In winemaking, the cloudy sediment or precipitation that forms in wine; also, the process of clarifying wine by removing these particles.
From French 'casse' (breakage, sediment), derived from Old French 'casser' (to break). The term refers to how wine breaks or separates into layers during clarification.
In 17th-century France, vignerons discovered that certain proteins and tannins in wine would literally fall out of solution and form sediment—they called this 'casse' because the wine seemed to be breaking apart, not realizing they'd discovered molecular precipitation.
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