Decanter World Wine Awards
Few, in truth, succeeded (the ever-mellifluous Charles Metcalfe came closest, but then he grew up wrapping his tongue around Schubert lieder). Should this ever become an Olympic sport, among the other varieties we’ll need to train with will include the Hungarian Cserszegi Fűszeres, Királyeányka or Zalagyöngye, the Romanian Fetească Regală or Zghihară de Huşi, Portugal’s Donzelinho or Fernão Pires, Greece’s Xynomavro or Agiorgitiko, Catalonia’s Xarello, Italy’s Sciascinoso and Georgia’s Mtsvane Kakhuri.
Actually this is no laughing matter. Whenever consumers are surveyed about purchasing cues, varieties slug it out with promotional offer, colour and brand for top slot. At least half of the varieties I have listed above have fine quality potential – yet printing the variety’s name on the label would prove powerfully dissuasive to browsing shoppers. The chance of ‘ordinary’ drinkers outside the relevant language group cheerfully requesting a wine by use of that variety name is zero. These varieties set off into the world hamstrung by nomenclature.
Pronunciation difficulties, moreover, may not only eliminate consumer access to beautiful wines, but they may even hold terroir evolution in check. Fetească Regală could be the perfect variety for certain distinguished white-wine sites in Washington State; Xynomavro might be what the more calcareous sectors of McLaren Vale have been waiting for. With names like those, though, we will never know. No one will ever plant a variety with an un-sellably difficult name.
This problem extends well beyond varietal difficulties. Having spent a certain amount of time standing in Australian bottle shops and talking to Aussie wine drinkers in 2009 and 2010, it became obvious to me that many Australian wine drinkers avoided buying European wines for no other reason than that they deeply disliked trying to pronounce any non-English names at all, for fear of getting them wrong and sounding daft. This, too, is a major factor in the success of wines produced in anglophone countries in the UK market, and probably the US market, too. The pronunciation of New Zealand’s largest wine-producing region will challenge any non-English speaker; Burgundian names are a big challenge for those who grew up speaking Mandarin. When I eventually get to China to visit its wine regions I will, no doubt, make a terrible hash of its names, too. Pronunciation, and ‘legibility’ in its widest sense, are a gigantic impediment to the global wine trade.
Are there any solutions? Cserszegi Fűszeres was famously marketed (by Hilltop Neszmély) as ‘The Unpronounceable Grape’, but that is no doubt a trademark and it’s a trick you can only play once. From time to time, I have toyed with the idea of trying to create a kind of periodic table for grape varieties, or more generally abbreviating variety names to a 1-, 2- or 3-letter code in the way that chemical elements (or airports) are abbreviated. Blends could then be annotated like chemical formulae (so Lafleur 2009 would be glossed M3CF2, Peter Michael’s 2009 Les Pavots CS33CF11M5PV1 and the 2009 Crianza Rioja from CVNE T4G1CG1). Cserszegi Fűszeres then becomes the sweetly simple CSF, and Öküzgözü becomes the lovable OK. The OIV could be responsible for creating and administering the codes. Such a scheme may, I admit, seem affectively repellent, but there’s no theoretical impediment to it and it might one day make a useful back-label code.
Numbers are another way out of the impasse: unlike words and names, figures are universal. Every variety could be given a ‘V number’, along the lines of Europe’s food-additive codes (the celebrated ‘E numbers’). Of course, numerical combinations grow tiresomely complex very soon, and in our digital age most people now have too many numbers in their lives to remember anyway. Numbers, too, lack emotional appeal.
The solution of last resort would be to attempt to re-baptise the most challengingly named grape varieties. Personally, though, I’d be against this: it seems like cultural defeatism, and would result in schmaltz. The names of crosses and hybrids are bad enough already. Optima and Regent sound like washing-up liquid.
For the time being, anyway, there is no alternative to grappling with the wine world’s strangest consonants and syllables. A least a glass of wine makes it easier, as we proved in Turkey.
Have your say!
Ca Suffit
December 12 18:14
The world is awash in decent wine at reasonable prices; the last thing consumers need are another 10 or 20 obscure grape varieties. The issue is not really the unpronounceable names but rather the absence of any need for these wines in the market.
António Rocha Graça
December 12 10:58
Trying to be the next big thing for the last 15 years, Portugal is well aware of the commercial obstacles imposed by its unique diversity of grape varieties, both at botanical and lexical levels. So, we have been trying to address the issue:
. Audible pronounciation assistance has been provided for a number of years now. Check Alfrocheiro at http://winesofportugal.info/pagina.php?codNode=1089#tab_1,codNode_1114
However, your suggestion of a code comes very timely as Portugal has passed, just last month, what I think is the first ever official grape varieties list displaying a nummercial code for variety reference and most specially for sorting out the synonims mess. The code is by no means intended for labelling usage but is very important for commercial transactions of plantlings or for scientific and regulatory reference. Despite some still lurking incorrections that should be corrected soon, using it, one can see that code PRT53006 can be referred to as Tinta Amarela, Trincadeira or Trincadeira-Preta, all regional names of the one and same grape variety. The list can be downloaded at http://dre.pt/pdf1sdip/2012/11/22600/0671206715.pdf
The code system solves the confusion issues without hampering the cultural and regional heritage conferred by variety names, which would be a most difficult issue to tackle should just one name be chosen, most especially when synonims exist from different countries (Durif or Petite Syrah? Syrah or Shiraz? Ugni Blanc or Trebbiano Toscano? Tempranillo, Aragonez or Tinta Roriz? Portugieser Blau, Portugais Bleu, Kékporto or Português Azul?).
I hope the same system may be applied for the whole of Europe or even at world scale, OIV being a major facilitator if it takes up the idea. We in Portugal, at least, are showing it is a workable solution.
Dick Friend
December 12 03:21
Andrew/Andreas/Andre/Drew (?)
Love the proposals and alternatives but, as you observe, abbreviations can be ugly, such as "Gru-Vee" for Gruner Veltliner. In a smartphone App "GRAPES 101", I included a pronunciation guide from Aglianico (ahlee-AHN-eeko) to Zinfandel (ZIN-fan-dell) on all 171 grape varieties planted for wine in Oz. With such info in your pocket, it does help you overcome embarassment in restaurants and bottleshops, and settle a few arguments! But yes, a spoken pronunciation button would be a useful addition.
Donn Rutkoff
December 10 21:46
hey, knock it off. we can't even pronounce Pinot auxerrois. course we can't agree if it is same as p blanc or a different grape. And in "the colonies" people still think german wine is rye-sling.