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Ullage

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

Ullage is the empty space between wine and the top of the bottle or barrel, indicating evaporation or fill level.

Detailed Definition
Ullage evokes absence, measurement, and the visible sign of time in verse. It suggests that loss leaves space, that emptiness tells story. Poets use it to symbolize depletion, the passage of years, or the need for topping up. It reflects the beauty of void, the information contained in gap, and the constant negotiation with entropy.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ullage was the air space in the bottle or barrel, a gap the poet called "the wine's lost volume to the angel's share"; He wrote of ullage as the missing wine, a headspace that allows oxygen to slowly work its magic; In her cellar poem, ullage was the mark of age, a level below the cork that speaks of decades passed; The poet compared ullage to the unwritten part of a poem—the silent gap that gives the text room to breathe; She called it the empty shoulder, a measurement of evaporation and time's gentle theft
Additional Notes
Ullage is the empty space between the wine and the top of the bottle or the surface of the wine in a barrel, representing the volume lost due to evaporation, leakage, or the absorption of liquid by the wood; in bottles, ullage increases over time and is a sign of age, and in extreme cases, it can indicate that the wine has been compromised by oxidation; in poetry, ullage symbolizes loss, the inevitable evaporation of substance, or the space left by what is no longer present, and it can be a poignant metaphor for aging, memory, and the sense of emptiness that can accompany the passage of time, a quiet reminder of the wine's journey from fullness to the present, partially emptied, moment.
Other Meanings of “Ullage”
Also Known As
headspace air gap barrel void
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