Wine Lessons > Industry Lingo

A mix of jargon you’ll hear if you hang around to long with winemakers, wine marketers and retailers

1. MOG: Translation - Matter Other than Grapes – Machine harvesting grapes is rather rough and often collects material other than grapes such as leaves, shoots insects, the odd lizard etc., collectively known as MOG

2. MOX: Translation -Micro-oxygenation. For some wine styles, subjecting the wine to air during its making is punishable by death i.e Riesling. It's another story at the opposite end of the style spectrum - dry reds. MOX is a process whereby a high tech machine doses red wines with oxygen in the form of micro-bubbles over a relatively short period of time. It produces easy drinking quaffers with soft tannins

3. The Weed: Translation – Merlot

4. Paddock Monkey: Translation – vineyard labourer

5. Over Delivery: Translation - a) A wine that presents much better value than the price tag. b) A term often used in the initial marketing of a new brand. in order to gain a following a product is marketed so that it appears to be sensational value by either price cutting or by producing a better wine than what people expect for that price.

6. Crush: Translation: (Broadly) Vintage – More specifically the quantity of grapes that went through the winery. ie. “It was a good crush”

7. Quaffer: Inexpensive, easy drinking, inoffensive, table wines designed to appeal to a mass market. Depending on the context used it can be either derogatory or complimentary

8. Boutique: Translation(s) – A reason to charge an arm or a leg for it; a hobby

9. Pongy: Translation – Sulphuric smell caused by preservative Sulphur Dioxide (SO2)

10. Plonky: A wine maker