Wine and the Words That Shall Not Be Spoken

The vocabulary gatekeepers are at it again, thinking if they can get us to stop using certain words, maybe we'll stop noticing something.

The list of words and phrases we are not supposed to use to describe wine seems to grow daily. There is an undeniable brand of authoritarian gatekeeping going on where wine vocabulary is concerned and I just don’t like it.

Of course, I can’t escape my own criticism here. When “Natural Wine” first saw its most excitable proponents take to their blogs and the most sympathetic publications to tell us that Natural Wine was the real wine, I made the point of writing that the term “Natural Wine” was ridiculous as it implies something that isn’t: that these minimal production bottlings are somehow more natural than other wines.

Still, that was out of character for me. I don’t like the policing of languaging. And yet, the police force seems to grow despite a defund the police movement across the country.

The terms “Masculine” and “Feminine” are verboten now. We ought not use these two traditional descriptors since gender is fluid and it’s insulting to suggest that “feminine” might have any meaning at all. I disagree. But who am I to insist otherwise?