Winemakers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who produce wine by growing grapes and fermenting their juice
2. Persons engaged in the craft of creating wine from cultivated grapes
3. Those specialized in the process of turning grape harvests into wine through fermentation

Etymology: "Winemakers" is the plural of "winemaker", a compound of "wine" and "maker". The second element is the old English-derived agent word for someone who makes or shapes something, the same sense found in "shoemaker" or "cartwright"-style trades, so the pairing simply names a person whose work is producing wine. The first half is the more rooted of the two. "Wine" came into English from Old English "win", borrowed long before the Norman period from Latin "vinum", but the compound itself is a native English formation rather than a Latin or French import. The Middle English form "wynmaker" shows the word was already in use in the medieval period, when wine-making was a settled trade across Europe.

Synonyms: vintners, brewers, fermenters, distillers, producers