Cuvee
Definition - What does Cuvee mean?
Cuvee is a French word that refers to special selections or reserve wines that are made from the vineyard’s highest quality grapes and processes. It refers to the batch of either bottles or barrels that come from the best grapes, the most desirable locations or plots that have some sort of prestige attached to them.
WineFrog explains Cuvee
The root of the word Cuvée comes from "cuve" which translates into vat but unlike the connotation in the English language, this means that it is just a small part of the vineyard’s production that year. When you see "Cuvée" on the bottle, it means that the winemakers took extra attention and care in order to produce those wines and that they usually have spent a longer period of time aging. These wines can be blended together or kept specific to a certain grape variety, producing a varietal wine.
This is entirely different for Champagne. For Champagne, Cuvée means that during pressing, they withdrew the best portion of the pressing, or the first 2,050 liters out of the 4,000 kilo press, and used it to produce the wine. Cuvée is usually used to denote a very special and rarer wine.
