Cuvée

The term cuvée comes from the French and means the Gärbehälterinhalt (from French Cuve - fermenter ). The meaning of the word is different depending on the context.

• In the French language is a blend of each separately bottled wine to a wine cellar. This can also be a blend of several grape varieties as well as a wine from a single location. The top product of a winery is sometimes called a tête de cuvée or as Cuvée Prestige.
• Champagne: The champagne is also the first running of the winepress juice which has the highest quality, referred to as the cuvee. However, the different bottlings of a champagne house are also called blends.

Blend in the German language

In German-speaking Blend is synonymous with waste, Mariage or mélange. This refers to either the common vats or the fermentation of grape varieties in a fermenter for the production of wine or sparkling wine or the subsequent blending of wine lots of different varieties or documents. Also, the wine produced is called Cuvée. The joint significance of all the different types of production, therefore, is that the final wine was produced in a blend of different grapes or vineyards.

The composition of the blend and this itself is, however, referred to in France as the assemblage.

The blending of wines to a cuvée has originally the meaning to increase the quality of the finished product. Another reason may be the constant quality and a consistent flavor over several vintages be away, especially with sparkling wine and there again mainly for branded products of major wineries.

If thinning a winemaker chooses such as a very full-bodied, intensely colored red as a blending partner for lighter, fruitier wines but from. But this always happens with Vorverkostungen the blend proportions in small sample rows, so that the result can be assessed by sensors. An optimally merged blend tastes better than any game of its own. The properties of the individual parts such as fruit expression, tannin, alcohol content, residual sugar, etc. complement each other thereby to form a harmonious whole. Typical vine cuvées are the wines of Bordeaux, which consist of three to five varieties. When Châteauneuf -du -Pape up to 13 grape varieties are even allowed, whereby white varieties may come in the red wine.

While the blending of grape varieties for the production of a wine is commonplace in most wine producing countries, cuvees are in Germany and Austria in the minority. The varieties need not be stated on the label. But even in Germany, this type of wine making is not new. Even the mixed cultivation of the vine varieties in a vineyard, which are then read as " mixed composition " together and pressed, has a long tradition. Although the mixed set today has little significance, there are some winemakers such as specialty blends.

The largest cuvee wine barrel Germany is in Freyburg ( Unstrut), Saxony- Anhalt, with a capacity of 120,000 liters and dates from 1896.