If you’re looking to expand your knowledge of kosher wines, it might help to brush up on some of the wine industry’s key words and phrases. Read on for our wine vocabulary list, from acidity to zinfandel:

Acidity: Measures the sourness of a wine. Very sour wines are called “tart,” while wines with hardly any acidity are termed “flat.”

Body: The body of a wine defines the concentration of its flavors. Full-bodied wines feel heavy in your mouth, like milk, and light-bodied bottles are more like water. Medium-bodied wines are somewhere in the middle.

Decant: To transfer wine from its bottle to a separate glass container (decanter), either to let the wine breathe or eliminate the sediment in aged red wine.

Fortified: Wine featuring a distilled spirit, often brandy, added sometime during fermentation. If the fortification occurs in the middle of fermentation, the result is a stronger, sweeter wine, as the distilled component will prevent yeast cells from converting sugar to alcohol.

Mevushal: A type of kosher wine heated during production to guarantee its purity. While non-mevushal wine can lose its kosher status if opened or poured by a non-observant party, mevushal wine will always remain kosher.