Coinciding with the annual transition to new moods and new wines, spring is the season of the wine trade show, where suppliers large and small display their wares for folks in the drinks industry.

These are organized races to taste (and spit) as many wines as one can before one’s tongue, feet and brain reach a point of near-total failure. And then, for some people, to keep going.

However well or poorly one manages the alcohol that seeps in despite the spitting, managing the information is the greater challenge. Every worthwhile wine has a history that recounts how the grapes were grown and where, who began the process of turning them into wine, what that process entailed, and ultimately how the history might inform the wine’s future as a beverage in someone’s glass.

As I’ve toured trade shows recently, I’ve had countless conversations with the sales representatives who practically bombard you with biographies of each and every wine. I love this bombardment. It reminds me how many factors are involved in what, for most people, exists as a single question: Do I enjoy drinking this?

You can certainly enjoy drinking a wine you don’t know much about. But once you take an interest in finding other wines you might like, information helps. This is obvious. Too often, though, people use just one category to aid in this endeavor: grape varietal. If I enjoy malbec from Producer A, the thinking goes, I enjoy malbec; I will probably also enjoy malbec from Producer B.

Sometimes this presumption is correct, or at least lucky.

A restaurant or retail operator needs to be more systematic. He might determine, for example, that of the seven domestic chardonnays he sells, there should be four that undergo malolactic fermentation; five that are vinified in oak barrels but only two of those with barrel fermentation and only three where the oak has not been used in past vintages; three that spend more than a month on the lees but only two of those with frequent bâtonage.

Those are just a few of the most obvious differences among domestic chardonnays, and for all the obtuse jargon, the variations in technique have dramatic effects on the wines. (And we haven’t even mentioned, in this example, the dramatic effects of region, climate, vineyard.)

If you were to taste a domestic chardonnay that was picked at 24.5 brix in Sonoma, underwent aggressive bâtonage after fermentation in oak, and was then racked into small new-oak barrels for 18 months of aging, you might conclude that you “don’t like chardonnay.” You might then hesitate to try a domestic chardonnay from the Willamette that was picked at 22 brix and fermented at low temperatures in stainless steel with no malolactic conversion. But this latter wine is much further from the first chardonnay, in almost every discernible taste category, than a sauvignon blanc or verdejo or pinot gris that shares various processing traits.

Your hesitation, based on incomplete information, would prevent you from discovering a wine you loved. It would also prevent you from learning something about how the world – natural, agricultural, industrial – works. That would be a shame.

Therefore the brief glossary below, which might serve a more focused project to discover new wines of interest and pleasure than pin the tail on a chardonnay. The terms described are all ones I’ve frequently heard through recent tours of the wine trade shows. They’re mostly about the making of wine, rather than farming, serving, storing, tasting, describing or anything else.

The next time you find a wine you like very much, do some research, either with the professional who steered you to the wine or at the winery’s website. Somewhere, usually, the technical information is available; record some of it and bring it back to your professional guide. Ask her to find you another wine, from a different grape or cépage (blend) grown in a different part of the world, that shares at least some of those traits. See where that trail leads, and repeat.

Brix. A measurement of the sugar content in grapes (or other foods). Other scales that perform the same function are Oechsle in Germany, which measures the density of the grape must, i.e. the unfermented sugar levels; Klosterneuburger Mostwaage (KWM) in Austria; and Baumé in France. If you pick grapes at earlier stages of ripening, you get lower Brix, more acidity, less alcohol. Brix is especially helpful for determining the relative alcohol content, mouthfeel and overall sense of richness in the same wine over several vintages. If you like more acidity and sinewy energy in your wines, look for lower Brix; if you prefer something sumptuous and mouthcoating, look for higher. It’s especially helpful for varietals, such as chardonnay and zinfandel, whose wines’ alcohol levels can vary greatly depending on viticultural practices.

Lees. Alcoholic fermentation occurs when yeast outside the grapes consumes sugars inside the grapes once they’re crushed. Lees are the dead yeast cells that result. Most wine is separated from its lees, through some combination of racking (gently moving the wine from one vessel to another, leaving deposits behind); fining (attaching an agent, such as egg whites, seaweed or isinglass, that creates larger suspensions that are easier to remove); and filtering (running the wine through a sieve).

Wines that are soon separated from their lees achieve a clarity and clean character that many people appreciate; think of a crisp Vinho Verde or standard Provençal rosé. Wines that rest “sur lie,” or on their lees, for weeks or months or in some cases years, surrender some of that clarity but gain a textural complexity, and often bready/yeasty flavors and aromas. Good Muscadet usually ages sur lie for more than a year. Many great chardonnays, from both Burgundy and elsewhere, age sur lie with bâtonage, or the frequent stirring of the wine with its lees, to emphasize the lees’ effect. So do most great Champagnes and many fine German rieslings.

The risk with fining and filtering is that along with the elimination of suspended particles in the wine, various compounds that contribute to a wine’s texture and flavor will be lost.

The importer Kermit Lynch once famously documented the opportunity he had to guide the vinification of two wines that were identical (grapes, vineyard, winemaker, cellar) except that one barrel was filtered and the other wasn’t. Lynch was decisive in his preference for the wine from the latter barrel. Conduct your own experiments to see where you stand.

Malolactic fermentation. Synonyms are “secondary fermentation” and “malo.” The must of grapes (freshly pressed juice with skins, seeds and stems) contains malic acid, which is often described as green apple-like, sharp and pungent. In the malo process, lactic acid bacteria transform that sharpness into a creamier, rounder acid.

Almost all red wines undergo malo. Some whites, especially very aromatic varieties that require a sharper acid to taste balanced, are prevented from undergoing this process via low temperatures (either natural or induced) in the cellar. Most pinot grigios do not undergo malo; most oaky chardonnays do.

Indigenous yeast. The magic of grapes is that all by themselves they contain everything necessary to make wine. Sugar is on the inside; yeast is on the skins – and in the vineyards, and in the cellars. Crush the grapes and let the yeast consume the sugar: the result is wine. Indigenous yeast, also sometimes called “native” or “uninoculated” yeast, is the original fermenting agent for wine. Now, though, there is “cultured” or “inoculated” yeast, produced commercially and sold to wineries to enable a more consistent, reliable fermentation process. Most modern wine is made with cultured yeast.

Indigenous yeast is usually spoken of as if it makes a better wine. It also sustains the romance of winemaking, since fermenting with native yeast is risky, difficult to pull off successfully and necessitates hand work. I’ve met many winemakers and importers, however, who dismiss the significance of the traditional method and claim that its effects are not noticeable. These are people who know a hell of a lot more than I do, yet I believe I can usually determine by tasting whether a wine was made with native or cultured yeast, and in general I decidedly favor the former.

This leads to lively arguments, as the info blasts from people trying to sell me wine come up against my own experiences. Become familiar with some of these terms, bounce them off your own drinking adventures and keep the arguments going.

Joe Appel works at Rosemont Market. He can be reached at:

soulofwine.appel@gmail.com