A winemaking process where sugar is added to grape juice before fermentation to increase alcohol content, especially when grapes lack sufficient natural sugar.
From 'chaptal' or 'chaptalize,' named after Jean-Antoine Chaptal, an 18th-century French chemist who promoted the technique. The '-ization' suffix indicates the process.
Chaptal invented this technique to save French wines in bad harvest years, and it became so important that winemakers still use his name two centuries later—he essentially weaponized chemistry to save an entire industry.
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