Free Bacchus Reference

The Glossary

The vocabulary of clean wine, spirits and sake — certification bodies, farming methods and the category terms that labels use without explaining. Plain language, no assumed knowledge.

A B C D E G H I J K L M N P R S T U Y

additive-free: Made with no permitted colouring, sweetener, glycerine or oak extract — disclosed voluntarily, since labels are not required to declare any of them.
agave: The succulent from which tequila and mezcal are made. Blue agave takes roughly eight years in the field before it is ready to harvest.
appellation: A legally defined growing area with rules on grape variety, yield and method. It governs geography and practice — not whether the farming used chemicals.
arthropods: Insects, spiders, mites and their relatives — the invertebrate layer that pollinates crops and feeds nearly everything above it.
B Corp: A certification assessing a whole company's social and environmental performance, governance and transparency — the business, not the product.
Bere barley: An ancient six-row barley grown in Scotland's north and islands for centuries, low-yielding but suited to poor soil and short seasons.
biodynamic: Farming that treats the estate as a single living system — composting, cover crops and a planting calendar, with no synthetic pesticide or fertiliser. Certified chiefly by Demeter, and stricter than organic.
CCOF: California Certified Organic Farmers — one of the oldest accredited organic certifiers in the United States, inspecting farms against the USDA standard.
classified growth: An estate included in the 1855 ranking of the Médoc, graded first through fifth. The list reflected forty years of nineteenth-century prices and has been meaningfully amended once since.
cover crop: A crop grown between vine or grain rows to hold soil, feed microbial life and fix nitrogen, rather than to be harvested.
daiginjo: A sake grade requiring the rice to be milled to at least half its original size before brewing, producing a lighter, more aromatic style.
Demeter: The international certifying body for biodynamic farming, founded in 1928. It inspects farms annually and can withdraw the mark — which is what separates it from an unregulated adjective.
Ecocert: A French-founded certification body operating in over eighty countries, auditing organic farming and processing to EU and equivalent standards.
ginjo: A sake grade requiring the rice to be milled to at least sixty percent of its original size, giving a more delicate, fragrant character.
herbicide: A chemical that kills unwanted plants. In vineyards it removes the need to cultivate weeds mechanically — and removes the ground cover with them.
integrated pest management: A strategy for using pesticides judiciously — monitoring pressure and spraying only when thresholds are crossed. A real improvement on spraying by the calendar, but not abstinence.
intermediate wheatgrass: The perennial grass bred into a grain crop and sold as Kernza. Unlike annual barley or wheat, it is not replanted each year.
IPM: Integrated pest management — using pesticides judiciously rather than on a fixed schedule. An improvement on calendar spraying, but not abstinence.
JAS: Japanese Agricultural Standard — Japan's national organic certification, applied to farmland and, separately, to processing such as brewing.
junmai: A legal classification meaning the sake was made from rice, water, koji and yeast — and nothing else. No added distilled alcohol, sugars or acids. A brewery that adds any of them may not print the word.
Kernza: The trademarked grain of intermediate wheatgrass — a perennial whose roots can reach ten feet, holding soil and carbon between harvests.
koji: A cultivated mould (Aspergillus oryzae) that converts rice starch into fermentable sugar — the step winemaking never needs, because grapes arrive already sweet.
land-sparing: The argument that farming intensively on less land, and leaving the rest wild, may protect more wildlife overall than farming gently across a wider area.
malting barley: Barley grown to a specification suitable for brewing and distilling — lower protein, high germination. A more demanding crop than feed barley, and harder still in a wet climate.
meta-analysis: A study that pools the results of many independent studies to find what holds true across all of them — stronger evidence than any single trial.
mezcal: An agave spirit that may be made from many agave species and is traditionally roasted in earthen pits, giving the smoke tequila usually lacks.
mildew: A fungal disease driven by damp weather — the perennial threat in maritime regions, and the most common reason an organic conversion fails.
Médoc: The strip of gravel on the left bank of the Gironde north of Bordeaux, home to the estates ranked in the 1855 classification.
nihonshu: The Japanese word for what English calls sake — literally 'Japanese alcohol'. In Japan, 'sake' alone can mean any alcoholic drink.
Pauillac: The Médoc commune containing three of the five first growths — Lafite, Latour and Mouton — and, on the same gravel plateau, Pontet-Canet.
peat: Partly decayed vegetation cut from bogs and burned to dry malted barley, giving the smoke characteristic of Islay whisky.
perennial grain: A grain crop that lives several years rather than being sown and harvested annually — leaving roots in the ground, and the soil undisturbed, between harvests.
phylloxera: The root-feeding aphid that destroyed most of Europe's vineyards in the late nineteenth century. Vines are now grafted onto resistant American rootstock.
pollinators: The insects, chiefly bees and hoverflies, that move pollen between flowers. Their abundance runs measurably higher on organic farms.
rectification: Repeated distillation to strip a spirit of character and impurities — the process by which vodka is made deliberately neutral.
Regenerative Organic Certified: A standard layered on top of organic certification, adding requirements for soil health, animal welfare and farmworker fairness.
Soil Association: The principal organic certifier in the United Kingdom, founded in 1946, with standards that in several areas exceed the statutory minimum.
species richness: The number of different species present in a place. The standard first measure of how much life a piece of land is supporting.
terroir: The claim that a wine or spirit carries the mark of where it grew — soil, slope, climate and the decisions made there. Contested in the abstract, unmistakable in the glass.
tillage: Breaking up soil by ploughing or cultivating. It controls weeds without chemicals, but disturbs soil structure and releases stored carbon.
USDA Organic: The United States federal organic standard. Farms are inspected by accredited certifiers, and the seal may be revoked; it governs farming, not what happens after distillation.
Yamada Nishiki: The most prized sake rice variety, valued for a starch-rich core that mills cleanly. Demanding to grow, and correspondingly expensive.

No terms match that search.

These definitions are the same ones that appear as tooltips throughout the Journal. For how certifications are checked and re-checked, see the Verification Standard.