The Project to DeColonize and Diversify Wine's Lexicon

Can it be done? Is it necessary? And one woman's compelling attempt to push forward a movement

Is there a problem with the way those occupied in the wine trade communicate about the beverage? Are younger people not drinking wine because of the way wine professionals describe wine? Are they moving away from wine because this entirely Western product is often described and talked about using a primarily Western lexicon? Are non-white Americans, particularly younger ones, alienated from wine because they have a more difficult time relating to wine due to how it is discussed, who is discussing it, and the way it is written about and described? Can the trajectory of wine sales in America be tilted toward an ascent if we change the lexicon of wine?

These are the questions and contentions addressed in Meg Maker’s newest Wine Scholar Guild Studio lecture on “Rethinking the Lexicon of Wine”. (You can access the entire lecture by clicking on the “Watch Now” button signing up for a free account at the Wine Scholar Guild and then using the special code emailed to you)

Having watched Meg’s presentation and being very interested in the subject of how we communicate about wine, I remain unconvinced that the future of wine in America depends in good part on rethinking and changing the way we communicate about wine. However, this effort does represent a legitimate and honest attempt to get at the apparent lag by younger Americans in their adoption of wine and for this reason alone, not to mention Meg’s superb presentation, it deserves consideration and our attention.

The underlying theme of Maker’s presentation is that the traditional language of wine is steeped in Eurocentrism and not suited for our times or our younger folk who are a more diverse lot than those that came to wine before them. The descriptors are steeped in American, French, Italian and Spanish cultures that are not immediately recognizable to people whose heritage is located in areas south of the United States, in the East, in the Middle East, or in Africa. We need to broaden and democratize the language surrounding wine, Maker asserts. The language must be more inclusive to a more diverse United States.

A good portion of Maker’s presentation is devoted to examining the evolution of winespeak and wine writing going back 50 years. We have evolved from using context and characteristics to describe wine to now using a highly metaphoric language that is chock-full of detailed descriptors largely of European origin strewn in wine reviews holding several commas and ending with a numerical rating. Whether or not his did work for consumers is not the point. The point is that this collection of Western metaphors that harken to a primarily Western palate makes wine more difficult to appreciate and understand if you are not raised in a Western culture. In other words, the common language of wine today is not inclusive, not diverse, and leads to forms of inequity that the wine industry needs to address if it is to attract a wider array of consumers.

The immediate prescription to address this problem is to broaden the lexicon of wine to include descriptors for wine that folks in non-Western countries can immediately recognize. What is a person of West African or Chinese descent, for example, supposed to do with a “Brioche” or “gooseberry” as common descriptors for certain characteristics of a wine? We need to broaden our collection of wine descriptors to make the effort to communicate about wine more inclusive and accessible to folks beyond the shores of English-speaking countries.

I don’t disagree with the notion of translating descriptive terms for wine (strawberry, dark berry, gooseberry, brioche, etc) into terms that are familiar to cultures outside the West. But I think it’s pretty clear that the utility of this kind of project will be far more useful if the results are deployed within the countries that house those cultures and where wines are hoping to be sold.

Any audience for wine stationed in the United States, however, is going to be served far better by utilizing words describing flavors, textures, and aromas most commonly found and experienced where the people live…in the United States. As the specific words connected to non-Western cuisines and foods make their way into the American culinary lexicon so that they are broadly familiar to the American palate, then it does make sense to incorporate them into the wine lexicon and I suspect no significant effort will be needed to see this happen. If this is what Ms. Maker is arguing for, then it’s hard to disagree. But this isn’t immediately clear. There appears to be a call for a wholesale broadening of the wine lexicon to accommodate any and all cultures and make the work of learning wine far easier and, most importantly, possible without imposing the baggage of the ideals, history, and culture of Western Civilization upon a younger audience.

One concern raised by Maker is that the Western-oriented wine lexicon is emblematic of the colonial history of Europe and its people. This is bad. To support this concern, Maker points to the article by Philipino sommelier Miquel DeLeon entitled, “It’s Time to Decolonize Wine,” published to some acclaim a few years ago in Punch. The article, well-written and well-received, is essentially a screed against the Western origins of wine and the oppressive “systems” that come with it. The article covers a good number of grievances De Leon has with the wine industry, the West, and cis, white males working in the wine industry. However, for Maker’s purposes, De Leon’s contribution is his observations on wine language:

Language is a particular challenge, considering English is my third. Traditional wine tasting grids and wheels are biased to Eurocentric flavors, and crucial wine vocabularies can center on foods completely foreign to my Very Asian Palate, like the description of body akin to the fat content of milk products or the essence of a flavor component wrapped up in a fruit I have never even heard of. (Seriously, what in the actual fuck is a gooseberry?)

Wine is rooted in Europe and its white adjacencies, themselves products of colonial and imperialist histories. From Chile to California, we feel the impact of how winemaking was affected by the conscious, hegemonic spread of Christianity. Even the word sommelier is deeply embedded in the servitude of someone charged with taking inventory of wine on pack animals. The wine world does not take into account current experiences of its BIPOC and LGBTQ+ members. It is steeped in a language that is coded and arcane, tied up with legal jargon and French techniques that only the privileged, monied few are able to decipher.

Western wine culture—very bad, very hegemonic, very classist.

De Leon’s complaint appears to be that wine’s Western-oriented language doesn’t match his own experience as a Philipino with a Philipino-educated palate and this made wine less accessible to him. But why wouldn’t the language of wine be oriented toward the West and Western culture? Wine is a product of the West. It was developed as a commodity in the West. It matured as an industry in the West. It was a product consumed primarily by people of the West.

Deleon’s complaint is akin to me, a man of the western United States, complaining that Philipino cuisine doesn’t naturally accommodate the English language I use or the California palate I developed. And this all comes back to wine, problematically, being a product of the West with a language steeped in French and English and Spanish vocabulary and therefore emblematic of Europe’s colonial past (and present, presumably).