| Palate |
| A term for the flavour, taste and texture of a wine. |
| Perfumed/scented |
| Strongly fragrant, can be fruity, flowery, animal etc. |
| pH |
| A chemical notation, used in winemaking and evaluation. The pH of a wine is its effective, active acidity - not in volume but by strength or degree. The reading provides a guide to a wine's keepability. The optimum pH for a wine to age is somewhere betwee |
| Phenolics |
| A large group of compounds, found in grapes and wine, including many colour, tannin and flavour compounds. |
| Phylloxera |
| A tiny louse that attacks the root system of wine grape vines, responsible for killing over three million acres of vines in Europe in the 1800s. It arrived in South Africa at the turn of the century. Grafting to resistant rootstock is the only known way t |
| Pomace |
| The debris from grape processing which consists of stems, seeds, pulp and dead yeast cells. It can be distilled into brandy or grappa and is also called press cake. |
| Porty |
| Heavy, over-ripe, stewed; bad in an unfortified wine. |
| Post-fermentation maceration |
| Skin contact with red wines following fermentation. Also called "extended skin contact," the process extracts flavour compounds, colour and tannin, resulting in greater varietal character and more developed tannins. |
| Powdery mildew |
| One of several fungi that can cause severe damage to grape crops; also called oidium. |
| Pruning |
| Cutting back the vegetative part of the vine after it has become dormant. Pruning affects the size and quality of the next year's crop. |
| Pump-overs |
| The pumping of fermenting red wine over the cap of skins to extract more flavour, colour and tannin from the skins. |
