The amount of sediment a river carries is its load. Gravity causes the moving water to flow downstream. Most large sediment falls to the bottom and moves by rolling and sliding.

From finest to coarsest, the sediments (and corresponding sedimentary rock) are: clay (claystone, shale), silt (siltstone, shale), sand (sandstone), granules + pebbles + cobbles + boulders (conglomerate or breccia).

In a stream, the most easily eroded particles are small sand grains between 0.2 mm and 0.5 mm. Anything smaller or larger requires a higher water velocity to be eroded and entrained in the flow.

Silt is the name of a sediment grain that range in size from 0.625 mm to 0.0039 mm. Mud is the smallest grain size and is also known as clay.

Mud is a mixture of silt- and clay-size material, and mudrock is its indurated product. Shale is any fine clastic sedimentary rock that exhibits fissility, which is the ability to break into thin slabs along narrowly spaced planes parallel to the layers of stratification.

[′sed·ə·mənt ′dis‚chärj] (hydrology) The amount of sediment moved by a stream in a given time, measured by dry weight or by volume.

Sediment in rivers gets deposited as the river slows down. The flow of water is strongest on the outside of river bends, eroding the bank, but is slowest on the inside of the bends, allowing deposition of sand and gravel.

Sediment is perfectly harmless, and it won’t affect how a wine ages—except that most wines will just get more and more sediment as time goes on. There are two main causes of sediment. The first is that it’s just present during most of a wine’s life.

Your Bottle of Wine Might Be Bad If:

1. The smell is off.
2. The red wine tastes sweet.
3. The cork is pushed out slightly from the bottle.
4. The wine is a brownish color.
5. You detect astringent or chemically flavors.
6. It tastes fizzy, but it’s not a sparkling wine.