range is the more forgiving one.
• Plume vs mouldCigars · FeaturedPlume is a crystalline bloom of oils that can appear on aged wrappers; mould is a fungal growth that damages the cigar. They are frequently confused, and the difference is visible.
• MaduroCigars · Good articleMaduro is a wrapper shade — a dark leaf produced by longer fermentation at higher temperature, not by a different plant or a later harvest alone.