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Millésime

Viniculture
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Millésime is the French term for vintage, indicating the year the grapes were harvested.

Detailed Definition
Millésime evokes temporality, specificity, and the marking of time in poetry. It anchors wine to a particular year, linking it to historical context. Poets use it to explore themes of memory, era, and the uniqueness of each moment. It reflects the belief that every year has its character, that time leaves its imprint, and that recalling the vintage recalls the world as it was.
Example
Example in poetry:
Millésime was the vintage year, a date the poet carved on the bottle's shoulder like a birthmark; He wrote of millésime as the wine's identity, the specific sunlight and rain of a single season; In her memoir, millésime was the poet's own birth year, a vintage that defined the character of the glass; The poet compared millésime to a stanza's date—a temporal anchor that gives context to the liquid text; She called it the year's signature, a numeral that evokes the drama of that growing cycle
Additional Notes
Millésime is the French word for vintage, which in wine terms refers to the year the grapes were harvested, and it is a key factor in determining a wine's character, quality, and value, as the climatic conditions of that specific year—such as rainfall, temperature, and sun exposure—profoundly shape the grapes' chemistry and the resulting wine; millésime is particularly emphasized in Champagne, where vintage wines are produced only in exceptional years, and in regions where the variations between vintages are dramatic; in poetry, the millésime is the date of composition, a marker of time and context that gives the work its identity and its specific resonance, allowing the reader to place it within a larger historical and climatic narrative, much as a poem's date can illuminate its cultural or personal significance.
Also Known As
vintage year harvest date declared year
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