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Representing Wine – Sensory Perceptions, Communication and Cultures
 9027204454, 9789027204455

Table of contents :
Representing Wine - Sensory Perceptions, Communication and Cultures
Editorial page
Title page
Copyright page
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1. Winespeak
1.1 The challenges of talking about wine
1.2 Aims and overview of this book
Chapter 2. Exploring sensory meanings
2.1 Sensuous cognition
2.2 Sensuous language
2.3 Communicating sensory experiences: Social cognition and genre
2.4 The data used in this book
2.4.1 Criteria for the General Corpus: Sources and TNs
2.4.2 Treatment of the General Corpus
2.4.3 Building the multimodal, promotional corpora
2.4.3.1 Corpora of marketing strategies
2.4.3.2 Corpus of documentaries about wine
Chapter 3. From tasting to reviewing
3.1 The tasting event
3.2 Transforming sensory experiences into sensory language
3.3 Describing wine through analytical schemas
3.3.1 The Aroma Wheel
3.3.2 The Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) system
3.4 The tasting note
3.4.1 The form and function of tasting notes
3.4.2 Types of tasting notes
Chapter 4. Descriptors of wine across the senses
4.1 The many words for wine
4.1.1 Metonymy
4.2 Sensations construed as properties and objects through language
4.3 Cross-sensory descriptors: Synaesthesia and syncretism
4.4 Summary
Chapter 5. Metaphor
5.1 The metaphorical nature of winespeak
5.2 Process-focused metaphors: Winemaking and related practices
5.2.1 Combining parts into a whole: The craft of winemaking
5.2.2 Raising wines: Organic metaphors for winemaking
5.3 Product-focused metaphors: The structure and behaviour of wine
5.3.1 Wine’s state and performance: Organic metaphors
5.3.2 Wine’s make up: Inorganic metaphors
5.4 The dynamics of wine: Motion language in TNs
5.4.1 Motion metaphors in TNs
5.5 Summary
Chapter 6. The grading and evaluation of presence
6.1 Noticing and assessing presence in wine
6.1.1 The vocabulary of presence (and absence)
6.1.2 The vocabulary of quantity
6.1.3 The vocabulary of range
6.2 Expressing intensity and persistence in wine
6.3 Assessing the quality of presence through motion
6.3.1 presence dimensions and motion
6.3.2 intensity and persistence through motion
6.4 Summary
Chapter 7. Rhetorical strategies to achieve credibility in wine assessment
7.1 The representation of the events described in wine reviews
7.2 The horizontal axis: The different events
7.2.1 The production event
7.2.2 The tasting event
7.2.3 The consumption event
7.3 The vertical axis: Space, time and source of knowledge
7.3.1 Activities and participants
7.3.2 Space and time
7.3.3 Source of evidence and modes of knowing
7.4 Summary
Chapter 8. The market individuation of wine
8.1 The marketing of wine
8.2 Choosing names for wines
8.2.1 Literal naming strategies
8.2.2 Metaphorical naming strategies
8.3 Packaging wine
8.3.1 Wine bottles
8.3.2 Wine labels
8.4 Summary
Chapter 9. Advertising wine
9.1 Literal strategies in wine advertising
9.1.1 The origin of wine
9.1.2 The process of making wine
9.1.3 The consumption of wine
9.2 Metaphorical strategies in wine advertising
9.2.1 Personification: Depicting wines as human beings
9.2.2 Wines as three-dimensional artefacts
9.3 Problematics of wine adverts in the theoretical framework
9.3.1 Pictorial simile
9.3.2 Contextual metaphor
9.3.3 Hybrid metaphor
9.3.4 Integrated metaphor?
9.4 Synaesthesia
9.5 Summary
Chapter 10. Documenting wine in film
10.1 Wine documentaries
10.2 Singularizing strategies in wine documentaries
10.2.1 The intrinsic value of wine
10.2.2 Adding value to wine
10.3 The form and function of figurative language in documentaries
10.3.1 Personification
10.3.1.1 Wine as child of winemaker
10.3.1.2 Expressiveness
10.3.1.3 Gender
10.3.2 Ingredient for a recipe
10.3.3 Assorted wine metaphors
10.3.4 Other verbal metaphors
10.3.5 Other language resources
10.4 Monomodal and multimodal metaphors in documentaries
10.4.1 Monomodal metaphors in documentaries
10.4.2 Multimodal metaphors in documentaries
10.4.3 Montage: Structure as metaphor
10.5 Summary
Chapter 11. Final remarks
11.1 Afterword: De gustibus non est disputandum
References
Index

Citation preview

Rosario Caballero, Ernesto Suárez-Toste and Carita Paradis

CONVERGING EVIDENCE IN L ANGUAGE AND COMMUNIC ATION RESE ARCH

Representing Wine – Sensory Perceptions, Communication and Cultures

21

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Representing Wine Sensory Perceptions, Communication and Cultures

Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research (CELCR) issn 1566-7774

Over the past decades, linguists have taken a broader view of language and are borrowing methods and findings from other disciplines such as cognition and computer sciences, neurology, biology, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. This development has enriched our knowledge of language and communication, but at the same time it has made it difficult for researchers in a particular field of language studies to be aware of how their findings might relate to those in other (sub-)disciplines. CELCR seeks to address this problem by taking a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of language and communication. The books in the series focus on a specific linguistic topic and offer studies pertaining to this topic from different disciplinary angles, thus taking converging evidence in language and communication research as its basic methodology. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/celcr

Editors Kris Heylen KU Leuven

Ninke Stukker

University of Groningen

Advisory Board Walter Daelemans

Martin Pütz

Cliff Goddard

Wilbert Spooren

Roeland van Hout

Marjolijn H. Verspoor

University of Antwerp University of New England Radboud University Nijmegen

University of Koblenz-Landau RU Nijmegen

University of Groningen

Leo Noordman

Tilburg University

Volume 21 Representing Wine - Sensory Perceptions, Communication and Cultures by Rosario Caballero, Ernesto Suárez-Toste and Carita Paradis

Representing Wine Sensory Perceptions, Communication and Cultures Rosario Caballero Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

Ernesto Suárez-Toste Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

Carita Paradis Lund University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/celcr.21 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2019029458 (print) / 2019029459 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0445 5 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6191 5 (e-book)

© 2019 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Preface

xi

Chapter 1 Winespeak1 1.1 The challenges of talking about wine  4 1.2 Aims and overview of this book  7 Chapter 2 Exploring sensory meanings 2.1 Sensuous cognition  10 2.2 Sensuous language  13 2.3 Communicating sensory experiences: Social cognition and genre  18 2.4 The data used in this book  20 2.4.1 Criteria for the General Corpus: Sources and TNs  22 2.4.2 Treatment of the General Corpus  25 2.4.3 Building the multimodal, promotional corpora  26 2.4.3.1 Corpora of marketing strategies  26 2.4.3.2 Corpus of documentaries about wine  27 Chapter 3 From tasting to reviewing 3.1 The tasting event  30 3.2 Transforming sensory experiences into sensory language  32 3.3 Describing wine through analytical schemas  35 3.3.1 The Aroma Wheel  35 3.3.2 The Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) system  38 3.4 The tasting note  40 3.4.1 The form and function of tasting notes  41 3.4.2 Types of tasting notes  47

9

29

vi

Representing wine

Chapter 4 Descriptors of wine across the senses 4.1 The many words for wine  51 4.1.1 Metonymy 54 4.2 Sensations construed as properties and objects through language  58 4.3 Cross-sensory descriptors: Synaesthesia and syncretism  64 4.4 Summary  70

51

Chapter 5 Metaphor71 5.1 The metaphorical nature of winespeak  72 5.2 Process-focused metaphors: Winemaking and related practices  75 5.2.1 Combining parts into a whole: The craft of winemaking  76 5.2.2 Raising wines: Organic metaphors for winemaking  78 5.3 Product-focused metaphors: The structure and behaviour of wine  80 5.3.1 Wine’s state and performance: Organic metaphors  82 5.3.2 Wine’s make up: Inorganic metaphors  87 5.4 The dynamics of wine: Motion language in TNs  91 5.4.1 Motion metaphors in TNs  95 5.5 Summary 97 Chapter 6 The grading and evaluation of presence 6.1 Noticing and assessing presence in wine  100 6.1.1 The vocabulary of presence (and absence)  104 6.1.2 The vocabulary of quantity  108 6.1.3 The vocabulary of range  111 6.2 Expressing intensity and persistence in wine  113 6.3 Assessing the quality of presence through motion  115 6.3.1 presence dimensions and motion  116 6.3.2 intensity and persistence through motion  118 6.4 Summary  122 Chapter 7 Rhetorical strategies to achieve credibility in wine assessment 7.1 The representation of the events described in wine reviews  124 7.2 The horizontal axis: The different events  125 7.2.1 The production event  126 7.2.2 The tasting event  128 7.2.3 The consumption event  134

99

123



Table of contents vii

7.3 The vertical axis: Space, time and source of knowledge  137 7.3.1 Activities and participants  137 7.3.2 Space and time  139 7.3.3 Source of evidence and modes of knowing  140 7.4 Summary 141 Chapter 8 The market individuation of wine 8.1 The marketing of wine  143 8.2 Choosing names for wines  145 8.2.1 Literal naming strategies  146 8.2.2 Metaphorical naming strategies  147 8.3 Packaging wine  150 8.3.1 Wine bottles  151 8.3.2 Wine labels  153 8.4 Summary  158 Chapter 9 Advertising wine 9.1 Literal strategies in wine advertising  161 9.1.1 The origin of wine  161 9.1.2 The process of making wine  162 9.1.3 The consumption of wine  163 9.2 Metaphorical strategies in wine advertising  164 9.2.1 Personification: Depicting wines as human beings  165 9.2.2 Wines as three-dimensional artefacts  167 9.3 Problematics of wine adverts in the theoretical framework  169 9.3.1 Pictorial simile  170 9.3.2 Contextual metaphor  172 9.3.3 Hybrid metaphor  173 9.3.4 Integrated metaphor?  174 9.4 Synaesthesia  175 9.5 Summary 179 Chapter 10 Documenting wine in film 10.1 Wine documentaries  184 10.2 Singularizing strategies in wine documentaries  185 10.2.1 The intrinsic value of wine  185 10.2.2 Adding value to wine  187

143

159

183

viii Representing wine

10.3 The form and function of figurative language in documentaries  190 10.3.1 Personification  191 10.3.1.1 Wine as child of winemaker  191 10.3.1.2 Expressiveness  193 10.3.1.3 Gender  193 10.3.2 Ingredient for a recipe  194 10.3.3 Assorted wine metaphors  196 10.3.4 Other verbal metaphors  196 10.3.5 Other language resources  197 10.4 Monomodal and multimodal metaphors in documentaries  198 10.4.1 Monomodal metaphors in documentaries  199 10.4.2 Multimodal metaphors in documentaries  202 10.4.3 Montage: Structure as metaphor  203 10.5 Summary  204 Chapter 11 Final remarks 11.1 Afterword: De gustibus non est disputandum  209

207

References219 Index231

Acknowledgements

This book is the product of a long-term research on wine by its three authors, both at an individual level and collectively. We first met at a research meeting in UNED Madrid in 2007 and from that moment, we started a research – and, eventually, personal – relationship that crystallizes in the present work. Through our joint work, we have also been able to secure funding for various research projects (from the humble Traduciendo los Sentidos. Metáfora en la Retórica del Vino funded by the University of Castilla-La Mancha in 2005 to the more challenging projects MoVEs II. Géneros del Discurso y Tipología Aplicada (grant FFI2013-45553-C3-2-P, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) and the ongoing project MAP(h)AS, Maneras de Actuar, Pensar, Hablar y Sentir en Inglés y Español (grant FFI2017-86359-P, Ministerio de Economía Industria y Competitividad), organized research meetings (Speaking about Sensory Perceptions, funded by The Swedish Bank Tercentenary Foundation in 2009 and thematic sessions (Sensory Perceptions in Language and Cognition, Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Stockholm in 2012; The Language of the Senses, XI International Conference of AELCO, Córdoba University in 2018) and, of course, drank our way through many conferences around the world. During the years that we have worked on how wine is represented, we have also received funding for several research stays from European Science Foundation (the European Network on word Structure: Cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding word structure in the languages of Europe (NetWordS), 2011–2015 and from the Royal Society of Letters at Lund (Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet. Finally, we want to thank the organizations, wineries and firms that have allowed us the use of charts and images. In the first place, we are grateful to the Deutsches Weininstitut GmbH and Herr Prof. Ulrich Fischer, DLR Rheinpfalz, for letting us use their pictures. We are also indebted to the following wineries that have given us permission to use their advertisements: Ca N’ Estruc, Bodegas Canopy, Masi Agricola, Stags’ Leap Winery, AOC Saint-Estèphe, and Bodegas Palacios Remondo. Finally, many thanks to LopezLi Producciones for granting us permission to reproduce a still from their film Jerez y el misterio del palo cortado.

Preface

This book is about how wine is represented at different levels and in different contexts and situations, and shows the various ways through which we describe wine, promote wine and talk about wine more loosely. The findings are based on the three authors’ extensive research over more than a decade in the form of large databases of texts and pictorial material, mainly in English and Spanish. In our previous research as well as in this book, we combine methods from Corpus Linguistics and theoretical assumptions from Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Semantics. At the level of text and discourse, our approach to wine discourse is situated within the field of Genre Analysis and Intercultural Pragmatics. The genres we deal with are both written and spoken, verbal and pictorial and are intended for both domestic and global audiences. At the level of semantic representation and meaning making, the book rests within the broad framework of Cognitive Semantics, whose bottom-up lexical semantic approach enriches the top-down procedures of discourse and genre analysis, and helps yield richer views of the shared cultural and cognitive schemas of the communities and practices that make up the discourses of wine. The result is a book that contributes to a range of fields, not only to semantics and discourse, but also to terminology studies, cross-linguistic comparison, intercultural pragmatics, and language for specific purposes. The point of departure of the book is the genre that most people interested in wine are familiar with, namely the tasting note or wine review, which we see as the wine genre par excellence, where we describe the iconic relationship between the tasting event and the arrangement of the reviewing in the text. We then proceed to analyses of labels, advertisements, handbooks, books and films about wine. The raison d’être of these different genres ranges from description, promotion, entertainment, aesthetics, education and a mix of them. All through the book, we take a particular interest in how speakers manage to convey what they want to convey about wine. We analyse, describe and explain the language used to make sense of the sensory perceptions that the wines may evoke, the forms of expression and the meanings they give rise to in the different text types, and in the different discursive and social contexts where they are used. This requires a take on verbal and pictorial expressions as firmly grounded on socio-sensory-cognitive assumptions about language and communication.

xii Representing wine

Our final remark has to do with the three authors of this book, who represent different experiences with wine and, therefore, slightly different approaches to the topic. One of us is a wine connoisseur who is highly acculturated to wine discourse. This has facilitated our understanding and, above all, framing of some of the language phenomena addressed in the book, and has provided critical access to both disciplinary knowledge as well as to some of the data discussed. In turn, while also interested in wine, the other two authors are more linguistics- and semantics-oriented, i.e., their interests are mainly on the richness of winespeak for research on sensory language and cognition. Our joint venture into winespeak and the various genres articulating it in the wine world has proved most useful in that it represents a truly a situated perspective, where we approach the representation of wine from both within and outside its boundaries in an attempt to better understand and explain it. In sum, in order to explore winespeak we have taken into account the idiosyncrasy of the communities and cultures (both wine lovers and experts) built around wine and the discourse contexts whereby these cultures interact and, at the same time, contribute to their existence.

Chapter 1

Winespeak



All I know is what I have words for. (Wittgenstein, 1953)



It’s a myth that “scientific” wine tasting has any validity in the real life of wine drinkers. In fairness to wine scientists and their methodology, it never was intended to. The ability to repeatedly nail the taste or scent of, say, almonds, in a “blind” taste test is critical only to tasters involved in product development or quality testing. But what do such skills have to do with judgment? Nothing, really. It’s like asking a sharpshooter to evaluate battlefield strategy. […] Just why wine tasting is supposed to achieve “scientific” results is itself a curiosity. No other aesthetic achievement has such a demand placed upon it. Can you imagine a ballet performance being “scientifically” assessed? Or a chamber music concert being judged solely on the basis of intonation and note-for-note perfection? (Kramer, 2015, p. 15)

People’s interest in wine has recently grown dramatically both in the Western world and in economically prosperous countries elsewhere. As a result, knowledge about wine is sought through many different sources – books, films, wine magazines – where the wine review is the prime source of information for many consumers around the world. Concomitant with the increase in popularity of wine in society, research concerned with the language of wine has developed into a research field to be reckoned with. Academic journals have devoted an increasing interest to wine language, and there is now a significant number of publications on the topic (e.g., Temmerman & Dubois, 2017; Goode, 2016a; Morgan & Tresidder, 2016; Silverstein, 2003, 2004; Lehrer, 1983/2009). Most of this attention comes from disciplines narrowly linked to the making of wine, e.g., biosemiotics, oenology, marketing and the broader field of sensory studies, or is centred on wine dictionaries and encyclopaedias. This book takes an interest in the social culture around all aspects of wine by paying attention to the different discourses of wine and to how language users, both wine experts and wine consumers in general, are able to express their experiences of wine in texts of different types. Previous research has explored the nature of winespeak and its potential to provide glimpses into the way we sense the world and communicate those sensory experiences to others. Metaphor scholars have pointed out that winespeak relies

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Representing wine

heavily on figurative language of various sorts, e.g., metaphor, metonymy and synaesthetic expressions However, few studies integrate insights from cognitive theory with discourse analytical procedures in order to explore the role of discursive practices or genres in wine communication. This is important because language use varies a great deal in accordance with the communicative contexts where it is used, that is, is sensitive and adaptive to the participants in the contexts where it is used, to their communicative needs and goals, the topic being discussed and the communicative medium used for that purpose. Indeed, if, for instance, figurative language is critical for the recontextualization of private, sensory experiences in verbal interaction with a wide and often international audience, the factors affecting this relocation of experiences should also be taken into account in order to explain how and why this process takes place. Broadly speaking, recontextualization is the reconstruction of knowledge within and across discourse contexts, a process whereby ideas, concepts and situations that are recontextualized undergo changes of both meaning and pragmatic value. Adjusted to new contexts, “recontextualizations have not only a retrospective side, being selective transformations of prior discourse, but also a prospective aspect, addressing particular audiences and thereby partly anticipating their (re)interpretations (and recontextualizations)” (Linell, 1998, p. 153). However, recontextualization may also go beyond the rhetorical manipulation of information across genres. Indeed, a more intriguing view of recontextualization concerns the transfer of knowledge from people’s experiences in and with the world into language and across various modes of expression. Wine assessment, and indeed, winespeak in general, is an example of this cross-modal dimension of recontextualization since it starts from actual, physical and, above all, private experiences that need to be translated into language in order to be publicly shared with other wine consumers. Because this involves various sensory as well as communicative modes, it provides an interesting perspective on the notion of recontextualization, namely, one that goes beyond texts – oral or written – in order to cover the ways in which knowledge arising from all sorts of human experiences is construed, (re)codified, disseminated and, eventually, legitimized. Figure 1 shows a schematic view of this recontextualization process. This book revolves around two pillars, as indicated by the macro and micro levels in Figure 1. The first of these comprises the genres and cultures of wine since the former cannot be understood without the latter as advocated by linguists of various different persuasions (Maingueneau, 1998; Hodge, 1990; Du Bois, 2003; Fairclough, 2003; Caballero & Paradis, 2013), psychologists (Tomasello, 1999, 2003, 2008) or anthropologists such as Silverstein (2003), who defines cultures as genred norms of practice. The fundamental second pillar is the language that characterizes those cultures or worlds of wine, which are mediated through language and genre



Chapter 1. Winespeak

wine → sensory + emotional experience private record translation of sensory information + emotions into language recontextualization

• macro level: genre • micro Ievel: utterances, constructions

public record

Figure 1.  Recontextualization of sensory experiences through language and genre

into different discourses: people meet to share a bottle of wine, experience wine through their senses and then they struggle to communicate about it. The obstacles go well beyond the alleged lexical shortcomings of language, and include cultural, referential and, indeed, naming issues. In order to describe the ways wine is discussed in several representative genres and by the diverse discourse communities dealing with wine, this book combines insights and procedures from Cognitive Semantics (Lakoff, 1987; Talmy, 2000; Croft & Cruse, 2004; Paradis, 2005, 2015a; Gärdenfors, 2014) and Genre Analysis (Swales, 1990; Freedman & Medway, 1994; Paltridge, 1995; Trosborg, 2000; among others). We approach winespeak by focusing on how it is used in real communicative situations involving concrete participants, clear rhetorical goals and recognisable texts. Moreover, our analyses are based on data from text corpora in English and Spanish and, accordingly, follow some of the procedures and insights from corpus linguistics. Yet, these analyses are applied to whole texts rather than the usual short language chunks examined within that area of research. The book brings together a (top-down) genre approach to texts and a (bottom-up) cognitive approach to winespeak and sensory language in order to benefit from insights of both. In this regard, the book attempts to make a contribution to linguistics in general and to Cognitive Linguistics in particular, terminology studies, discourse and genre analysis, cross-linguistic comparison, intercultural pragmatics, and language for specific purposes.

3

4

Representing wine

1.1

The challenges of talking about wine

What is the difference between an elegant wine and a sexy wine? What does an open-knit wine taste like? Why is acidity often described as screeching, strident or shrill? Many people complain that they do not understand the way sommeliers, critics and connoisseurs talk about wine, and mock their pompous, obscure language, while others want to learn more about the topic and turn to the growing literature on wine in search of explanations of what elegant, open-knit and full-bodied mean, so that they can use these terms themselves when describing their drinking experiences. If this is the case, a word of caution is needed because this book is not your average book on wine. Our discussion covers such terms since they unashamedly point to the need to go beyond literal language in order to talk about wine (even if they are not the only indicators of the imaginative and resourceful nature of human thinking and language use). The book starts from the assumption that winespeak is but a genre specific version of the language we use to describe sensory experiences in our everyday life – from toothpaste and perfume to food and all sort of other beverages such as whiskey, smoothies, coffee or tea. For instance, it is easy to understand what squeaky clean means when used to describe spotless windows, dishes or hair. Yet, we do not think of squeaky as combining information from both hearing and touch as referring to the sound made when you run your fingers along wet and clean glass, china or strands of hair. If we understand the modifiers of hair, cream, yoghurt and toothpaste in squeaky-clean hair, comfortable moisturizing cream, silky yoghurt or tingling fresh toothpaste, it is safe to assume that making sense of those same qualifiers when applied to wine is both straightforward and natural. A different thing is trying to explain what motivates their use. What mechanisms and what experiential and cognitive motivations are at work when we use words such as soft, silky, well-knit or sexy to talk about wine? Indeed, winespeak is often characterized as subjective, obscure, tongue-incheek and completely different from how we talk about things in our everyday lives. This is a view that partly rests on the ritualistic quality of some wine genres and partly rests on the difficulties of identifying sensory experiences and putting words on the experiences. However, the latter view is not completely accurate. Describing a wine as velvety, loud or bright is not necessarily more challenging than pinpointing its aromas as mineral, balsamic or Asian spices – whatever people think they smell like. Consider the following descriptions of white wines, and think of the difficulties involved in identifying these aromas and flavours:



Chapter 1. Winespeak



(1) [Wine] explodes with a bouquet of flower flavors that hit you with lilac, citrus blossom, talcum powder and more. The flavors gather strength and concentration as they move through a myriad of pretty fruits, finally resolving in a long, slightly honeyed finish.



(2) The nose is sharp and angular, with cat pee, green melon and citrus, while the palate is crisp and intense, with peach skin, tangerine, lime and mineral notes.



(3) [Wine] expands on the palate, displaying copious quantities of spice-immersed minerals, dense layers of pears, and hints of ginger. This formidable, powerful effort possesses an awesomely long, pure, and suave finish.

These descriptions range over very specific as well as very vague aroma terms, from the rather imprecise flowers (which flowers?) to the potentially intimidating cat pee and the twisted spice-immersed minerals. Whereas beginners are often instructed to use broad descriptors when they are not sure about aromas, many yield to the pressure to insert dauntingly exotic substances they find impressive and desirable in other people’s tasting notes. It is unlikely that a newcomer will be satisfied by spice when one can have a panoply of Asian spices or, even better, cardamom, nutmeg and cumin. This means that unless flowers is narrowed down to something more specific, it may be perceived as rather useless in a description of a wine. Note of caution: it is not. Cat pee, on the other, may hit readers as shockingly specific but, in fact, it is a classic descriptor for cooler-climate Sauvignon Blanc whites, even though newcomers often interpret it as if the wine is flawed. Another aroma often found together with cat pee is gooseberry, which many people will find less eccentric, but perhaps also equally unfamiliar. Finally, spice-immersed minerals comes across as a very bizarre descriptor. Yet, in spite of all these characteristics, winespeak may be explained as basically concerned with expressing what a wine is, what it has and what it feels like. These three dimensions are described by using both everyday and technical language as well as imagery of different kinds. Before taking this point further, consider the expressions underlined in the following tasting note: (4) The son of Montebello, this is made from the same vineyard sources on Montebello Ridge, but is a selection of the more forward cuvees. A deep red/ purple colour, the nose shows lovely, dense fruit with a delicious spicy edge from the oak. There are also some dense, ripe menthol and eucalyptus notes. The palate is firm and well structured, quite tannic, with good acidity. A concentrated red with a good aging potential. Very good/excellent.

5

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Representing wine

This wine is introduced as the winery’s offspring or, in this case, as another wine’s offspring (Montebello is the top wine in the portfolio of Ridge Vineyards, even if it is also referred to as “a red” at the end of the text, i.e., the critic uses a metonymical shortcut based on the wine’s colour). Using kinship terms is a very common way of representing the relations between wines and wine makers. The ensuing description focuses, on the one hand, on wine as a product, i.e. its condition and design, and, on the other, on how the taster experiences it, i.e., what it smells, tastes and feels like. These two aspects involve language use of different kinds. For instance, the description of wine as a product may be done by describing its chemical/analytical components through numerical expressions that convey its exact contents (grams, percentages etc.), or through generic terms such as sweetness, fruit or oak. Here we also find metonymies that present wines as having a nose and a palate even though these correspond to the wine’s aromas and flavours as experienced by the taster’s nose and palate and, therefore, are related to the tasting stages, and metaphors describing the wine’s structure (well-structured, firm) and – present and future – evolutionary stage (good aging potential). As to the experience of wine, descriptions cover the saliency, diversity and complexity of the components or traits of wine and their intensity and persistence in the taster’s nose and mouth. This aspect usually involves metaphorical and synesthetic language, e.g., terms such as deep, dense, notes, edge, all of which typically belong to domains other than wine. Figure 2 provides a schematic view of the three dimensions briefly introduced here and the strategies involved in their description. WINEMAKING (PROCESS)

WINE (PRODUCT)

TASTING

PERCEPTION TYPE WINEMAKER PARADIGM

PRESENCE SALIENCY QUANTITY RANGE

TERROIR EVOLUTION VARIETY STRUCTURE

Wine is • Referring to wine • Framing wine against region/vintage/wine set

Wine has • Reporting the presence, quantity and range of its elements or components

Figure 2.  Wine dimensions and communicative strategies

Wine feels • Assessing what wine looks, smells, tastes and feels like



Chapter 1. Winespeak

In short, the way critics talk about wine involves (a) referring to wine and framing it against a given region, vintage or wine portfolio – what we have called winemaking in Figure 2, (b) pointing to the more or less salient presence and/or absence, quantity and range of its different elements or components – i.e., wine as a product – and (c) describing what it feels like when we look at it and put it in our mouths – the tasting dimension in Figure 2. However, although the dimensions may seem very simple or basic, their discussion is a highly complex task that relies, in the first place, on our range of sensory experiences and our capacity to isolate and memorize them and, in the second, on our ability to translate those experiences into intelligible language. Of course, intelligible here must be understood within the context of wine culture. Part of becoming a member of the wine community – indeed, of any community – rests upon learning the language used by its members, which, in turn, helps build and reinforce the sense of membership. Part of this acculturation process concerns familiarizing oneself with the discourse practices articulating wine culture and community and the language strategies used in them – at least, the most critical among these. Contributing to this endeavour is one of the goals of the present book. 1.2

Aims and overview of this book

In this book, we explore the language of wine in some of the genres and cultures that make up the wine world. We pay particular attention to the way the sensual experiences afforded by wine are communicated in such a critical genre as the tasting note as well as in several promotion practices – from the way wine is named and packaged to adverts promoting its consumption. Part of our discussion draws upon earlier work (Suárez-Toste, 2007; Caballero & Suárez-Toste, 2008; Paradis, 2009a, b, 2010, 2015b; Caballero & Paradis, 2013; Paradis & Eeg-Olofsson, 2013; Suárez-Toste, 2013; Caballero & Paradis, 2015; Suárez-Toste, 2017) where we describe how metaphor and metonymy meet the needs of wine critics in communicating what wine smells, tastes and feels like and point to the blurred boundaries among metaphor and synesthesia in wine description. However, the scope and approach in this book are far more comprehensive and ambitious and, thus, after more than a decade of research, we are now ready to synthesize our findings in one volume and discuss the following issues from different perspectives:

7

8

Representing wine

1. What is communicated about wine from the vineyard to the emptied bottle? How and where is it communicated, by whom and for whom? 2. How do language users go about describing the sensory experiences afforded by a wine through language and through other means such as pictures and films? 3. How can the language of wine be modelled from a semantic point of view and from a discourse analytical point of view? 4. Are the descriptions and explanations endemic to the different genres of wine or are they generalizable? In order to address these questions, we combine lexical semantic and genre procedures. We start from the basic assumption that language – metaphorical or otherwise – does not have meaning per se but responds to the various contextual demands that shape communicative interaction and, therefore, must be approached with this in mind and in such a way. This involves narrowing – situating – our analysis to a particular genre or context of use and interpreting the strategies used to discuss wine in those contexts in the light of factors such as rhetorical goals, participants etc. In short, it is our belief that knowledge about wine itself and people’s experiences of this beverage form an important backdrop for our understanding of how language is used in the domain of wine. And, most importantly, this is what motivated us to write this book. The book is organized as follows. In Chapter 2, we introduce the theoretical and analytical frameworks behind our discussion of sensory language in wine discourse, and describe the various corpora used in our research. This is followed by a description of the task of wine critics in the most critical practice in the wine realm, namely the tasting event (Chapter 3) and introduce the language and schemas they use to communicate their impressions within the wine community. In Chapters 4 to 7, we will become acuanted with how people inside this community use language of various sorts (metaphorical, metonymic, synaesthetic, etc.) in order to describe and assess their wine experiences in the genre par excellence in the wine realm, namely the tasting note. Finally, in Chapters 8 to 10 we move from written genres to more multimodal practices, and describe the ways in which wine is presented to its potential consumers. Here we discuss various strategies whereby wines are differentiated in a growing market by means of naming and packaging and, finally, advertising, and expand our discussion of such promotional genres by also addressing the role of film documentaries. The book ends with a chapter where we return to our questions and try to stitch together the findings resported in the different chapters and we also briefly sketch some of the issues still pending in both sensory and wine research.

Chapter 2

Exploring sensory meanings



Flavor is a multi-modal sensation. It is multisensory, involving all the sensory systems of the head and upper body. This is nicely demonstrated in a quote attributed to the famous chef Paul Bocuse: “The ideal wine … satisfies perfectly all five senses: vision by its colour; smell by its bouquet; touch by its freshness; taste by its flavor; and hearing by its ‘glou-glou’”. (Shepherd, 2015)



Green really does have a smell – think of dawn in the backyard on a summer day, just as the sun starts to bring out the fresh, herbaceous aromas of a dewy lawn. (Gasnier, 2006, p. 77)

While there are many claims and opinions about sensory language in the literature, there are very few theoretically informed, systematic studies of how people actually talk about sensations in real situations, in real texts and across cultures and languages. It is the aim of this chapter (a) to offer a semantic framework and a discourse framework within which sensory language can be studied in a principled way, both with a focus on wordings and discourses, and (b) to give a description of the databases we have used to carry out our investigations and the rationale for their compilation. Indeed, although sensory language is not necessarily more difficult to study than language referring to other domains, it has often been described as particularly problematic. Typically, the difficulties have been related to the inability of language users to talk about sensory experiences, and the reasons for this are that some sensations such as smell, taste and touch are highly subjective. Another claim is that it is very difficult to identify a sensation in one modality, while ignoring the input from other modalities and, therefore, putting that experience into words is difficult as well. Interestingly, the same is true of visual experiences, i.e., of descriptions of shapes that are not round, square or triangular, or of colours that are not one of the clear-cut focal colours such as blue or yellow. However, for some reason or another, these experiences have not been discussed as problems. Whether this has to do with the fact that there are different requirements for visual descriptions or that there is no research where all modalities are taken into account are still open questions. Another factor that contributes to the fact that people find it hard to discriminate and express sensations is that sensations are normally holistically evaluated

10

Representing wine

and, therefore, in order to focus on one sensory modality at a time, we need to block off the stimuli from other sensations. Naturally, there are people who are better at this than others, but it normally requires training, and most people have neither been trained to discriminate sensations nor to describe them. In this book, we focus on texts written by people who have been trained to talk or write about wine and the sensory experiences of it to (a) people who may have been trained to talk about those experiences, (b) people who have a lot of experience in sensory discrimination and (c) people who want to read texts about wine for entertainment or in search of buying tips. In Section 2.2, we describe our theoretical approach that links the sensory, cognitive and social systems to the language system. We present an analytical framework through which we are able to account for (a) how wine critics communicate their sensory experiences to make them understandable, (b) what kind of words and expressions they use to refer to sensory experiences and (c) how it all works out in the text. Since our main focus is on descriptions of sensory experiences of wine in tasting notes, we give examples from this genre (the texts are henceforth referred to as TNs). However, it is important to emphasize that such descriptions are by no means restricted to wine discourse, but apply to the mediation of sensory experiences through language in general. In this regard, the theoretical framework in which we couch our descriptions and explanations is not a specialized framework designed to deal with wine language. On the contrary, it is a general semantic framework for all kinds of meanings in all kinds of contexts. In Section 2.3, we discuss the top-down perspective where communication about wine is viewed in the light of the text types and discourse conventions that frame the content mediated through language. This is because winespeak brings to light a shared and culturally specific use of language that is largely acquired and entrenched through socialization and repeated use, i.e., is learned and effectively put to work through discourse interaction. Finally, in Section 2.4 we describe the corpus data compiled for our investigations of sensory language in wine discourse. 2.1

Sensuous cognition

Our approach to meaning in language is couched in the broad framework of Cognitive Linguistics (CL). A basic tenet of this framework is that thinking and language use are embodied and firmly grounded in the way we perceive the world around us, or as Rohrer (2007, p. 27) puts it, “human physical, cognitive, and social embodiment ground our conceptual and linguistic systems”. This means that all acts of communication are influenced by the systems on which language is contingent, namely the perceptual system, the cognitive system and the socio-cultural system



Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings

(Paradis, 2015a). These systems enable us to experience the world, organize and categorize our experiences and form concepts in accordance to these experiences. Descriptions and assessments of wine are beautiful examples of this threesomeness, and it is particularly evident in the genre of the tasting note. TNs offer a decomposition of the sensory experiences afforded by wine by writers who use language and text conventions to share their experiences with an audience, and they do so in a way that they think their readers will find trustworthy and, most importantly, useful for their own interests and experiences Although language is seen as an integral part of our cognitive system (which, in turn, is grounded in our bodily predisposition and perceptual experiences of the world around us), perception and perceptual meanings have largely been neglected in linguistics. Instead, cognition has been granted the lion’s share in research trying to explain how we construe and communicate our experiences and ideas. There are however, exceptions of treatments of sensory language in linguistics (e.g., reviewed in Caballero & Paradis, 2015; Levinson & Majid, 2014; Majid & Levinson, 2011; Majid et al., 2018; Viberg, 1983, Strik Lievers & Winter, 2018; Winter et al., 2018) and anthropology and philosophy (Classen, 1993; Howes, 2003, 2011, 2013; Keller, 2016), but it is in fact in psychology and neurobiology that we find a great deal of research stressing the intimate relationship between bodily phenomena, the brain and language (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, 2010; Bergen & Wheeler, 2010; Beveridge & Pickering, 2013; Ellis & Newton, 2005; Gibbs, 2005; Louwerse & Connell, 2011; Lynott & Connell, 2009, 2013; Varela et al., 1991; Zwaan, 2009; in particular, Spence and colleagues have been very productive in this field: Spence et al., 2014, including work on wine, as in Spence & Wang, 2015a, b, c). What neural research shows is that the brain simulates real actions both when we talk about them and when we read about them. For instance, when language users encounter a verb such as lick, the motor area in the brain is activated in the same way as when they actually perform the action of licking (Hauk et al., 2004; Pulvermüller, 2003) and, similarly, brain responses have been observed in the areas of taste and smell for words such as cinnamon, garlic and jasmine (González et al., 2006; Barrós-Loscertales et al., 2012). Other neurobiological findings of importance to wine descriptions concern metaphor and synaesthetic expressions. For instance, expressions such as the man is oily and her voice is scratchy, oily and scratchy describe the personality of the man and the sound of the woman’s voice respectively through backgrounded reference to touch and texture. In either case, however, texture-selective parts of cortex are activated (Lacey et al., 2012). Such couplings of words and meanings call for a descriptive and explanatory framework that can accommodate these lexical semantic units and relate them to the language system at large and to the socio-cultural contexts where they are used (see Section 2.3).

11

12

Representing wine

While vision is our most consistent source of ‘objective’ data about the world, smell is an elusive phenomenon from a cognitive point of view. Keller (2016: 117) points out that olfaction is considered the most animalistic and primitive of our senses. Smells induce desires, emotions, and physiological responses that make us respond to them in automatic ways. Keller also notes that the link between olfactory processing and cognitive processing is considered weaker than for sight and hearing. What the olfactory system does instead is to provide input to the emotional systems, but not to the language system (Keller, 2016, Ch 5). From the point of view of the constitution of our brains, both taste and smell share connections with areas for emotional processes (Rolls, 2008; Yeshurun & Sobel, 2010). In a study of words referring to taste and smell, Winter (2016b) shows that they are also similar with respect to emotional loaded words. Words about taste and smell are on average more emotionally loaded than words that are used to talk about other sensory experiences. In the psychological and neurobiological literature, we also find proposals suggestive of Aristotle’s ideas about the existence of a common sense. The common sense is a general, relational structure or co-ordinating ability that unites disjoint sensory experiences into a multimodal whole in perception and which, unlike individual senses, is not related to specialized bodily organs such as taste bulbs or smell receptors in a one-to-one relationship. Contemporary brain research has pointed to the existence of large areas of cortex situated between the cortical areas of the different senses that function as higher-level representational convergence zones (Binder, 2016; Binder & Desai, 2011). These convergence zones are particularly important in wine assessment and in the descriptions of wines beyond the individual sensory perceptions. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, wine critics do not only account for the individual senses, but also provide their readers with holistic assessments of wine that rely heavily on descriptors characterized by conceptual synaesthesia and lexical syncretism. This idea of more holistic experiences is also relevant for neuro-oenology views of wine tasting as a complex conglomeration of events (Shepherd, 2015), i.e., as comprising successive stages related to the biomechanics of the ingested wine and the release of the volatiles that activate the multiple brain mechanisms. For instance, flavour is a multi-modal sensation that involves all the sensory experiences and all relevant motor systems, including the muscle systems of the tongue, the jaw, the cheeks, the neck, the ears etc. A great deal of what we refer to as flavour is retro-nasal smell, i.e., not the sniffing-in but the breathing-out part, and touch is critical in locating the wine in the mouth, which fools the brain into thinking that flavour primarily comes from the mouth. Shepherd notes that flavour is special among the sensory modalities in that it is always an active sense, including the muscle systems of the tongue, jaw and cheeks. This state of affairs is

Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 13



also reflected in how we describe the taste of wine, namely through a great deal of motion expressions (Chapters 5 and 6). In short, what different areas of research show is that the sensorium does not fall neatly into vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell, and, therefore, bearing in mind its holistic nature is a must when trying to understand how it works irrespective of whether we approach it from a biological, cognitive, cultural or linguistic point of view. With respect to the relation between perception, cognition and language in sensory language, Paradis & Eeg-Olofsson (2013, p. 38) draw attention to the many descriptors used across different sensory perceptions, highlighting the interrelatedness of the senses and, accordingly, explaining the descriptors in terms of lexical syncretism, i.e., as “grounded in how the conceptualization of our sensorium works. We cannot taste something without smelling something, and we cannot taste something without feeling something and over and above everything is the sight of something.” All this prompts a way of modelling meaning where the dynamics of meaning-making are taken seriously and where word meanings are not cast in a straight-jacket of one-to-one relationships but in a mould where word meanings are kneaded and shifted in accordance with speaker goals and contextual demands. 2.2

Sensuous language

The framework for the modelling of meaning-making in discourse, here with examples in relation to wine, is Lexical Meaning as Ontologies and Construals, LOC for short (Paradis, 2005). The basic assumption is that meaning in language is founded on sensory perceptions, and that concepts draw upon our sensory experiences on the one hand and our encounters with other people in the social world on the other (Paradis, 2015a). Simply put, the ways we sense and understand the world are communicated through the words of the languages we use. Knowledge of language involves the ability to make the coupling of a conceptual structure with a lexical form, e.g., wine/wine, in different social contexts and genres.1 Paradis (2015b) demonstrates that meanings, and in particular concrete nominal meanings, are construed with the focus of attention either on their constitution or their function, which are two main ways of profiling nominal meanings of entities.

1. In this book, we follow the convention of referring to lexical form using italics, single quotes for meanings of lexical forms and small caps when the focus is specifically on concepts, lexical or others.

14

Representing wine

wine a. constitution: ‘concrete object’, ‘liquid’, ‘alcoholic’, ‘red’, ‘sweet’ etc. b. function: ‘grape’, ‘produced by wineries’, ‘consumed for pleasure’ etc. In the case of wine, the aspects related to constitution involve reference to a concrete object in the world, i.e. what it is. In the case of wine, language users construe its meaning as an entity, i.e., wine is object, wine is liquid, wine is food. The meaning potential of wine includes conceptual structures in all basic domains, for instance, wine has colour, smell, taste, texture, space and time among other conceptual structures. function, on the other hand, involves aspects related to the production and consumption of wine, i.e., knowledge structures relating to how it came into being and how it is used, consumed and enjoyed. In these respects, function may profile either a telic or an agentive perspective. The telic perspective involves the parts of the meaning structure of wine related to its use. For instance, wine is a consumable, and wine is an aesthetic product, e.g., a wine to be enjoyed well chilled, in which case the use of wine as a beverage is made salient. The agentive profiling evokes meaning aspects relating to how it came about, e.g., a garagiste wine, the most promising wine Abreu has yet produced. Semantically speaking, the activation of either its constitution or function is essentially a part-whole construal, which does not involve different senses, but different zones within a sense. Either of these two general ways of “viewing” profiles conceptual structures relevant for each of them, while other structures of the entire meaning potential form part of the backgrounded structures of the domain matrix when talked about in discourse. For instance, when wine reviewers describe their experiences and assessment of wines in a TN, they use expressions that profile all the different domains, and the way this is normally done is through descriptions that are iconic with the tasting event itself. In Table 1, we see examples of regions associated with the various basic domains at the beginning of the table and other constitutional and function domains at the end. The top domains in the first column in Table 1 relate to the constitution of wine, while the ones from the bottom of the column relate to the function of wine. The cut-off point, where both constitution and function are present, is around maturity, which is the domain that results from a wine’s constitution and, at the same time, relates to the function of maturity for a certain purpose, namely the wine’s consumption time. As seen so far, the meaning potential of wine in a language user’s mind involves conceptual structures from all kinds of different domains of knowledge. In addition to vision, smell, taste and touch, its domain matrix also includes conceptual structures relating to knowledge such as vintage, barrel, oak, vineyard, terroir, grape, cellaring, agriculture, wine shop, glass, wine district, oenology,

Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 15



Table 1.  Examples of domains and regions of domains of wine Domain

Region

colour smell taste texture quality maturity origins commercial value drinking-vessel consumption

deep ruby/purple sweet, roasted herbs, black cherries full-bodied, sweet tannin, good acidity, fruit-like spiciness, long round outstanding, elegant, powerful mature location, grape variety/varieties, growers, oenologists expensive, wine shop, vineyard large, tall glass on stem with a globe-shaped cup for optimal bouquet dinner, meat, cheese

alcohol, viticulture, price, consumer, producer, nutrition and so on and so forth. For instance, when a speaker is talking about red wine, its meaning is profiled as a concrete object (constitution) where colour is made prominent However, even if other domains are backgrounded, they are still always present but less salient. Put differently, to model the meaning of an expression such as red wine, the concept representation also has to include information about the possible regions associated with a red wine, i.e., the colours may be ruby, purple, blue-red or almost black, and include information about the relative salience of the domains, the salience of which in turn depends on the context in which the conceptual structure is evoked. Salience is a function of whether the expression is used to just mention red wine in passing in contrast to white wine, whether red wine is used in promotional contexts or as a drink at lunch time, or whether it is used in a serious tasting session in which case the colour of the wine comes with expectations concerning its potential aromatic profile, or speculations about the grapes involved in its production, e.g., knowledge about the wine districts that usually produce this type of wine. In a wine tasting session, the constitutional domains may be more salient than the functional ones, and the procedure is to focus on one modality at a time, which means that they all receive the critic’s main attention, but at different times. Instead, if you are a wine drinker the constitutional domains of the concept of wine might more salient than the functional ones, while the opposite may be true if you are a wine dealer or a grower, in which case money and soil may receive the main focus of attention, i.e., the part of the whole that is profiled against the base. Now, these ways of approaching and viewing wine are normally structured into three main parts in TNs, i.e., production, sensory descriptions and prime drinking time recommendation. The relative weights and salience of meaning structures (such as the ones in Table 1) differ in the different parts of the reviews, as described

16

Representing wine

in Chapter 3. While producers, vineyards and grapes are the focus of attention in the part concerned with the production of wine, colour, smell, taste and touch are important in the description of wine as a beverage, and cellaring and maturation figure prominently in the final part that is the recommendation. The descriptions of the sensory perceptions differ from descriptions of objects such as soil, climate, grapevine, wine glasses, and the wine as a commodity or an object simply because they are not objects but sensations. Vision in this chapter is treated as a mapping onto the colour domain, but the links between the colour domain and the domains of smell, taste and touch respectively are anything but straightforward. Moving on from the description of concepts, we now proceed to how this knowledge may be structured and construed in discourse through the lens of words in language. Our tool is the LOC framework, shown in Table 2, which includes a system of pre-meaning structures based on the meaning potential of a lexical item, and a number of Construal types which generate the profiling of the conceptual structures for the discursive meaning in communication.2 We may describe pre-meanings as successive chains of conceptual material formed along the way to fully profiled meanings in actual discourse. All lexical elements are associated with such a body of conceptual material and, in this sense, pre-meanings are the raw material of the crystallization process that precede to profiled meanings in speech or writing. See Table 2. Table 2.  Ontologies and cognitive processes in meaning construction, adapted from Paradis (2005) relating it to the topic of sensory descriptions Ontologies (conceptual structures) Contentful structures

Configurational structures

Pre-meanings relating to concrete spatial matters, to temporal events, processes and states, e.g., colour, smell, taste, touch, wine, grape

Pre-meanings of an image-schematic type which combine with the contentful structures, e.g., scale, contrast, boundary, part-whole

  Cognitive processes Construals   Operations acting on the pre-meanings at the time of use: – Gestalt formation (profiling) – Salience (metonymization) – Comparison (metaphorization)

In descriptions of sensory experiences of wines, the Contentful structures related to vision, smell, taste and touch are evoked and activated by the words used to express those experiences, as exemplified in the first column in Table 2. Configurations are conceptual structures of a different type, e.g., scale, contrast, boundedness or 2. For a full description of the framework see Paradis (2005), and for references to various applications of the framework see Paradis (2015a).



Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 17

part-whole. Their role is to shape the contentful structures through with one or more of these templates. In other words, they are few in comparison to the Contentful structures and can be described as “secondary” because they do not have a status in the absence of the Contentful domains, much like grammatical elements such as definiteness, grading, tense, aspect etc. Furthermore, the Contentful structures and the Configurations are the pre-meanings on which Contruals operate at the time of use in discourse. For instance, a meaning is profiled as a the whole for the part Configuration when we refer to a certain smell as say gooseberry or a meaning may be expressed as a range of a scale as in somewhat sweet, in which case the base is the scale along the dimension for dry-sweet. The profiling of a specific part of the whole meaning potential of, say, wine is brought about through a Construal of Gestalt formation and salience as in metonymization which is a part-whole or whole-part Configuration, and/or through Construals of Comparison as in the case of similes and metaphorizations. There will be more on these Construals in the subsequent chapters. In contrast to Configurational templates, the Construal mechanisms are dynamic and responsible for the profiling of the linguistic expressions at the time of use in discourse. Construals operate on both types of pre-meanings, completing the conceptualization process and forming the discursive meaning when the final meaning Gestalt is formed. For instance, the sight of wine might be completely cloudy or very cloudy, in which case the Contentful meaning structure of cloudy is activated in both cases but with two different Configurations applied to it. This operation of construing the Contenful meaning with one or the other Configuration is an operation performed by the Construal mechanism and motivated by speaker choice, the communicative situation and the discursive demands on the occasion of use. The communicative success naturally also hinges on the overlap of the interlocutors’ knowledge and experience with wine. When we express ourselves in speech or writing, all words used zoom in on and evoke the relevant parts of their pre-meaning potentials, combining Contentful and Configurational structures through Construal operations as indicated in Table 2. While being firmly based in the Cognitive Linguistics framework, it is important to point out that LOC differs from the most treatments within Cognitive Linguistics in two important respects. One is the explicit distinction between conceptual Configurations and Construals, which is not recognized in most Cognitive Linguistics treatments. This is necessary in order to be able to make a distinction between a word’s pre-meaning structures in conceptual space and the dynamics of discursive meanings in language use. The other is the view that words do not have meanings but are associated with a use potential that has been developed through people’s encounters with language.

18

Representing wine

2.3

Communicating sensory experiences: Social cognition and genre

Our claim that the meanings of words and utterances is context-dependent brings in the socio-discursive dimension of the approach adopted here to describe the way wine is discussed by the different people making up wine discourse, including both people whose profession revolves around wine and people who like wine and participate in the various discourse practices through which the community is articulated. Indeed, our definition of discourse draws from linguistics, where it is broadly defined as the use of language in social contexts, and social theory, where discourse refers to the ways in which knowledge and social practice are structured and manifest themselves through the different symbolic forms (e.g., language) available (Foucault, 1969). Following both approaches, wine discourse would be the way(s) a group of people with an interest in wine, i.e., a discourse community, represents the areas of knowledge they are interested in, i.e., the wine topic, and shares them in various spoken and written interactions. Those interactions are the typified communicative routines and texts known as discourse genres, i.e., usage events defined by formal (textual) features, functions or communicative purposes, and the relationship between those interacting in and through them. In addition to epistemology and theoretical reasoning, the notion of genre also meets a methodological need in that it provides a sensible, operative framework for exploring the form and function of wine language. As discussed elsewhere (Caballero, 2003, 2006, 2017; Caballero & Suárez-Toste, 2010), a given genre within the range of discourse practices of a community provides researchers with a manageable and situated research context. Indeed, knowing how the genre works may provide researchers with default assumptions on the topics, relationships between authors and audiences, rhetorical goals and prototypical textual organization from which their research may operate. This knowledge should be helpful for building a reasonable set of research hypotheses on the reasons for the use and textual instantiation of the language constructions under investigation, and frame the results and ensuing discussion within such a culturally situated scenario. The main genre in this book is the tasting note, a choice justified by its quantitative and qualitative importance in the world of wine. Concerning the genre’s qualitative import, wine criticism in the form of TNs has an undeniable functional and acculturating importance in that wine aficionados learn how to describe and assess wines by regularly reading TNs written by wine experts as they work their way through the wine market (Silverstein, 2003, 2004, 2006; Lehrer, 1983, 2009; Hommerberg, 2011). Wine critics have shaped, and indeed, educated, the taste of the growing number of wine drinkers from the 1990s, and their TNs have gone beyond being mere private records of a sensory experience to become extremely useful consumption guides in today’s ever-expanding wine market. However, the

Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 19



tasting note is not an independent, clear-cut genre, but bears a symbiotic relationship with the various events and interactions that weave together many of the socio-discursive practices articulating wine discourse. Indeed, rather than being self-contained practices, genres cannot be discussed without taking into account what discourse and genre analysts variously call the genre systems (Bazerman, 1994), sets (Hyland, 2007; Paltridge, 2007), or colonies (Bhatia, 2000) to which they belong, that is, the set of genres that is closely related in the discourse practices of a given community. The system of genres that revolves around wine tasting comprises wine tasting events and situations ranges from the private to the promotional. Figure 3 displays some of the most popular genres in wine discourse.

WINEMAKING Oenologist file Winery TN Bottle labels Marketing texts

WINE DISCUSSIONS Magazine TN Online forums

TASTING EVENT Oral assessment Written private notes Interaction among tasters

Figure 3.  Most popular genres in wine discourse

First and foremost we have the TN in all its versions, which covers tasting events as private as an oenologist’s own records, tracking the evolution of a wine still in the making, or as public as professional critics’ TNs written for faithful subscribers. Wine writers have authored handbooks on the methodology of wine tasting as well as monographs on specific wine-producing regions, grapes, styles, etc. Documentaries have traditionally covered wine regions. Promotional efforts are often unidirectional, authored by the winemaking company and aimed at consumers. Advertisements in the press are far more numerous than TV commercials. Flyers with datasheets and “official” TNs are usually offered at events, at cellar-door sales, inserted in wine magazines and other publications. Other promotional efforts are

20 Representing wine

interactive, as in the case of tasting events (trade tastings, portfolio tastings, open room events, cellar visits), where potential importers, distributors, and/or consumers can get to speak with some winery representative as they sample the wines. On the Internet, we can find a TN in tweets with long threads of responses sparked by the original message. Online forums, consisting of dedicated members, use threads for the exchange of impressions on individual wines, and sometimes even organize virtual tasting events where people from all over the world can contribute their impressions as they taste a wine simultaneously. In sum, the organic view of genres is particularly evident in electronic media, where genres may often be linked to the extent that their boundaries are often blurred. This suggests that what happens in one genre needs to be set against those other genres related to it. 2.4

The data used in this book

For our discussion in this book, we have used various corpora that include textual, visual and audiovisual data in English and Spanish. Table 3 shows these corpora, their size and the sources used for their compilation. The General Corpus consists of 6,000 TNs written in English (365,919 words) and 6,000 TNs written in Spanish (208,776 words). The TNs in the General Corpus were retrieved from some of the most authoritative wine publications in each language. We decided to split our sources evenly between the U.S. (Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, The Wine Advocate) and the United Kingdom (Decanter, Wine-Pages, and Wine Anorak). Indeed, whereas availability was a concern (one thousand TNs were chosen from each source), reliability and representativeness were far more important: our text sources rank among the best reputed benchmark publications and online webpages in the world of wine. Some of these were available by subscription only, as in the case of The Wine Advocate, whereas others were free as with The Wine Enthusiast. TNs from this corpus are used all through the book without reference to them as retrieved from the General Corpus. In other words, this is our main source of data and contains TNs from both English and Spanish and from different sources and critics. As to the Spanish corpus, our choice was determined by the fact that there is no single periodical publication of lasting reputation that can stand up to the likes of Decanter or The Wine Advocate. The Spanish TNs were retrieved from the annual guide Guía Peñín de los Vinos de España, the internet-based El Mundo Vino, and the internet-cum-paper publication MiVino-Vinum. While these sources have a lower impact and coverage than their English and American counterparts, all three meet the criteria of relevance, representativeness and diversity, and are also widely read by Spanish wine aficionados and consumers.

Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 21



Table 3.  Databases and corpora used Text corpora → Genre: Tasting Notes English

Texts / words

Spanish

Texts / words

6,000 / 365,919    

    Guía Peñín de los Vinos de España El Mundo Vino MiVino-Vinum

    6,000 / 208,776

84,864 / 8,332,666

 

 

The General Corpus Wine Spectator Wine Enthusiast The Wine Advocate Decanter Wine-Pages Wine Anorak The Specific Corpus Wine Advocate

Multimodal corpora → Promotional genres: wine names, labels & packaging, adverts, documentaries Description

Source

Wine names

Guía Peñín de los 10,200 names Vinos de España 2014 Internet pages 3,000 bottles

Wine labels and packaging Advertisements in magazines

Documentaries

Items

Language Spanish

French, English, Spanish, Italian, German, Hungarian 12,700 pages from all English, French 104 issues published in 2015 and 2016

Decanter, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine, Revue du Vin de France A Year in Burgundy, 3 A Year in Champagne, Jerez y el Misterio del Palo Cortado

English, English, Spanish

The absence of TNs written by identifiable female critics in the corpus points to some of the problems of building a corpus of wine texts. The lack of sufficiently rich and diversified texts from a gender perspective is an issue that is particularly salient in Spanish publications. Unfortunately, this state of affairs made us deliberately avoid texts from Jancis Robinson’s Purple Pages for the English sub-corpus. In addition to the authorship problem, other relevant issues concern the type and medium of transmission of the text sources and the criteria for choosing the wines under review – questions that apply differently to the English and Spanish sub-corpora. In addition to the General Corpus, we also used a Specific corpus of TNs retrieved from the American wine magazine Wine Advocate authored by world famous wine

22

Representing wine

critic Robert Parker.3 This corpus contains 84,864 texts published between 1989 and 2006. The total number of words used is 8,332,666 and the number of different words is 46,000. (For more information about the corpus as such, and an interactive information visualization (InfoViz) tool designed to retrieve different kinds of information about the wines reviewed, both linguistic information and metadata, see Hommerberg, 2011, pp. 77–88; Kerren, Kyusakova & Paradis, 2014). The original corpus was stored as an Access database, where each record, in addition to the review text as a whole, contains information about the unique ID number, their origin, vintage, colour, degree of sweetness, grape variety, rating, and price, among other things. The searches reported on in this book were performed in an auxiliary corpus, containing only the unique ID number and the wine review texts. Each text was split up into words and sentences and tagged for word class using the Penn Treebank tagset. This corpus was built from the former, the original database, using the WineConverter tool (see, Kerren, Kyusakova & Paradis, 2013, pp. 93–94). In the next few sections, we expound on our criteria for inclusion of TNs and other types of texts and visual material. In the case of the Specific Corpus, this was not a problem since we used all the texts. The database includes all TNs written between 1989 and 2006. 2.4.1 Criteria for the General Corpus: Sources and TNs Our first decision for the design of the General Corpus concerned the type of source for the TNs to be included. For the sake of representativeness, we wanted a balanced corpus with TNs from different geographical sources, written by trustworthy authors and covering various types of wines. One important issue was the pertinence of considering sources other than the conventional print ones. This was an important choice given the proliferation of online wine resources, and one with a direct impact on the quality and trustworthiness of the texts. For instance, Dr. Jamie Goode’s Wine Anorak and Tom Cannavan’s Wine-Pages are personal blogs, which is a welcome circumstance but not a deliberately sought one: simply put, there was nothing in the print market in the UK that could rival Decanter until the launching of The World of Fine Wine (TWoFW) in 2004. However, TWoFW is a quarterly publication at a hefty yearly €120 and not as intensely focused on TNs as any of the other sources, which meant that a corpus of one thousand TNs from that magazine would be extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming to compile. Even more important was whether or not there was an internet version of their 3. We are very grateful to Mr Robert Parker for providing the data in machine-readable form, which facilitated our work immensely (http://www.erobertparker.com/members/home.asp).



Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 23

databases, not so much for our convenience (consider that each TN had to be converted into a .txt file and cleaned manually) as for the sake of our being able to use search engines. In pursuit of relevance and representativeness, one cannot simply obtain any 1,000 TNs from each source. Rather, it was imperative that the texts should be withdrawn as the result of careful searches for wines that would yield valid results. An identical circumstance determined the choice of the Spanish sources, aided again by the availability of search engines that enable the deliberate selection of diverse and representative wines, and prevent duplicates. For the language of our TNs to be sufficiently rich and representative of the real possibilities of the genre, we were careful to have as many styles of writing as possible as well as texts covering as many different wines as possible, i.e., wines coming from different grape varieties, different blends of grapes and different geographical regions, characterized by various ages and stages of development at the time of tasting, displaying several quality levels and price levels, etc. As a result, both the English and the Spanish corpora include wines sourced from every major wine-producing region in the world and in Spain, made of every major grape variety and blends thereof, more good-to-great wines than bad ones (this is also true statistically concerning the wines that are reviewed by critics), old wines and young wines, oaked and unoaked, sweet and dry, etc. This very deliberate plan was also useful in order to prevent personal biases from playing a role in our choice of wines. We further decided to concentrate on table reds and whites, and in the General Corpus of TNs we excluded sparkling and fortified wines for the sake of simplicity; indeed, the language of those styles deserves separate treatment as it can include many terms exclusive to them. The criteria for our wine searches were further complicated by the fact that websites offer TNs that go back to the time when authorship was taken for granted and therefore not attributed in the text – mostly because at the time only one person was responsible for them. Thus, whereas Jamie Goode is the only person responsible for the tastings and reviews in wineanorak.com, the databases of such publications as The Wine Spectator contain data that date back to periods in which TNs were anonymous, and only vaguely attributable to certain tasters by resorting to detective work based on which regions were covered by which tasters and when. Even worse is the case of The Wine Enthusiast and Decanter, where TNs appeared mostly anonymously in the internet versions. This would not be a problem as a rule, but we were intent on limiting ourselves to having native English speakers only, and many of these tasting panels include European specialists who are naturally fluent in English but might conceivably use English wine language only as a result of a secondary learning process. Finally, The Wine Advocate started as Robert Parker’s modest newsletter in 1978 and now has over 55,000 subscribers who pay $ 99 per year to enjoy online access to more than 300,000 TNs. As it progressively

24

Representing wine

grew into a multi-taster operation of some international diversity, it has become increasingly difficult to determine the authorship of the TNs. For example, vertical searches of some very interesting Spanish wines threw results where six TNs would be authored by Robert Parker himself, two by Jay Miller, another two by Neal Martin, and the most recent three by Luis Gutiérrez. Of course, the hiring of such specialists as Luis Gutiérrez to cover Spain, Portugal, Jura, and much of South America is highly appreciated; however, since English is not his first language, we avoided TNs written by him for our research purposes here, although we do use his contributions to El Mundo Vino for our Spanish corpus. A final note concerns the particularities of the Spanish corpus. In Spain, until the 1990s, very little attention had been devoted to the fact that there was a whole world of wine outside its frontiers. If this was true of the wine lists of most merchants and restaurants (save for some exceptions, often geographically close to the Pyrenees), it was even truer of the media coverage of foreign wines. We blame it on politically induced isolationism, rather than genuine chauvinism justifiable by the excellence of Spanish wines. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a Spanish version of Decanter or La Revue du Vin de France. There are, however, quite a few publications devoted to Spanish wines in the form of annual guides and some webpages with comprehensive coverage of the wines available for purchase in Spain. Among these, La Guía Peñín de los Vinos de España is the oldest and most popular, and has an impressive publishing record (over twenty editions). However, named after wine writer and critic José Peñín, this publication is no longer the single-man operation it used to be, and a tasting panel now agrees on ratings and TNs. El Mundo Vino is by some distance the most exciting project available, with a rotating panel of experts who use a single-blind approach. Finally, MiVino-Vinum has an online search engine that covers TNs published on their website as well as in the magazines Vinum, Mi Vino, and the annual Guía del Vino Cotidiano. While Spanish publications mainly cover Spanish wines, we tried to be as inclusive of foreign wines as we could, and also to contemplate as much potential domestic diversity as possible, so in the same fashion as with world wines we have made sure to include cooler Atlantic Albariños as well as softer inland Chardonnays, fresher high-altitude Garnachas and jammy Monastrell reds, and virtually everything in between. While the Guía Peñín tends to review only the vintages that are commercially available, there is sufficient presence of older wines in El Mundo Vino. They periodically taste wines vertically, sometimes including as many as 10–20 vintages going as far back as several decades. El Mundo Vino is also our Spanish source for TNs of foreign wines. Even so, the ratio of Spanish to foreign wines in the Spanish corpus is 9 to 1. The results are rich nonetheless because of Spain’s location, microclimates and grape diversity. Because Spain is a microcosm of world wine, much could be achieved in terms of diversity; because Spanish wines must reflect

Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 25



certain weather limitations, some extreme styles are rare, and so it could be said that proportional presence of the acidity levels of Chablis or some Rieslings is not likely to be found. While it can be safely assumed that, in general, the tasters are aware of such wider global context, it is less clear whether they may feel they are writing for Spanish consumers who need not be acquainted with worldwide diversity. 2.4.2 Treatment of the General Corpus Managing 12,000 texts demands consistent cataloguing, and therefore it was decided that file naming should follow a basic strategy that could easily be replicated for documentation. All texts were labelled by using source initials (WA for The Wine Advocate, WS for Wine Spectator, AK for Wine Anorak, etc.), followed by R or W for R[ed] or W[hite] and a corpus number within each type (1 to 500 of each). Thus, WE R378 refers to red wine number 378 of the tasting notes extracted from The Wine Enthusiast.4 After cleaning the texts to make them compatible with a concordance program, we identified and tagged all the instances of metaphor and synesthesia. Whenever a term was considered figurative in a given context, it was tagged with the source domain in capitals, as in “A symphonytagg music of flavors” or “a bit jarringtagg hearing on the palate”. Of course, tagging metaphorical expressions was not always this simple, but often involved using various tags in agreement to the more or less comprehensive quality of the sources informing the data found in the texts. This is illustrated in the following example where ripe, cheerful, full-bodied and muscular belong to the domain of living beings, hence the tag organism, yet focus on such different aspects as their physiology, anatomy or personality.

(1) Say hello to this marvelously ripetagg organism/physiology, cheerfultagg organism/human/personality Zintagg ref/metonymy. It is a full-bodiedtagg organism/anatomy, musculartagg organism/anatomy wine with a beautiful personalitytagg organism/human/personality.

In order to ensure analytical – intra-rater – reliability, the texts were analysed by two researchers, who tagged the texts independently and, then, compared their respective analyses in order to resolve any possible disagreements. Two researchers meant a double triage process and inevitable discrepancies, which forced us to reach a consensus over many problematic terms, usages, and contexts. Subsequent searches for tags and terms were conducted with MonoConc Pro. 4. Because the data have been sourced from the online versions of these publications (some of them only available by subscription), it is impossible to document each example without revealing the identity of the wine at issue, thus probably incurring in copyright liability.

26 Representing wine

2.4.3 Building the multimodal, promotional corpora The need for corpora that covered genres other than the TN was evident from the start; which genres was problematic, though. Eventually we concluded that the promotional aspect was the key to this diversity because promotion is largely achieved via visual and multimodal efforts. Wine can only be commercialized in a container, which in the case of the overwhelming majority of the wines discussed in our corpora is a 75cl glass bottle, and this bottle needs a label to further accomplish the individuation process (and comply with legal regulations). The packaging thus described acts as the most frequent metonym in advertisements published in wine magazines, other general interest magazines, billboards, etc. Finally, documentaries on wine producing regions are regarded here as promotional efforts too, inasmuch as the written script contains all sorts of laudatory comments towards the wines and the mere display of visuals engages audiences and fuels their interest for the regions. 2.4.3.1 Corpora of marketing strategies In order to explore the way wine is promoted (Chapters 8, 9 and 10), we built three different corpora in agreement with the three main strategies used in the market, namely (a) a corpus of wine names, (b) a corpus of wine labels and packaging and (c) a corpus of wine advertisements. The wine names were retrieved from a corpus of 10,200 Spanish wines, all of them listed in the annual publication La Guía Peñín del los Vinos de España (the 2014 edition). The motivation behind this decision is of a pragmatic sort: there seems to be no other comparatively comprehensive record of commercially available Spanish wines. Thus, at the end of each volume there is an alphabetical index of all the wines rated in the guide, which is not to say all Spanish wines but certainly as close as one can get to the totality. Our choice is justified by our intention to cover as large as possible a number of wines that coexisted in the market at the same point in time, where we could, idiomatically, master the intricacies of connotation and wordplay, and, last but not least, a corpus of wines from the country we know best from firsthand tasting experience. As to the wine labels and packaging strategies, these amount to a corpus of 3,000 wines from all over the world. Among these, 2,000 were randomly sourced from bottle pictures uploaded to Twitter and Instagram accounts, belonging to wine critics and importer portfolios, and supplemented by the 1,000 labels featured in the volume 1,000 Wines You Must Try before You Die. The latter measure ensured that quality levels were taken into account above any packaging frivolities that might have merited a photo on the social media. Our choice needed to be determined by representativeness with a strong emphasis on regular commercial releases rather than extreme artsy or experimental examples. Indeed, some micro releases have



Chapter 2.  Exploring sensory meanings 27

been made where wine is contained in imitation of plasma bags, but that is not a real alternative to glass, nor representative of an established trend. Finally, the wine adverts were drawn from the major specialized periodicals published in 2015 and 2016 in the UK (Decanter), the USA (Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine) and France (Revue du Vin de France). The adverts come from 104 issues in total, including special issues and supplements and roughly amounting to 12,700 magazine pages. The total number of adverts is slightly more than 3,000 but as for the number of unique adverts (not counting those repeated several times not only within the issues of the same magazine but also across the different publications) our estimate says ~1,100. The reason for not including Spanish-speaking magazines is that there is no Spanish periodical publication of comparable average length, virtually exclusive dedication to wine, and heavy presence of wine advertising. Accordingly, we decided not to force a similar corpus of adverts published in Spanish publications. In fact, numerous adverts for Spanish wines belong to the English-speaking sources, in which case we tracked down the original Spanish advert (if indeed there was one) for comparison. 2.4.3.2 Corpus of documentaries about wine While increasing interest in everything related to wine has resulted in a relatively recent boom in the production of film and television features where wine is more or less prominent, we decided to privilege those that explore wine over those that use wine as a background for the main storyline. In like fashion, we decided to stay away from fiction because mainstream films such as Sideways are mainly concerned with the plot and wine only provides a context or determines a series of leisure activities but little else. Other films like Bottle Shock (2008) are more genuinely focused on wine, but their distribution has been far more restricted. Of course, among documentaries there is an abundance of perspectives: the different angles sometimes appropriate wine for their own purposes, which means that the productions sometimes border other genres such as the reality show (Somm), or the legal thriller (Sour Grapes), and they forget about the more conventional informative feature about a region or style. Our choices follow this informative approach: A Year in Burgundy, A Year in Champagne, and Jerez y el Misterio del Palo Cortado. The first two documentaries are sourced from the trilogy A Year in (the third one being Porto). Produced by the same team and using the almost cliché “A Year in X” structure, they are given extra unity by the cohesive use of importer Martine Saunier as ambassador and interlocutor with producers whose wines she has long imported to the US. In order to add some diversity but still manage to include a fortified style, we chose the Spanish documentary Jerez y el Misterio del Palo Cortado (Sherry and the Mystery of Palo Cortado). We find this corpus to be an appropriate selection

28

Representing wine

because it features a region producing reds and whites of the highest quality that is very sensitive to weather conditions (Burgundy), a region that produces both vintage and non-vintage wines whose elaboration requires additional cellar processes (Champagne), and, finally, a region that produces a wide range of (fortified) wines from the same grape in a very forgiving climate. This enables the discussion of conventional reds and whites, sparkling, and fortified wines in only three documentaries, and focus on information as well as the promotion of wine. At worst, they may be a little too European.

Chapter 3

From tasting to reviewing



[T]here are still millions of hectolitres of neutral, shapeless, and impersonal wines about which the taster can say nothing once he has spat them out. The birth of a taster’s vocabulary dates from the advent of quality wine. (Peynaud, 1987, p. 215)



It is easy to mock wine writers for their purple prose, mixed metaphors, non-sequiturs and tautology but you try and taste hundreds of wines a week and then have something original to say about them. (Jeffreys, 2010)

As pointed out in Chapter 1, talking about wine includes describing the wine both as an object and an experience. While the former is a fairly straightforward operation, the latter is a process whereby the array of sensory stimuli provided by the wine and the personal, emotional reactions triggered by those stimuli are recontextualized so that the experiencer can share his or her experience with other people. In order to do so, previous experiences with wine and the ability to identify and retrieve them from memory are important in the sense that they provide critics both with a sensory repository and expectations of types of wine. Indeed, expectations play an important role in the assessment of wine, which starts by setting the wine against a set of parameters in accordance to its varietal composition, similar wines in its category and, sometimes, also its past vintages. Accordingly, many pedagogical tools aimed at introducing wine aficionados to the task of reviewers include the provision of a set of – more or less – default expressions retrieved, presumably, from the set of expectations of well-established types of wines. In order to understand the rationale behind the use of wine descriptors, we now take a closer look at the tasting event itself, the task of the wine critic and the discourse practice and genre constraints that apply. Using the data from the General Corpus, comprising TNs written in English and Spanish, described in Chapter 2, we describe the sensory experiences in wine tasting and how they are mediated by language. We start with the structure of a wine tasting session and, and go on to show how language is used to communicate this experience in a way that makes sense to people who did not taste the wine and who were not present at the tasting event. In Section 3.3, we introduce two ways of sharing perceptual experiences through language using two types of analytical schemas, namely the Aroma Wheel and the schema developed by the Wine and Spirit Education Trust

30

Representing wine

(WSET), both of which are used by wine tasters and educators dealing with wine knowledge and wine practices. The descriptors in these two schemas are by no means mutually exclusive in wine writing, but are most often combined because, although their objectives and applications are somewhat different, their main goal is the same, namely, to provide the means to assess wines in a systematic way, and help wine tasters identify and talk about their individual experiences with wine. Analytical schemas also form the basis of work done by professional wine critics, who report on their experiences in the TNs. However, the way of describing wine in TNs differs from analytical schemas in important ways, as discussed in Section 3.4 where we offer a detailed description of the information included in TNs, the genre’s general structure, and the way this structure relates to the preceding tasting event. While analytical schemas help provide systematic descriptions of wines, TNs are actual descriptions written by wine critics for an audience that wants to be updated about wines. As in any other field, producers and retailers use these reviews to promote their products, while customers may use TNs as guides for their next purchases or for comparing the professional assessment with their own experiences. By juxtaposing the general-purpose, analytical schemas and TNs, we pay attention to the way their different goals and purposes show up in their structure and use of language. 3.1

The tasting event

Tasting wine is a complex experience that involves the activation of sensory perceptions via vision, smell, touch and taste. This activation, in turn, triggers memories of previous experiences against which the new experiences are set up, and this, hopefully, gives rise to aesthetic and emotional reactions. To the complexities of sharing this very subjective response to wine, we must add the difficulties derived from the fact that although wine tasting necessarily involves all the sense modalities, not all of them are activated one at a time. Thus, we may isolate the visual inspection itself, but then expectations are raised by the sight of the wine, i.e., whether it is white or red, the colour and transparency of each type, etc., and these expectations linger and influence tasters’ assessments of the rest of the sensory experiences concerned with the wine’s aromas and texture. For in the tasting event, it is not possible to separate the experience of taste from the experience of smell or from the experience of touch, i.e., the wine’s feel inside the mouth, which means that the taster’s sensuous pleasures or displeasures, meaningful interpretations and emotional involvement are all part of a holistic and integrated experience. In other words, it is the sensuous totality and unity that constitutes an experience (Hekkert, 2006, pp. 159–160).



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 31

So, what exactly does the tasting event consist of? Gluck (2003, p. 109) provides the following description: You pour out the wine. You regard its colour. You sniff around it. You agitate the glass to release the esters of the perfume and so better to appreciate the aromas, the nuances of the bouquet. You inhale those odoriferous pleasantries, or unpleasantries, through the chimney of the taste, the nostrils (the only access to the brain open to the air) and then you taste. You swill the liquid around the mouth and breathe in air so that this liquid is aerated and experienced by up to ten thousand taste buds. The taste buds are arranged in sectors of differently oriented cohesion: one designed to recognize salinity, another alkalinity, another sweetness and so on. They connect with the brain which in turn provides the sensory data, memory based, to form the critic’s view of what s/he is drinking. Some of the wine is permitted to contact the back of the throat, but only a small amount is permitted to proceed down the gullet, so that the finish of the wine can be studied. Then the wine is ejected and several seconds are left to elapse whilst all these sensations are studied and written up as the impression the wine has left is mulled over.

As described in this quotation, the procedure includes five stages and several sense modalities. It starts with the taster evaluating the visual impression of the wine and, in the next stage, it proceeds into assessing its smell. The third stage concerns the wine’s taste and texture, which are assessed in several stages: first, the wine’s initial impression; second, its evolution in the mouth, which involves its taste and its mouthfeel. The fourth stage is the so-called internal olfactory stage where the wine’s aftertaste is assessed. This is followed by a final, fifth stage, which is the wine’s finish and refers to the sensations left on the palate by the wine after having been swallowed. What is missing from Gluck’s description are the terms used to refer to the tasting stages in the wine community. When the tasting process is described, the smell stage is conventionally called the wine’s nose/nariz and the one concerned with its taste and texture is called its palate/boca. In both cases, we have a general metonymy that uses the taster’s organ of perception to stand for the sensation provided by wine, i.e., what may be formalized as body organ for sensation. Such expressions are conventionalised in wine language and therefore they are also often explained in handbooks introducing novices to the world of wine. For instance, the handbook Wine for Dummies offers the following explanation of the terms nose and palate: Wines have noses – and palates, too. With poetic license typical of wine tasters, someone once dubbed the smell of a wine its nose – and the expression took hold. In fact, most wine tasters rarely use the word smell to describe how a wine smells because the word smell (like the word odor) seems pejorative. Wine tasters talk about the wine’s nose or aroma. Sometimes they use the word bouquet, although that word is falling out of fashion. Just as a wine taster might use the term nose

32

Representing wine

for the smell of a wine, he might use the word palate in referring to the taste of a wine. A wine’s palate is the overall impression the wine gives in your mouth, or any isolated aspect of the wine’s taste.  (McCarthy & Ewing-Mulligan, 2006, p. 24)

The tasting procedure as a whole is construed in temporal terms as a performance with a beginning, a middle and an end. This progression may be verbalized in dynamic terms. While English tends to use verbs such as open, start, close and finish and, and sometimes the nouns derived from them, Spanish generally describes the process, using nouns such as entrada ‘entry’, recorrido ‘trajectory’ and paso de boca ‘mouth passage’ to refer to the initial and middle tasting stages (for a full discussion, go to Chapters 4 and 5). Common to both languages is the use of the term attack/ ataque to refer to wine’s initial impression on the taster’s palate which, again, may be explained as metonymically motivated in that of all the information expressed by attack, the expression only recruits the initiative component of such an action and only its suddenness and vigour get profiled. Figure 4 provides a schematic view of the tasting process.

colour

nose

palate

• attack • mid-palate • aftertaste/finish

Figure 4.  The stages in wine tasting

As shown in Figure 4, visual experience is the point of departure of wine tasting. This means that vision has a special position compared to the other senses, not only because it can be isolated from the others but, most importantly, because it sets the scene and provides information beyond the visual properties themselves. In the next section, we examine how the sensory experiences of wine may be mediated through language. 3.2

Transforming sensory experiences into sensory language

When describing wine, wine reviewers or critics transform their sensory experiences into sensory meanings through language. As recent research has shown, this is not a trivial task since our perceptual system is very powerful and much more fine-tuned than our conceptual system and our language resources are for putting sensory experiences into words. This is particularly relevant in the case of aromas, a critical part of wine assessment since, as we will see, there are more



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 33

aroma-product descriptors than descriptors of any other sensory product. This is because in wine appreciation, aromas are a key element in hedonistic approaches to wine. Much of the pleasure we derive from wine tasting comes from the realization that a well-matured bottle of wine, served at the right temperature from the right glass, can offer an incredible array of aromas that is like nothing else in the world, even in the world of wine. That properly handled grape juice should contain the potential to develop such an incredible wealth of olfactory stimuli is little short of miraculous, and it makes us experience apparently similar grape varieties as more different from one another than meat from fish. Here is where the holistic approach to wine appreciation reaches its peak: the number of variables is seemingly endless, including not just grape variety but different clones, soils, weathers, training systems, crushing methods, maceration lengths, fermentation yeasts, oak treatment and so on and so forth. Furthermore, those aromas evolve through time inside the bottle, and with air and temperature once served. This means that the potential to offer even richer olfactory enjoyment is contained even in two bottles of the same wine. According to Bushdid et al, (2014), humans are able to discriminate half a million different tones and several million different colours, but these figures are nothing when compared to the discriminatory ability and access to data of our olfactory receptors. Indeed, we are able to discriminate at least one trillion different smell components (Bushdid et al., 2014), an extraordinary ability which, nevertheless, appears to be particularly difficult to translate into words, partly because of an alleged lack of words for smell in most languages (Majid & Buhrenhult, 2014). Whether this lexical shortage is entirely true or not is both a theoretical and an empirical question, which we address in Chapter 4. The fact that we are extremely good at discriminating smell components also seems surprising in relation to the fact that we perform poorly when we are asked to name smells (Binder, 2016; Majid & Burenhult, 2014; Olofsson et al., 2014). Being able to identify smells and, on top of that, finding words to name them is a very special talent, which, like describing wine, needs a bit of training. However, not very much research has been carried out on how humans use language to describe sensory experiences (for a discussion see Majid & Levinson, 2011; Croijmans & Majid, 2016; Winter, 2016a, b). More work is needed to relate empirical data from different genres to a coherent theoretical semantic account of how humans actually describe sensory meanings in discourse. Through our studies of texts describing sensory experiences, we hope to contribute to a better description of how speakers actually talk about sensory experiences in a natural setting. This description may, in turn, help explain why people are not very good at providing single words as descriptors for smell. The issue at stake here is then how perceptions are transformed into meanings through language. A particularly intriguing question is, of course, what meanings

34

Representing wine

of sensory perception are like, or, put differently, what the nature of such meanings is. Meanings of sensory perceptions differ in one important way from meanings of concrete entities such as cars, hotels, pears, or from abstract meanings such as ideas, freedom and beauty. Seen from one angle, sensory meanings may be placed on a par with concrete objects such as cars etc. because both are firmly grounded in time and space, which means that like concrete objects, sensory meanings are not abstractions. However, there is also a difference, as described by Wittgenstein (1977, p. 102) in his book on colours where he puts the issue of what the nature of the meaning of sensory perceptions really is as follows: “When we’re asked What do ‘red’, ‘blue’, ‘black’, ‘white’, mean? we can, of course, immediately point to things which have these colours – but that’s all we can do: our ability to explain their meaning goes no further”. Although this excerpt concerns visual stimuli only, the same is true of the other sensory experiences with one very important difference, namely that there is nothing to point to. Visual experiences, like concrete objects, are imaginable and can be pointed to if speakers are in the same place. To some extent, this also applies to the other senses because they can be experienced at the same time, but they differ in that the experiences of sound, smell, taste and touch are more difficult to share in a communicative situation. They are not imaginable to the same extent, at least not by most people. Needless to say, this is also a simplification: if we see a rough surface, we also know what it feels like to touch it – and the same is true in the opposite direction. Taking these things into account is important for our understanding of the rather difficult task of translating sensory experience into language so that readers who are in a different place at a different time understand them and can imagine what the wine is like (as described in the next section). An important question to which we seek answers in this book is what exactly sensory meanings are like. In spite of the fact that sensory meanings are concrete sensuously speaking, they are, at the same time, private and elusive, and strongly linked to previous encounters and memories in our lives. In order to provide an answer to what the nature of meanings of sensory experiences is, we need to take the back door through language into conceptual structure and back to perceptions again. What these conceptual representations are will be shown in the subsequent chapters of this book. These things are what makes the reviewing of wines a very demanding task. As mentioned earlier, there are basically two different types of wine description, namely, analytical and synthetic descriptions. Analytical descriptions or schemas are concerned with component parts or the wine, whereas synthetic descriptions concentrate on the unity of the parts, i.e., the total complexity of the composition of wines (Herdenstam, 2004, p. 111). In Section 3.3, we deal with two models that analyse and describe the various traits of wines by relating them

Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 35



to the different senses, and in Section 3.4 we show how the different sensory experiences of the wine are described in a more holistic, less analytical way in the genre of the tasting note. 3.3

Describing wine through analytical schemas

We have already established that the task of wine reviewers is to transform their sensations and evaluations of the wine into language via conceptual representations. They then have to express themselves so that the sensations evoked when tasting the wine become interpretable and preferrably arouse their readers’ sensorium. This section turns to those analytical schemas that function as guiding tools for the decomposition of the holistic impression of a wine. Such schemas, in one form or another, are foundational for well-structured wine tasting events as well as for the transfer of the sensorial impressions by language. Here we present two different analytical schemas or terminologies, one that uses objects as descriptors and another one that uses properties along scales. As an example of the former type, we have chosen the German version of the well-known Aroma Wheel developed by oenologists at the University of California at Davies (Noble et al., 1987). The new version was designed at The German Wine Institute (www.germanwines.de) and, in contrast to the original Aroma Wheel, it also includes descriptors for taste and covers both red and white wines. In order to illustrate the second type of analytical schema, we introduce the set of scalar descriptors for Appearance (vision), Nose (smell) and Palate (taste and touch) developed by the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET). Our discussion of these two models responds to the fact that the existence of the Aroma Wheel does not make the WSET type of schema redundant nor the other way around. Rather, the two types of schema are complementary analytical systems. 3.3.1 The Aroma Wheel The original Aroma Wheel only offered descriptors of smell designed as a guidance tool in order to achieve consistent and clear wine descriptions (Noble et al., 1987). In the decades that have passed since the early 80s, the Aroma Wheel has been further developed in several different ways, both within and outside the wine industry (e.g., coffee, beer or fragrance wheels). One such reformulation is the wheel designed by the German Wine Institute, which includes white and red wines and goes beyond smell to also offer taste descriptors. Figures 5a and 5b show the German Aroma Wheels for red and white wines respectively.

Representing wine

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36

Figure 5.  The German Aroma Wheel for red wines (a) and white wines (b). Reproduced with permission of the Deutsches Weininstitut GmbH and Herr Prof. Ulrich Fischer, DLR Rheinpfalz.5

As shown in Figure 5, the olfactory descriptors are organized into three concentric tiers with the general tiers close to the center of the wheel and the more specific ones on the outskirts. Most of the olfactory descriptors refer to olfactory properties of objects such as eucalyptus, coffee, banana, smoky, spicy, while taste descriptors include general property terms such as weak, sour, light. The tier in the middle contains properties (except for the taste descriptors) that are organized as superordinates of both the innermost circle and the outermost circle such as fruity, microbiological, smoky, floral. The tiers are connected from the core and outwards in 5. We are grateful to the Deutsches Weininstitut GmbH and Herr Prof. Ulrich Fischer, DLR Rheinpfalz, for permission to use their images.

Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 37



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a hierarchical system where for red wines, for instance, fruity subdivides into berry, stone fruit, citrus, cooked fruit, artificial fruit, which in turn are subcategorized into raspberry, strawberry, red currant, black currant, blackberry, elderberry; sour cherry, sweet cherry, cherry brandy; orange peel; fruit candy; currant jelly, blackberry jelly, strawberry jam, plum jam; prune. Semantically, these are very rich knowledge representations of objects. They contain knowledge structures pertaining to their visual, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile traits and emotions provoked by our experiences of those entities in different situations as well as our memories and feelings in relation to those experiences. The descriptors are expressions of properties of objects. With reference to smell, we find descriptors expressed by adjectives derived from nouns, e.g., vegetal, floral, smoky. They profile adjectival properties of the entire nominal meanings of vegetation, flower and smoke through the derivational suffixes (-al and -y). With reference to

38

Representing wine

taste, the properties are expressed through adjectives such as weak and powerful referring to intensity. These property descriptors are understood as ranges of the scale of intensity with weak at the one end and powerful at the other. In the next section, we present an analytical system, namely The Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) system, which is based on dimensions and ranges along these dimensions to a larger extent than the wheels are. 3.3.2 The Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) system In contrast to the terminological system represented by aroma wheels and their focus on smell, the WSET system covers property descriptors in the domains of vision, smell, taste and touch, referred to as appearance, nose and palate – the latter conflating taste and touch. In WSET, each of these perceptual domains comprises a number of dimensions, which are all expressive of a certain sensation of a wine in the corresponding parts of the experiential procedure. The characterization of the wine is done by identifying a number of dimensions of the different sensory perceptions. Table 4 shows that most of the descriptors are properties organized along scales of opposition, with the exception of the smell descriptors, under nose, which include properties of objects expressed through adjectives derived from verbs such as pronounced or nouns such as fruity, floral, smoky or the actual referents themselves, e.g., animal. An interesting characteristic of the WSET is that the sensations that these objects produce are construed on the basis of a scalar configuration. As shown in Table 4, the visual – appearance – dimension provides information about clarity along a scale from bright to cloudy, which, at the same time, is an evaluative scale from positive to negative. Intensity ranges from pale to deep, and colour is divided into the traditional types, i.e., whites (ranging from water-white to deep), rosés (from pale to deep), and reds (from pale to opaque). In addition to those quality dimensions, we find other visual phenomena such as legs and bubbles since these are also used in wine characterization. The olfactory – nose – set includes condition (from clean to unclean), intensity (from weak to pronounced), development (from youthful to tired), and a list of object-related descriptors such as the ones in the Aroma Wheel above. Finally, the gustatory and tactile – palate – descriptors are based on the dimensions of sweetness (from dry to luscious), acidity (from flabby to sharp), tannin (from astringent to soft), body (from thin to heavy), fruitiness (from weak to pronounced), alcohol (from light to high) and length (from short to long). A similar take is found in Adrienne Lehrer’s work on wine conversation (Lehrer, 1975, 1983, 2009), where she established several scales related to taste and



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 39

Table 4.  The WSET approach to wine tasting. Adapted from Herdenstam (2004, p. 131) Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) appearance clarity bright – clear – dull – hazy – cloudy intensity white: water-white – pale – medium – deep rosé: pale – medium – deep red: pale – medium – deep – opaque colour white: green – lemon – straw – gold – amber – brown rosé: pink – salmon – orange – onion skin red: purple – ruby – garnet – mahogany – tawny other observations legs, bubbles, rim, colour vs. core, deposits, etc. nose condition clean – unclean intensity weak – medium – pronounced development youthful – grape aromas – aged bouquet (tired – oxidized ) fruit character fruity, floral, vegetal, spicy, woods, smoky, animal other observations fermentation aromas, ripeness, faults palate sweetness dry – off-dry – medium-dry – medium sweet – sweet – luscious acidity flabby – low – balanced – crisp – acidic tannin astringent – hard – balanced – soft body thin – light – medium – full – heavy fruit intensity weak – medium – pronounced alcohol light – medium – high length short – medium – long

40 Representing wine

touch. She presents scales of acidity (from sour to flat) sweetness (from cloying to dry), astringency (from hard to soft) and body (from heavy to light), and points out that good wines are supposed to display a balance of these gustatory dimensions, in which case tasters describe the wine as harmonious. According to Lehrer (2009, p. 165) there is however a lack of general reference norms when scalar judgements about gustatory properties of wines are made, and the way we perceive the interrelation of these dimensions results from and reflects our educational as well as personal backgrounds. This is of course something that we have to be aware of when we evaluate and discuss wine. To optimize mutual understanding, we need to calibrate and synchronize our assessments and our use of terminology, which requires some training and practice. It is imperative to adapt our expectations to paradigms determined by such variables as grape variety, region, vintage, bottle age, etc. Harmony and balance can occur in so many different forms that it would be pointless to offer rigid models. Training and practice, again, are key to proper appreciation and evaluation. The benefits of analytical schemas have attracted some attention in the literature. Zubek et al. (2016) set up a series of experiments investigating to what extent wine tasting novices were successful in recognising wines and how they went about describing the wines, both with and without the help of an analytical schema and both in pairs and individually. The study shows that the analytical schema was helpful for tasters in the sense that their descriptions became more coherent and discriminative. 3.4

The tasting note

TNs are short texts (20–100 words on average) in which wines wines are described, evaluated and, often, rated along a scale (100-point or 20-point scale). In this regard, TNs share the same goals as any other review genre – whether it focuses on books, audiophile equipment, coffee brands or any other commodity. However, contrary to these other review practices, the rhetorical structure of TNs is to a lesser extent determined by the genre’s descriptive and evaluative goals, but, as described in this section, it reproduces the tasting event in textual form. It often starts with what the wine looks like and finishes with what it feels like inside the taster’s mouth. TNs began as private records, and when they were first circulated in the press, they did so in publications, or sections of publications, concerned with wine and gastronomy, and nowadays they are often included in quality newspapers and lifestyle magazines, which, in some cases, include a specific section for such matters. However, their weight in wine discourse led to the emergence of periodical publications exclusively devoted to the distribution of TNs, such as the influential



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 41

and well-known North-American The Wine Advocate, which reached the number of 12,000 TNs per year. This has been integrated in the online website RobertParker. com (offering “over 285,000 searchable professional notes from The Wine Advocate, Robert Parker’s books and other sources”). Other wine publications include Wine Spectator, The World of Fine Wine, Decanter, La Revue du Vin de France or Wine Enthusiast, all of which offer articles, photos, adverts, and more or less openly promotional features together with hundreds of TNs. In a similar vein, annual buying guides of several hundred pages exclusively devoted to TNs abound, although none is as internationally comprehensive as Parker’s biannual compendiums used to be. The closest equivalents, yet at a smaller scale, are the British selections found in wine books by Hugh Johnson’s or Oz Clarke. What also abounds are annual regional guides such as James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion, the French Guide Hachette des Vins, Guide des Vins Bettane+Desseauve, RVF Guide des meilleurs vins de France, the many specific guides such as Gault & Millau, the Spanish Guía Peñín, Guía del Vino Cotidiano, Guía de Vinos Gourmet, and Guía Proensa, the Italian Gambero Rosso, etc. Print publications, however, are becoming obsolete for the management of the growing number of TNs published daily. For instance, the site JancisRobinson.com offers subscribers access to “10,178 articles (two new most days) and 136,300 wine reviews.” TNs are readily available for wine professionals and aficionados, who can access them in various formats as offered by some of the most important wine critics, publications and websites (e.g., Jancis Robinson at www.jancisrobinson.com, Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar or Antonio Galloni’s Vinous). The impact of the genre may be illustrated by the fact that the assessment of some wine critics has a direct influence on the saleability and, above all, prices of wines all over the world – Robert Parker being a case in point, as discussed in Chapter 6. 3.4.1 The form and function of tasting notes TNs provide a synthetic, holistic description of the wine experience. Despite the undeniable vagueness, verbosity and farfetchedness of some critics reported in Kramer (2015), Bosker (2015), Jefford (2015, 2016) and Johnson & Robinson (2013), and criticism of their language as lampoonable camouflage rather than serious technical discourse (Peynaud, 1987; Gluck, 2003), a good TN is, in many ways, more useful than a technical description of a wine. This is because while professional wine critics must be able to distinguish and describe wine aromas or flavours (and, therefore, use some of the terms discussed in Section 3.3), this is not the only requirement of their job. Rather, what sets them apart from other professional or amateur people within the wine community is their ability to combine the technical, pleasurable,

42

Representing wine

and emotional dimensions of wine in a single text. No factsheet will effectively describe a wine using exclusively lab data such as pH, alcohol or acidity in grams per litre; and no list of aromas or flavours will ever convey the emotions aroused by a wine or even basic information such as tactile impressions or the balanced quality of its components. Simply put, not only are TNs central in the wine domain; without them wine communication would be virtually non-existent. This is so to the extent that, although he describes the genre as “a specialized form of wine entertainment,” Andrew Jefford, one of the most serious and respected wine writers today, writes in Decanter that Academic attempts to give rigour to wine writing (via, for example, Ann Noble’s ‘aroma wheel’), to come up with an objective language for wine, or to ‘unfuzz’ winespeak always end in boredom for the reader. Conservative, restrained wine descriptions are tedious, repetitive and soporific, and utterly fail to evoke the excitement of smelling and tasting wine. They are phenomenologically inadequate, if you like.  (Jefford, 2015)

Good TNs may be introduced as phenomenologically adequate since they are structured iconically with regard to the wine tasting experience described in Section 1, which runs from the taster’s inspection of the wine’s visual appearance through smell, taste and the feeling of its texture. The procedure goes from vision through smell, taste and touch (see also Silverstein, 2004). This is shown in (1), a typical example of a TN.

(1) The 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon Madrona Vineyard is the most promising wine Abreu has yet produced. The colour is a murky opaque purple, suggesting extraordinary richness. The wine’s forward, sweet berry-scented aroma includes hints of cassis, lead pencil, and licorice. Thick and rich, with the 1996 vintage’s sweet tannin in evidence, this full-bodied, powerful yet gorgeously layered and pure Cabernet Sauvignon will be more precocious and flattering at an earlier age than either the 1995 or 1994. It will have two decades of positive evolution.

The first part gives some general information about the year, the grape, the vineyard and the name of the wine as well as a general positive evaluation aimed at making the reader aware of the fact that this is a very good wine. This is followed by a description of the wine’s properties, underlined by us in order to indicate that what is included in this bit of text is different from what appears before and what comes after. Like the tasting event, the description starts with the visual impression of the wine as murky opaque purple, followed by the description of its aromas as sweet berry-scented and including hints of cassis, lead pencil, and licorice. The wine’s taste and texture are described as thick and rich, with sweet tannin, full-bodied, and powerful yet gorgeously layered and pure. The text ends with a concluding assessment



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 43

and recommendation of prime drinking time that reports on a wine with a very long time window in which it will evolve in a positive way and, therefore, tells the readers that this is a wine of high quality (Caballero, 2009; Paradis, 2009a, b; Hommerberg, 2011; Caballero & Paradis, 2013; Paradis & Hommerberg, 2016). In short, a general characteristic of TNs is that they are at the same time both descriptive and evaluative all through, and this is evident in the organization of the texts. Table 5 shows the schematic structure of the genre. Table 5.  The discursive schema of tasting notes (Caballero, 2007) Technical card (optional) Introduction of the wine   Name and year and/or   Winery and/or   Price and/or   Score and/or   Cases/bottles made and/or   Grape composition     First evaluation of wine   Assessment of the wine’s colour Assessment of the wine’s nose (aroma and bouquet) Assessment of the wine’s palate (flavours and texture or mouthfeel)   Attack and/or   Mid-palate and/or   Aftertaste or finish   Closing evaluation of the wine   Potential consumers and/or   Consumption span and/or   Recommended food and/or   Final evaluation and/or   Import information and/or

Although TNs generally conform to the rhetorical structure shown in Table 5, this schema should not be taken to be a rigid sequential pattern adhered to by all texts in the same manner, but as an analytical generalization of how TNs are usually organized. Indeed, critics may organize their reviews along this pattern described, or play with the sequence by omitting or merging the sections. This is the case in example (1) where the initial and final parts of the TN, essentially descriptive, also include assessments, very often of a more holistic type such as is the most promising wine Abreu has yet produced and powerful yet gorgeously layered and pure. Some TNs also include an overall evaluation of the quality of the wine at the point in time when it was assessed as in (2) below.

44 Representing wine



(2) 2005 Domaine la Noble Merlot. Languedoc Roussillon, France. $ 9. 88 points. Appealing aromas of sweet red and blue fruits emerge from the nose of the 2005 Merlot. A terrific value, it is rich, suave, satin-textured and packed with candied bilberries as well as cherries. This fruit-forward offering’s finish reveals notes of chocolate before exhibiting some structured tannin. Projected maturity: now-2008. Importer: Dan Kravitz – Hand Picked Selections, Warrenton, VA.

This TN starts by giving the production facts of the wine assessed, followed by its sensory description and a recommendation of prime drinking time. It also illustrates a common practice in the genre, namely, the provision of wine’s holistic evaluation in numerical form. Most critics have adopted either a 20-point (e.g., Decanter, World of Fine Wine, Jancis Robinson, Revue du Vin de France, El MundoVino) or, as shown in (2), a 100-point rating system (e.g., most American and Australian critics and the Spanish Guia Peñín). This score may appear at the beginning or the end of the TN or in a separate technical card where details such as the winery’s location, the wine’s importers, its price, or the number of bottles produced are provided, although this information may also appear as part of the main text, as in (2). Finally, TNs also display several degrees of explicitness with regard to the way wines’ colour, nose or smell, and palate or taste and mouthfeel are referred to in the main body of the texts. The most explicit strategies involve the underlined expressions in the following examples:

(3) The full nose displays hay and creamy nougat, and the mouth is a melange of orange, almond and herb flavors. This solid white has unique character and closes long, with citrus and nut flavors and a fine spicy back-bouquet.

(4) It opens with a fragrant black raspberry and black licorice bouquet. On the palate, this wine is full bodied, balanced, rich, and very fruit forward. The flavor profile is a delicious boysenberry and vanilla oak blend with notes of blackberry with a hint of blueberry. The finish is dry and its moderate dusty tannins are nicely prolonged. (5) Color cereza, borde granate. Aroma ahumado, fruta madura, chocolate. Boca sabrosa, retronasal ahumado, fruta madura. ‘Cherry colour, garnet rim. Smoky aroma, ripe fruit, chocolate. Savoury palate, smoky retronasal, ripe fruit.’

(6) La personalidad de la barrica predomina en una nariz que en segundo plano deja ver un toque de fruta muy madura (albaricoque). Paso de boca suave, con un amargor en el centro que termina en un posgusto con recuerdos de miel y repostería.



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 45

‘The personality of the barrel predominates in a nose that reveals a touch of very ripe fruit (peach) in the background. Smooth mouth passage [mid-palate], with a bitterness in the centre that ends in an aftertaste with honey and pastry memories.’

Here tasting stages are explicitly mentioned in terms that draw upon organoleptic terminology (colour, aroma, flavors), the organs involved (nose/nariz, mouth/ boca) and specific locations within those, usually related to tasting stages (retronasal ‘back-bouquet’, paso de boca ‘mouth passage’, centro ‘centre’, posgusto ‘back palate’). The TNs presented so far are relatively short and easy reads. There are, however, longer TNs in our data where the reader is taken by the hand in a more pedagogical way, as shown in (7) by Andrés Proensa.

(7) Típico de una Cabernet madura. Intenso color rubí-cereza ribeteado por una corona de color rubí con tonos teja que evidencian su evolución en la crianza. Bien dibujado, de mediana intensidad, con muchos matices de fruta y de bien medida crianza; destacan los recuerdos de frutos negros en sazón (no hay tonos pesados de pan de higo, que indicarían sobre maduración, ni los habituales recuerdos de pimiento verde, que denunciarían una incompleta maduración de la uva), un toque de mentol y un desarrollado bouquet especiado, indicativo de la crianza en barrica; hay recuerdos de maderas finas (cedro, toquecito de piñones) y un fondo de tinta y trufa negra. No hay rastro de evolución negativa ni de fatiga. Rotundo, potente en sabores (contrasta con una nariz que no es muy intensa), con un ligero toque salado, buena acidez y un fino apunte amargo que se manifiesta en la salida y contribuye a dar longitud a la presencia del vino en la boca. Es un tinto estructurado, es decir, con cuerpo y con sensación de solidez, construido en torno a una firme armazón tánica bien arropada por el cuerpo (extracto); da sensación de solidez y vitalidad pero no hay puntas agresivas, lo que muestra, junto a los aromas, la perfecta maduración del fruto en dos variedades, Cabernet Sauvignon y Cabernet Franc, que no son precisamente dúctiles en su naturaleza. El vino transmite sensación de volumen y de relieve, no está aún redondo pero tampoco está muy lejos de ese estado superior de engarce y desarrollo. Expresivo y muy sugestivo; hay recuerdos bien definidos de frutos negros bien maduros de los que parecen surgir otros, como los minerales, balsámicos y el toque de tinta y trufa e incluso el bouquet especiado. El conjunto expone bien el carácter varietal. No es especialmente largo en los rasgos aromáticos (tampoco corto) pero lo suple con la presencia sápida proporcionada por el toque amargo y por una ligera untuosidad. Es uno de los mejores cabernet españoles. Esquiva con maestría los tonos vegetales que tanto afean a la mayor parte de los vinos de Cabernet Sauvignon, y también a los de Cabernet Franc, y es un tinto bien caracterizado, singular en sus rasgos

46 Representing wine

y con prestancia. No es, sin duda, un tinto de trago largo y fácil, es un tinto para comer, para una ingesta pausada y se diría que hasta reflexiva. ‘Typical ripe Cabernet. Deep ruby-cherry with ruby-garnet rim that shows its evolution. Well-delineated, of moderate intensity, with nuanced fruit notes and well-measured ageing in oak. Ripe black berries (not jammy or figgy, which would suggest overripeness, but no under ripe greenish bell pepper notes either), a hint of menthol and a well-developed spicy bouquet suggestive of oak ageing; echoes of fine oak (hint of cedar, pine nut) against a background of ink and black truffle. Not a hint of tiredness or excessive evolution. Bold, intense flavours (as opposed to a subtler nose) with a salty note, good acidity and a fine bitterness in the finish that contributes extra length. A well-structured red, full-bodied and solid, built around a firm tannic scaffolding that is wrapped by good body (extract). No aggressiveness in spite of its nerve, which confirms the perfect ripening of the two varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, which are not exactly the docile type. The wine confers an impression of good volume, not quite peaking yet but certainly close to its optimum level of integration. Expressive, with neat echoes of ripe black berries over mineral, balsamic, inky and truffle notes, and the spicy bouquet. It shows neat varietal character. Not particularly long (or short) on the nose, it more than makes up for it with the savouriness conferred by the bitter note and a certain unctuousness. Decidedly one of Spain’s best cabernets, eluding the vegetal notes that so often ruin cabernet-based reds. Well-defined, original, distinct. Not a big-gulp drink, this is a wine for the dinner table, one to ponder over.’

Although very rich in words with regard to the sensory impressions of the wine, there is also information with respect to production and consumption that is not included in this TN at all, but it is interesting because of its detailed description. We are not going into details about its contents, but the purpose is just to show this very detailed TN as an extreme example of a rich text of 393 words, which makes it one of the longest in our data sets. Of course, TNs are not always that clear about what the characteristics of the wine in relation to a particular sense modality are. Space constraints are a defining feature of TNs as a rule, and economy is a guiding principle. Consider (8) and (9) below (we have underlined the text for the convenience of the readers).

(8) This magnificent wine explodes from the glass with toasted mineral aromas. Medium to full-bodied and viscous, this is a muscular, powerful, and intensely concentrated wine. It has unbelievable depth and length. Loads of smoky minerals and white fruits are found in this stunning wine’s core.

Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 47





(9) Bajo un barniz de roble fino, las hierbas aromáticas (eneldo, laurel, anís) van surgiendo, y una verdadera explosión de frescor y fruta cítrica. Amplio, largo, con gran futuro. Pero hay que esperarlo un año.

‘Under a varnish of fine oak, the aromatic herbs (dill, laurel, aniseed) keep emerging, and a true explosion of fresh and citrus fruit. Wide, long, with a great future. But you need wait for a year.’

These passages are more general and less explicit and direct, than examples (3)–(6). Thus, in (8), we need to infer that explodes from the glass refers to the wine’s aromas’ first encounter with the nose and the mouth, what in Figure 4 is called the attack, and when the critic describes the wine’s body as medium to full and viscous, we need to know that the critic is referring to the palate. The reader may know these things because the first expression is often used to describe that stage of the tasting event, and because of the fact that the description of a wine’s body follows the description of its smell. However, in such cases the reader needs to infer information from the iconic order of the tasting event. Likewise, in (9) surgiendo ‘emerging’ and explosión ‘explosion’ implicitly point to the wine’s nose and attack, and amplio ‘wide’ and largo ‘long’ refer to the wine’s mid-palate and finish respectively. 3.4.2 Types of tasting notes TNs may be written by professionals in the food industry, by professional wine critics and by wine aficionados who publish them in various social networks. Indeed, a form of keeping in touch with the wine world is to participate in the many online forums with wine aficionados and professionals from all over the world – cheaper and often more user-friendly than professional TNs. Among the pioneering sites, we can count Robin Garr’s WineLoversPage (http://wineloverspage.com), Wine Spectator (http://www.winespectator.com), and Mark Squires’ E-Zine (http:// marksquires.com) later merged in Robert Parker’s online site (https://winejournal. robertparker.com). In Spain there is Verema.com. In addition to online discussion forums, we have CellarTracker (http://www.cellartracker.com). This is a database of both professional and amateur tasting notes that advertises itself as “the world’s largest collection of wine reviews, tasting notes and personal stories from people who love wine”, and offers its subscribers the possibility of managing their wine cellar using various mobile applications. The best online websites and their respective forums provide a wealth of instruction as well as fun and friendship as long as one is fluent in winespeak (discussed in Chapters 4 and 5) or willing to put in some work. Moreover, a forum may yield better results than even professional critics’ TNs for several reasons. In the first place, somewhere out there, someone may be drinking precisely the wine you are

48 Representing wine

considering opening and, therefore, a fresh TN is easy to obtain if you ask online. This sharing goal is the true raison d’être of amateur TNs, as also acknowledged by Dean & Forbes (2016, p. 125) who claim that Unlike winery-sponsored social media posts or attention (and advertising revenue) seeking bloggers, the reviewers and responders in the online discussion forums seem to be driven by the need to share and learn rather than promote. As such, it could be seen as closer to ‘pure’ eWOM [electronic word-of-mouth] than the other social media forms.

Secondly, although immediacy is not the only parameter to bear in mind, there are not so many TNs, especially not of very expensive wines, that receive professional updates as regularly as most aficionados would like to see. The TNs and multiple exchanges in discussion forums are frequently tailor-made to the requirements of each forum, subgroup, or even thread, so that the degree of convenience can be much greater than the TN one may obtain from a professional who reviews, for example, South-African reds only in June. The following extract from a real forum interaction illustrates some of these points. A: Is it worth opening one of these or would it be infanticide? B: I would think it would be the latter. I have only 3 bottles and I’m waiting at least another 5 years before opening the 1st one. C: I’d suggest you find something else to open. D: Ditto what B and C said. Run a search of tasting notes using “2000 Guigal Hermitage” and you’ll find some earlier impressions of this wine. Let it sleep…… E: Way too young. I wasted a bottle last year just to try it and it has potential but needs 5+ years. A: Alright, alright, I was just hoping. F: Have a slightly different take on this. Opened a bottle this June with a guest. We both thought the wine was very good and very enjoyable right now, but will benefit from more shelf time. I have 17 more, and intend to try another one around the end of the year. Should mention that we decanted for about 3 hours before drinking. G: I think it’s implied, but you were talking the red Hermitage right not the white? The white is actually drinking really well right now. B: G, do you think it will improve? I have 2 of the white. G: B, I do. I have had one bottle at a restaurant […], and opened one of my own this spring. The other three are resting, but it is nice right now 93 points. Depends a little I think on personal taste. I really like the nutty beeswax flavors that come with age, but others might prefer to catch it now with the nice white floral flavors and peachy fruit.



Chapter 3.  From tasting to reviewing 49

H: Although I think it will definitely benefit from more time in the bottle, we had some in June and it was very tasty. I bought six on release and hadn’t yet opened one at that time. Someone else brought the bottle […] and I thought “Great, now I finally get to try it and see how it’s doing” I really thought it was excellent which lulled me into opening one of my six about two weeks later. My bottle was very tight despite some decanting through an aerated funnel. So, my gut is to suggest you wait a bit longer. A: Thanks guys and yes G, I was referring to the red. This thread was named TNR, after Tasting Note Request, and the name and vintage of the wine under discussion, in this case a wine over $ 60 that merits some cellaring and has a relatively hard-to-guess drinking window. The thread is from August 2005, and the wine (being a 2000) was reviewed in 2003. Since then it makes sense to assume there have been no official, i.e., professionally sanctioned, updates. A forum member asked for feedback and got six responses over the subsequent 72 hours (four of them within the next business day) and, in this case, all of them from USA and Canada forum members. Those updates included TNs by someone who had tried the wine twice within the preceding two months. While most forum posters agree that the asker should wait (after only five years) in order not to waste one of his three bottles, participant F (who purchased 18 bottles) can afford to be more adventurous, has already opened one and plans to open a second one soon. He mentions the three-hour decanting time, which may help make the wine more accessible. A final intervention from H, who has tried it at a restaurant only months before, and later from a bottle at home, suggests the wine is indeed too closed to be fully appreciated. Halfway through the thread, B and G start a little digression on the topic of the Blanc version of the wine. How reliable or useful the responses may prove is of course another issue altogether. In short, the increasing number of opportunities to discuss wine in online sites has breathed new life into the TN genre, and, by extension, into wine discourse. The close relationship between conventional TNs and the wine aficionados’ online reports is interesting both genre- and winespeak-wise. In the first place, the TN-forum combination points to the ecological quality of genre systems or families introduced in Chapter 2, an organic view particularly evident in electronic media, where genres are linked to the extent that their boundaries are often blurred, which suggests that what happens in one genre often needs to be set against those other genres related to it. Although posters are a multifarious lot, bonds are created and eventually everybody gets to know everybody else. This contributes to creating an unmistakable feeling of belonging, i.e., of a community built upon a common interest and, of course, a shared language. Indeed, not only does the acculturation role of TNs result

50

Representing wine

from the passive interaction of wine aficionados with the genre as readers, but also, and most interestingly, from their more active role in customising the genre to their own needs and re-producing it in various forms in the different contexts at their disposal – online or otherwise. Thus, while forums, because of their very nature and purpose, do not follow a pre-established rhetorical pattern, it seems reasonable to assume that participating in them reinforces what their participants have previously learned from other sources. In other words, the acculturating role of TNs does not only rest on the fact that wine aficionados regularly learn how to describe and assess wines by reading numerous TNs (Silverstein, 2003, 2004; Lehrer, 2009). Rather, the genre’s health may also be explained as arising from people’s role as wine critics themselves, which, in turn, contributes to the entrenchment of both the TN genre and the strategies used by its participants.

Chapter 4

Descriptors of wine across the senses



But wait. Isn’t wine made from grapes rather than asparagus or grapefruit? Well, there is some sense behind this descriptive noble rot. The molecular structures of wine are in fact similar to those found in fruit, flowers, vegetables, and even in spoilage factors such as “wet dog” and “cardboard box.” For example, scientists have identified the chemical compound methozypyrazine in aged sauvignon blanc, which has a canned asparagus aroma. That compound is also found in high concentration in-you guessed it-canned asparagus. Perhaps that’s why our memories can lead to some bizarre connections. During one wine appreciation class, a student commented that the wine reminded her of Dallas airport. That made some obscure sense: We were tasting Rieslings, and when aged they tend to have a petrol smell akin to airplane fuel. Another student said the chardonnay reminded her of her son’s gerbil cage-the oak-aged wine evoking the pine shavings in the cage. (MacLean, 2003)

As pointed out in Chapter 1, winespeak is basically concerned with describing what a wine is, what it has and what it feels like when we engage with it and drink it. In that chapter, we addressed three main questions: (a) What kind of descriptors are there? (b) What conceptual (ontological) structures are evoked in the descriptions of different sensory experiences in the TNs? (c) How does sensory cognition shape the language of perception? In order to answer these questions we examined the wide array of expressions in our English and Spanish TNs that refer to wine and its properties. Our focus in this chapter is on meanings expressed through adjectives (both adjectives proper and participles) and nouns, while we leave the discussion of descriptions that involve situations and events for Chapter 5. 4.1

The many words for wine

The word wine appears 3,361 times in the 6,000 TNs of the English corpus, while in the Spanish equivalent vino only occurs 971 times in the 6,000 TNs. In addition to the basic level terms wine and vino, there is a plethora of different words that refer to wine. These may refer to the wine’s constitution, i.e., to aspects of the meaning of wine as a substance (nectar or liquid velvet) or to its function, i.e., how the wine came about (for instance, as an effort or an experiment) or to the way people use it (wine referred to as a crowd pleaser or as a headline grabber). Within

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Representing wine

these two ways of perspectivizing wine there are also words for wine that are used to highlight additional aspects. For instance, some terms also evoke meaning nuances related to style and register, e.g., the colloquial descriptors quaffer, sipper or vinazo, whereas some others are metaphorical construals where wine is personified, e.g., seductress, gigante ‘giant’, puppy or potro ‘foal’. Table 6 gives an overview of different terms used to refer to wine. In Table 6, the names for wines are grouped into four categories: drink- and food-related, winery-related, wine-related (mostly metaphorical renderings of properties of the wine and the experience of the wine) and critic-related. Just by looking at the table, we see that there is an uneven distribution of terms in English and Spanish. English features a greater variety of types of descriptors that refer to wine than Spanish. The reason for this is an open question, and we can only suggest possible explanations for this. One such explanation might have to do with the critics’ writing styles, i.e., the Spanish texts may belong to writers who are very matter- of-fact and abstain from evaluations woven into the names given to the wines they review. Another reason may be that there are in fact cultural differences which, in turn, very well may have to do with the ‘matter-of-factness’ of the texts. The number of examples of the basic level words wine and vino may reflect to what extent the reviewers also want to entertain their readership with glorious language (English) rather than terse and concrete wordings (Spanish). Referential language is interesting because it brings forth the knowledge domains related to what we know about wine, which include wine making, wine reviewing and wine consumption. These perspectives reflect the different types of meaning structures that are part of the conceptual structure of wine, i.e., everything a speaker knows about this drink. In addition to presenting wine from different perspectives, using expressions from common core words such as wine to the more colloquial and, somewhat condescending quaff or plonk, and descriptors that situate wine within a given taxonomy such as sibling, competitor, look-alike, paisano ‘fellow countryman’ or predecesor ‘predecessor’. The richness of the domain matrix that makes up the backdrop of wine was outlined in Chapter 2, and includes everything we know about wine. However, when we talk about wine or when critics write about wine, we and they only evoke a minor part of the totality of what we know. The reason is that not everything is relevant at all points in time. For instance, when the focus is on the producer, knowledge about grapes and locations is at the forefront, while when we focus our attention on a wine’s aromas the focus is on wine as a substance and wine as pleasure accessed through our noses. These are aspects of a wine’s constitution, i.e., wine as a concrete thing. If we turn to a wine’s function, we find different aspects foregrounded, for instance, when wine is presented as a commodity through terms such as bargain, product and, often, as a valuable commodity as in treasure. In turn,



Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 53

Table 6.  Terms used to refer to wine in English and Spanish Reference to wine (types)

Instances (tokens) Eng.

Sp.

Drink- and food-related Eng.

3,425

980

Sp.

brew, confection, drink, drinker, drinking, eiswein, elixir, fizz, fruit bowl, glugger, juice, nectar, plonk, quaff, quaffer, quaffing, sipper, syrup, vin, vino, wine elixir, sopa de roble, vinazo, vino, zumo de limón

Winery-related  857  35 Eng. accomplishment, achievement, award-winner, blend, combination, combo, creation, debut, edition, effort, ensemble, entry, example, expression, imitation, interpretation, introduction, job, masterpiece, melange, mix, mixture, offering, performance, prize, project, release, rendering, rendition, selection, speciality, success, take, tour de force, triumph, venture, version, vision Sp. elaboración, experimento, interpretación, obra, prototipo, proyecto, trabajo, versión Wine-related Eng.

Sp.

Critic-related Eng. Sp.

 725  69 ager, baby, balancing act, bargain, beast (of), beauty, behemoth, bell ringer, blockbuster, bomb, bomber, bombshell, brother, bruiser, brute, button pusher, candidate, caricature, cascade, challenger, character study, charmer, cheapie, choice, class act, classic, colossus, companion, compatriot, competition, competitor, concoction, contradiction, cousin, creature, cross (N), crowd pleaser, dead-ringer, dream, drench, edifice, evocation, fatty, Ferrari (of), freak, gem, giant, glitz, glory, Godzilla, granny pleaser, head turner, headline grabber, heavyweight, hulk, incarnation, jewel, keeper, knockout, legend, liquid velvet, live-wire, Lolita, look-alike, mate, meanie, middleweight, monster, monument, neighbour, newcomer, number, package, palate pleaser, partner, peer, poster boy, potpourri, powerhouse, predator, predecessor, pretender (to the throne), product, puffball, puppy, reflection, rival, seductress, show stopper, sibling, softy, son, sophisticate, spider’s web, stable mate, star, statement, strand of pearls, street-walker, study, stuff, stunner, successor, superstar, sweetie, symphony, thoroughbred, treasure, tropical model, turn-on, upstart, value, whore, whore-like, winner, workhorse, work of art bebé, bestia, bomba, caballo ganador, caricatura, clásico, compañero, discípulo, edición, ejemplar, ejemplo, estrella, exponente, gigante, hermano, número, paisano, pequeño, potro, predecesor, producto,quintaesencia, recital, reedición, referente, representante, respuesta, rey, sinfonía, sustituto, toro    27   3 curiosity, discovery, delight, enigma, experience, oddity, paradox, rarity, surprise experiencia, rareza, rompecabezas

54

Representing wine

offering, release, job, obra and trabajo (both mean ‘work’) point to the producers of the wine, while discovery, enigma, experience/experiencia or rareza ‘rarity’ convey the critic’s reaction towards the wine assessed in the TN. Finally, terms such as crowd-, granny- and palate-pleaser bring to mind the consumers of wine and the main function of wine as a product to be enjoyed. Most such terms are unmistakably evaluative and, therefore, always express the critic’s assessments of the wine. However, terms such as keeper, show stopper, head turner, headline grabber or charmer, usually offered at the end of TNs, presuppose potential consumers. As always in language use, things are not neat, simple and straightforward. A great many, or maybe most, of the terms are not easily categorized as focussing either on constitution or function but they express both constitutional and functional aspects wrapped up in one form. For instance, fruit bowl describes the wine at the same time as it may well offer a consumption recommendation. In addition to showing how language can be used to highlight different aspects and different knowledge domains of wine, the naming of wine itself is a good example of the usefulness of metonymization, i.e., the use of expressions as shortcuts that point to a specific aspect related to the production or consumption of wine. In this regard, the examples in Table 6 illustrate the part for whole metonymy, where the part functions as an indication of the aspect that is talked about in a certain context (Paradis, 2004; Warren, 2006; Benczes et al., 2011; Littlemore, 2015). Wine metonymizations are discussed in more detail in the next section. 4.1.1 Metonymy As already pointed out in the previous section, the terms used to refer to wine are all metonymical in the sense that they highlight specific aspects of wine that are in focus when they are used. Since TNs are short descriptive and evaluative texts, metonymies are efficient shortcuts that zoom in on different aspects of wine and, sometimes, on meaning aspects that evoke evaluative meanings. Some metonymies are shared with other beverages, e.g., beer, tea or coffee. They are all entities we may refer to as drinks, i.e., a superordinate motivated by the metonymy action for substance, or containers and measures such as bottle, glass or drop, i.e., the metonymies container for content and measure for substance. Other metonymies, on the other hand, are specific to wine. For instance, wines are often referred to by their colour (red/tinto, white/blanco, rosé/rosado), the processes involved in the production of them (a Brut Nature, a fino, a smaragd, a moelleux, a Crianza, a Sélection de Grains Nobles, a Gran Reserva), the vintage year (a 1990), the producer (a Trimbach), the dominant grape variety (a Grüner-Veltliner, a Cabernet), the wine’s pedigree (a Premier Cru, villages, a 2eme grand cru classé, a Grosses

Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 55



Gewachs) and, most often, geographical source specifications that range from country to appellation to cru or lieu dit (an Australian, a Savennières, a Morgon, a Clos Windsbuhl). Table 7 shows examples of the types of metonymical expressions found in the English and Spanish corpora. The table is organized in accordance with the entities that inform the metonymies that stand for the wine as such and entities that are extrinsic to the wine, but nonetheless crucial for it. Table 7.  Metonymies for wine in English and Spanish Intrinsic traits of wine Grape variety Eng.

Sp.

Instances Eng

1,037 200 albariño, aligote, barbera, cab, cabernet (sauvignon), cabernet-merlot, carignan, chard, chardonnay, chenin, CSM, dolcetto, gamay, garnacha, gewurz, gewurztraminer, grenache, gris, gruner, GSM, malbec, Malvasia, merlot, monastrell, mourvedre, muscat, nebbiolo, petit sirah, Petit Verdot, Picpoul, pinot (noir), pinot blanc, pinot grigio, pinot gris, pinotage, primitivo, riesling, Romorantin, Roussanne, S.B., sangiovese, sauvignon (blanc), Scheurebe, semillon, shiraz, syrah, tempranillo, Tokay-Pinot Gris, TPG, Traminer, verdejo, Verdelho, verdicchio, Vermentino, viognier, zin, zinfandel albariño, albillo, bobal, cabernet, chardonnay, chenin, garnacha, gewurz, gewurztraminer, godello, grüner veltliner, macabeo, malbec, mencia, merlot, monastrell, moscatel, riesling, sauvignon, syrah, tempranillo, ull de llebre, verdejo, zinfandel

Colour Eng. Sp.

blanc, red, rosé, white blanco, rosado, tinto

Vintage year Eng. Sp.

date, vintage añada, año, date

Type of wine (incl. process, pedigree) Eng.

Sp.

Sp

  521

160

  456

 61

  325

561

auslese, BA, beerenauslese, claret, claret-like, crianza, cuvée, Fume-Chardonnay, gran reserva, grand cru, growth + ordinal number, kabinett, micro-cuvée, moscato, normale, premier cru, Reserva, reserve, riserva, spatlese, TBA, trockenbeerenauslese, varietal, VdP, vendange tardive, VT amaretto, amarone, amontillado, cava, champagne, crianza, cuvee, ecológico, grand/premier cru, kabinett, monovarietal, multivarietal, oloroso, reciotto, reserva, roble, spatlese, varietal, vendimia tardia, vermut

(continued)

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Representing wine

Table 7.  (continued) Extrinsic traits of wine Location/ appellation/ geographical source Eng.

Sp.

  801

Abtsberg, Alsace, Amarone, Anjou, Aussie, Bandol, Banyul, Barbaresco, Bardolino, Barolo, Batard, Batard-Montrachet, Beaujolais, Bienvenue-BatardMontrachet, Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Brunello, Burg, Burgundy, Cahors, Caillerets, Carinena, CdP, Chablis, Chassagne, Chassagne-Montrachet, Chateauneuf, Chevalier, Chevalier-Montrachet, Chianti, Colonello, Condrieu, Corbieres, Cornas, Corton-Charlemagne, Côte de Beaune, Côte Rotie, Côtes du Rhone, Côtes du Ventoux, Criots-Batard-Montrachet, Crozes, Crozes-Hermitage, Echezeaux, Ermitage, Gigondas, Grail, Grasberg, Graves, Hermitage, Julienas, Jumilla, Koonunga, Languedoc, Listrac, Loire, Macon, Macon-Villages, Madeira, Malborough, Medoc, Metertiere, Meursault, Meursault combinations, Montrachet, Morgon, Mosel, Muscadet, Musigny, Napa, Narvaux, new world, Pauillac, Perrieres, Petit Chablis, Pic St Loup, Pomerol, port, Pouilly, Pouilly-Fuisse, Priorat(o), Pucelles, Puligny, Puligny-Montrachet, Rheingau, Rhone, Ribera, Rioja, Rocche, Rosette, Rully, Saint-Émilion, Saint-Estèphe, Saint-Joseph, Sancerre, Sauternes, Sauvie, Savennieres, Sherry, Sori San Lorenzo, St Julien, Toro, Tuscan, Vaillons, Valpolicella, Vergers, Virondot, Vosne, Vosne-Romanee, Vouvray, Wachau Alella, barolo, Borgoña, Brunello, Burdeos, cariñena, CdP, Chablis, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Cote de Beaune, Coulee de Serrant, Furstentum, gallego, Jerez, Le Montrachet, nuevo mundo, oporto, Priorat(o), Rias Baixas, Ribeiro, ribera, Rioja, Rueda, Saint-Emilion, toro, txacoli/chacoli

Container / Part of container Eng.

bottle, bottling, glass, label

Sp.

botella, etiqueta, magnum

Producer / Winery Eng.

Sp. Measure Eng. Sp.

110

   54

 14

   36

 18

Almaviva, Beaucastel, Cap de Mourlin, Chantegrive, Chateau X, Clos des Papes, Clos Mogador, Coutet, Dominus, Elderton, Grahams, Juan Gil, Kester, Leoville-Barton, Luzon, Margaux, Mondavi, Moro, Musar, Pingus, Ravine, Rayas, Rayas-like Berroja, Chateau X, Chivite, Guitián, Mondavi, Paternina, Pedrosa, Riscal, Tobía, Tondonia, Vega Sicilia, Yquem     1 drop trago

 80



Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 57

The metonymies in Table 7 are divided into intrinsic and extrinsic referents, where the former group has to do with the wine itself, i.e., the grapes, the colour, the type of wine and the vintage, and the latter group includes aspects of location, producer, container or measurement. Within these groups, we find metonymies at different levels of specificity. For instance, a wine referred to as a 1996 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel could also be referred to as the white, the 1996, the German, the Haag, the Riesling, the Mosel, the Brauneberger, the Juffer-Sonnenuhr, the Auslese or the Goldkapsel. In fact, this list could be made longer had we zoomed in on small lots of this wine giving preference to more specific AP or Fuder designation, number of *, Auction status, etc. Even within the same category (say Auslese), the Germans often bottle specific lots that are richer than average and are marked by *, **, ***, or even individual barrels (Fuder) with different numbers, and they also reserve special lots for auctions. We must note that these more concrete namings co-exist with expressions of an evaluative, poetical and even pretentious nature such as elixir, ambrosia and nectar of the Gods. In this respect, the Spanish term caldo (‘broth’, ‘bouillon’) is a particularly interesting term, which was originally used to refer to traditional mulled wine but is now used about wine in general, especially good ones. However, in this context we must add that caldo has become frowned upon but it is nevertheless still used pretentiously in the sense of good wines. Because wine assessment relies heavily on the unified general patterns of sensory-cued input, it is important to regard wine as a whole to be more than the sum of its parts. In this sense, the components of wines demand conceptualizations as distinct entities that interact with one another. Thus, sensory metonymies of the body part, e.g., nose and palate, for the corresponding sensation, e.g., this wine has better nose than palate. The importance of the metonymy organ for sensation may be attested by the high number of occurrences of terms such as mid-palate, mouth, nose and palate in English (3,441 instances in 6,000 texts) and boca, nariz and paladar in Spanish (4,298 instances in 6,000 texts), all of them used to describe the traits of wine ascertained through those body parts, while, at the same time, pointing to the tasting stage where that appreciation takes place. The following examples illustrate the use of metonymies to refer to both the wine and the tasting stages.



(1) In Rueda, sometimes the Sauvignon Blanc and Verdejo taste similar. But in this case there’s no mistaking things. This S.B. is sharp, with teeth to the nose and palate. […]. As good as you’re going to find in Spanish Sauvignon.

(2) Una tonelada de bayas rojas frescas (grosella, frambuesa), una boca jovencísima pero cargada de materia frutal densa y finísima. ‘A ton of fresh red berries (redcurrant, raspberry), a very young mouth but loaded with dense and really fine fruit matter.’

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Representing wine

(3) La nariz grita ¡Monastrell! ‘The nose shouts: Monastrell!’

In these examples the aromatics and flavours of the wines are envoked by means of the corresponding sense organs nose and palate. This is both economical and vague enough to equip critics with the flexibility to avoid aroma/flavor distinctions, and at the same time it enables such unlikely expressions as with teeth to the nose and palate, where teeth (meaning bite as a term commonly used to describe acidity, not exclusive to wine) follows the same metonymization pattern by contingency. Metonymical shortcuts of this kind help tasters and reviewers highlight the aspects in focus in just one word, which provides an explicit meta-comment for the readers to navigate in the descriptions and focus their attention on the sensation discussed. This is of help since the descriptors are used across the different sensory modalities. 4.2

Sensations construed as properties and objects through language

Like most experiences in the world, wine tastings comprise highly complex interactions between sensory experiences, different sensory modalities and memories of previous sensory experiences. It is the task of wine critics to communicate their experiences, and their success hinges on their ability to translate their sensations into language in a way so that their readers can interpret, and, ideally, also relate to. A good description should give rise to an aesthetic response on the part of the reader. In Chapter 3, we showed that the structure of TNs is iconic with the tasting event itself, i.e., the discourse practice emulates the actual tasting practice. We also introduced two different types of analytical schemas, namely the Aroma Wheels and the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) system, both of which include terms that we then encounter in TNs. Those terms are primarily adjectival and nominal expressing properties and object concepts. In examples (4) and (5) we see how and where in the text these meanings are used.



(4) This is a deep ruby/purple-coloured wine with sweet notes of espresso intermixed with jammy blackberry and cassis fruit. It is supple-textured with sweet tannin, copious fruit and glycerine, and a long, persistent, harmonious finish.

(5) Amarillo pajizo bastante pálido. Aroma de intensidad correcta, con fruta limpia y fresca (manzana y algún recuerdo cítrico). En boca es de cuerpo medio, con acidez correcta, fresco pero sencillo, con un final discreto. ‘Fairly pale straw yellow. Correct aromatic intensity, with clean and fresh fruit (apple and some citrus hint). On the palate it is medium bodied, with correct acidity, fresh but simple, with discreet finish’.



Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 59

The English example (4) reviews a red wine and the Spanish (5) a white wine, and both of them start with a description of the colour of the wine (a deep ruby/purplecoloured, amarillo pajizo bastante pálido ‘fairly pale straw yellow’). Thanks to the explicit colour specifications, the reader, already here, gets a clear hint to what this wine is like. This visual information is followed by a description of the smell of the wines, which in (4) and (5) is accounted for through entities referring to things we eat and drink: espresso, blackberry, cassis fruit, manzana ‘apple’ and recuerdo cítrico ‘citrus fruit memory/hint’. It is worth pointing out that these object descriptors, which are used about the smell of the wines, also have colour. This is not explicitly stated but conveyed on the sly as part of the review where the smell of the wine is described. This is an interesting aspect that is likely to go unnoticed when we just read individual TNs. We will return to this observation in some detail later in this chapter. Furthermore, the taste and texture of the wines in (4) and (5) are rendered by expressions relating to fruit (fruit/fruta) as well as more technical components (tannin, glycerine, acidez ‘acidity’) and also by expressions referring to the reviewers’ experience of size and volume in the mouth, namely, cuerpo medio/medium-bodied. We also see that the objects used are modified by properties of dimensions, which have the double function of qualifying the objects in various ways and, at the same time, add an evaluative component. These properties are scalar, which means that there can be more or less of them. For instance, the taste of the wine may be sweet, very sweet or somewhat sweet (Paradis, 2001, 2008). We return to degrees and amounts in Chapter 6. Such property expressions are used across the board. They may refer to colour specification (jammy, pale) and colour intensity (deep), aroma (limpio ‘clean’), and fruit character (fresca ‘fresh’), sweetness in smell and taste (sweet), touch (supple), length (long, persistent) and some summing up experiences about the finish and the whole experience (harmonious, discrete ‘discrete’). In the Spanish data, some of these property descriptors are of a more absolute and prescriptive type. In (5) the wine is deemed to have a level of acidity that is correct, acidez correcta ‘correct acidity’, a rendering that is much more authoritative than its synonym balanced. In the above TNs we can also see modifications of the property meanings in the form of scalar degree modifiers of those properties. This is the case of bastante pálidez, where bastante ‘fairly’ is a modifier of ‘paleness’ and thereby specifies an even more narrow range of the scale of paleness of the white wine than paleness itself would. In order to illustrate the points just discussed, we move from examples of individual TNs to the English and Spanish data sets where we searched for descriptors across the different modalities to find out what kind of descriptor types are more frequent and what kind of descriptors are typical of each modality. With respect to frequency, we started by searching a large data set consisting of some 33,000

60 Representing wine

TNs from our Robert Parker database, the Specific Corpus, and found that smell attracts the major part of the descriptors, closely followed by taste and touch, while vision attracts the fewest. The proportions of the number of descriptor types are 50% for smell and 41% for taste/touch and 9% for vision (Paradis & Eeg-Olofsson, 2013). These proportions are revealing in the sense that they show where the main assessment focus is. It is also clear from example (6), which includes only very short statements about the colour of the wine whereas the descriptions of smell, taste and touch are longer, more elaborate and involve rich and complex meanings.

(6) While no one will confuse the 2005 with this estate’s prodigious 1990, it is an outstanding effort from one of St.-Emilion’s finest terroirs. In terms of potential, the vineyard is exceeded only by Ausone, Pavie and Belair for micro-climate and exposition. A beautiful dark ruby/purple colour is accompanied by an ethereal nose of blueberry liqueur, spring flowers, melted licorice, raspberries, and crushed rocks. Medium-bodied with good acidity, sweet but high tannin, a broad mouthfeel, and admirable elegance as well as freshness, this beauty should age easily for 25+ years. Anticipated maturity: 2015–2035.

In this TN, the colour of the wine is described as beautiful dark ruby/purple, while its smell is presented in much richer terms (nose of blueberry liqueur, spring flowers, melted licorice, raspberries, and crushed rocks), as are taste and touch (medium-bodied with good acidity, sweet but high tannin, a broad mouthfeel, and admirable elegance as well as freshness). Taking a closer look at how the wine is described across the sensory modalities with respect to the properties and the objects, we see that the descriptors are both similar across the modalities and differ from one another. Table 8 gives an overview of examples of descriptors across vision, smell, and taste/touch that will be important for our discussion of what properties are used in TNs and also later on when we zoom on cross-modal correspondences in the tasters’ descriptions of their sensations. The top rows of Table 8 show descriptors that are shared across the sense modalities and refer to simple properties of dimensions such as dark, light, deep, soft, deep, thin, tight, full, weak, big, chewy, dense and dry. Most of these terms are common core words and highly flexible as to the kind of domains they can be instantiated in. In other words, the expressions are multifunctional across semantic domains, registers and genres. Beneath those are modality specific terms, but, as we will see later, what we here refer to as modality specific may not be so modality specific after all. The visual experience of wine is described through common words related to colours such as dark/oscuro, light/claro, bright/brillante. Some visual terms are used across the sensory domains (deep/intenso, soft, strong and thick), while others

Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 61



Table 8.  List of examples of different descriptors of vision, smell, and taste/touch Vision Eng. Sp. Eng. Sp.

bright, brilliant, dark, deep, dense, full, light, shallow, soft, solid, strong, thick, weak, young atractivo, bonito, brillante, claro, cubierto, intenso, opaco, oscuro, pálido, subido amber, black, blue, crimson, deep-ruby, garnet, green, plum, purple, red, white amarillo, ambarino, anaranjado, amoratado, atejado, alimonado, caoba, cardenalicio, castaño, cereza, cobrizo, dorado, granate, oro, pajizo, picota, rubí, verdoso, violáceo

Smell Eng. Sp. Eng. Sp.

Eng. Sp.

deep, expansive, focused, full, huge, thin, tight, weak cerrado, clásico, compacto, complejo, con carácter, concentrado, contenido, correcto, corto, elegante, evolucionado, expresivo, fino, intense almond, apple, apricot, blackberry, earthy, floral, game-like, musty, nut, oaky, Oriental, peach, perfumed, rose, spice-box a frutos secos, a tierra húmeda, acetaldehído, ahumado, almendrado, balsámico, cítricos, cuero, de fruta, de intensidad + Adj, de tipo tropical, especiado, floral, tostado animal-like, caramel-infused, cassis-scented, chocolate-drenched N/A

Taste/touch Eng. Sp. Eng. Sp.

austere, big, chewy, deep, dense, dry, fat, long, pure, rich, ripe, supple, sweet ácido, apretada, crujiente, desligado, dulce, excelente, en filigrana, fina, fluida, fresco, goloso, grasa, suave, tierna concentrated, creamy-textured, multi-dimensional, oily, silken-textured, sustained, textured frutal, a frutas, glicérica

are more closely linked to, but, by no means restricted to, the colour domain, as in black, blue, amarillo ‘yellow’ or expressions that spring from names of objects (ruby/rubi, straw/paja, gold/oro, anaranjado ‘orange coloured’, atejado ‘brick red’) and even people such as cardenalicio ‘cardinal purple’. The former sets are all gradable scalar properties of contentful dimensions (dark along a scalar dimension of darkness, and soft along the hardness scale, as described in the model of meaning shown in Table 2 in Chapter 2, see also Paradis & Willners, 2011), while the latter are similar to object concepts in that they are defined through a set of contentful quality dimensions (blue formed on the basis of three integral dimensions: hue, saturation and brightness, see Gärdenfors, 2014, p. 21). Like colour specifications, the expressions relating to experiences of smell may also be described through general dimensional property words such as weak/débil,

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Representing wine

deep/intenso, thin/fino, but the wordings and the meaning construals differ from both colour descriptions and descriptions of the taste and texture. Smell is mainly described through derivations of terms that refer to objects, such as fruity/afrutado, floral/floral, spicy/especiado and smoky/ahumado, and the objects themselves, e.g., apricot/albaricoque, spice-box/caja de especias, blackberry and cuero ‘leather’, in which case the reader has to zoom in on the smell of these objects through a construal of focus of attention (see Table 2 describing LOC). Descriptors of this kind are the most common type for smells, and their application is covered by analysis schemas of the Aroma Wheel type shown in Chapter 3. Finally, the descriptors of the experience of the wine in the mouth are typically expressed both by properties along general spatial dimensions such as long, big, deep, or even more specific property words along scale dimensions such as chewy, supple, austere, textured and oily. Properties along scale dimensions are covered by analytical schemas that make use of scalar representations for the identification of vision, smell, taste and touch such as the WSET and also in a less explicit way in the German Aroma Wheel (see Chapter 3). The usefulness of portraying sensory experiences, primarily smell but also touch and taste (the latter, technically, smell from inside) in this way is that there is no tangible referent that can be discussed with other people outside the self. What wine critics do, then, is to make use of familiar natural objects from the vegetal, chemical or geological spheres so that people may relate to those objects’ visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile properties and, by so doing, they evoke the addressees’ memories of such objects and memories of episodes that involve those objects. Semantically speaking, the object becomes the referent. When using the object to talk about, say, smell, the olfactory region of the contentful conceptual structure of the object is the profiled domain. The interesting thing is that even though smell is profiled, colour, taste and texture are there at the same time, i.e., you get them for free as it were. Smell is the foregrounded part that is made salient, and the other sensory regions are substructures of the whole together with many other concepts that form part of what we know about the object in question. Put differently, the way we talk about sensory experiences is reflected in the way we think about them and feel them, which is not something that applies to sensory meanings only, but is pervasive in language and is always the case for complex concepts such as concrete conceptual structures formed from contentful structures. These expressions referring to objects are construed through metonymization, which has the effect of making one aspect of the object salient. The expressions as such are whole for part configurations, where the objects are named, but the profiled structure is the olfactory region of the whole. While the construal is metonymization, this is not metonymy proper, like bottle for the wine itself, but



Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 63

regular zone activation that happens in all contexts and in all language use, in particular for meanings with a complex domain potential (for a detailed discussion of these distinctions, see Paradis, 2004). Table 9 gives examples of common descriptors and thereby illustrates what kind of dimensions and objects they evoke (the ontological categories) in our wine data. Table 9.  Ontological categories of object descriptors and examples Ontological categories

Examples of descriptors

fruit herbs and spices flowers and plants sweets beverages minerals human beings

apple/manzana, lemon/limón vanilla/vainilla, nutmeg/nuez moscada violet/violeta, cedar/cedro chocolate, jam/mermelada coffee/torrefactos, tea/té chalk/tiza, earth/tierra body/cuerpo, backbone/espina dorsal, nose/nariz

The use of descriptors from categories such as fruit, minerals and spices is interesting because it is motivated by the fact that concrete word meanings, in contrast to abstract meanings, evoke rich sensory experiences which are intimately tied up with our experiences in life and thereby trigger memories of those sensory experiences (Huang et al., 2010). For instance, it is well-known that odour-cued memories, i.e., episodic memories, are both biologically (nature, living matter) and phenomenologically (subjective experiences) different from visually cued memories evoked by words or pictures. Olfaction is particularly interesting since it is directly linked to the limbic system and to the amygdala-hippocampal complex, which is involved in both emotion and memory for places. Smells are often are older memories from the first decade of our lives and, as such, producing a stronger feeling of being brought back in time and a higher degree of emotional arousal, even if they are thought of less often than visually cued memories (Willander & Larsson, 2006). In a study of taste and smell words in English, Winter (2016b) also shows that there is a probabilistic tendency for words associated with these senses to be more strongly valenced and also to appear in more emotionally valenced contexts. He also shows that in his data smell words are more negative than taste words, and that they occur more often in negative contexts. All this points to the fact that there are different prerequisites for the social practice of tasting wine carried out by wine critics and the word-cued information that readers receive. There is a relative shortage of domain-specific property descriptors of the sensory experiences involved, and this shortage has been taken as a sign of our lack of words for talking about smell and taste (Rouby et al., 2002; Majid

64 Representing wine

& Buhrenhult, 2014). However, there is reason to examine this issue from other angles and with explicit statements about how meaning in language is modelled. At this point in time, research on how we actually mediate sensory perceptions through language is still scarce. We need more work on this using concept-driven analyses of authentic communication (Paradis, 2015b). Interesting work on sensory perceptions have been carried out through the window of individual words (with the tacit assumption that they are the primary resources), pre-selected by the analyst or through automatic retrievals from digital data sources. For instance, Strik Lievers & Winter (2018) found that verbs are always over-represented for both sound and touch. These results also reinforce the need for a conceptually driven textual analysis of how descriptions of experiences in sensory domains are expressed. With respect to the overall number of words for each sensory modality, research suggests that vision ranks highest whereas taste and smell rank lowest (Strik Lievers & Winter, 2018; Winter et al., 2018). The dominance of vision vocabulary has also been shown to hold good in a study of short conversation in 13 different languages (San Roque et al. 2015). 4.3

Cross-sensory descriptors: Synaesthesia and syncretism

As we point out in different places of this book, the descriptions of the sensory modalities in TNs are normally fairly neatly presented in an orderly fashion from vision and smell to taste and touch. Taste and touch, however, are often conflated in TNs, and the reason for this conflation is that they are often very difficult to tease apart. Experientially, they are two sides of the same coin in that putting something into our mouths necessarily gives rise to a feeling of its texture. Experientially, this is also true of smell and taste since taste is also a matter of smell. Trying to experience the taste of something is very difficult if we have a cold or our noses are blocked. The reason for giving smell a designated place in TNs is probably that what is referred to as smell in TNs is what the critic experiences from outside when sniffing the wine and, therefore, it can easily be separated from taste, which is the subsequent step in the tasting procedure. The prominence given to smell in terms of number of descriptors in the TNs does not mean that visual experiences are of less importance than the stimuli from the other senses. Strictly speaking, all sensory perceptions converge in our appreciation of wine (e.g., Demattè et al., 2006; Oberfeld et al., 2009; Spence et al., 2014; Spence & Wang, 2015). For instance, we searched the Robert Parker corpus, the Specific Corpus, for olfactory descriptors of red wines and white wines.

Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 65



Table 10.  Common object descriptors for reds and whites: Dark objects and light objects respectively Red wines

White wines

cassis, spice, cherry, currant, licorice, blackberry raspberries, mineral, black-cherry, chocolate, plum, pepper, blueberry, wood, oak, tar …

apple, pear, peach, flower, honey, oil, sugar, butter, orange, herb, spice, honeysuckle, pineapple, melon, vanilla, apricot, grapefruit, almond, hazelnut, salt …

A look at these data reveals an interesting correlation between the colours of the objects used for describing the wines, i.e., whether it is red or white (Paradis & Eeg-Olofsson, 2013). While the smell of red wines is mainly described through objects that are dark such as licorice, blackberry, tar or chocolate, white wines are mostly portrayed through objects that are light such as honey, peach, melon or grapefruit. These are the main trends, but there are also a number of descriptors that are used for both red and white wines, for instance, the term spices. The smell and colour of spices in the different uses in actual texts become more specific in the contexts where the descriptor is used, as illustrated in examples (7) and (8) describing a red and a white wine respectively.

(7) It possesses enthralling aromas of black raspberries, dark cherries, beef blood, and Asian spices that give way to an oily-textured, magnificently concentrated, highly-refined, and very focused personality.



(8) This decadent offering is studded with lychees, yellow plums, roses, assorted white flowers, and spices whose effects linger in its extensive finish.

In (7) the term spices in the description of the red wine is surrounded by dark objects, but this is not the case in the description of the white wine in (8) where the same term is surrounded by light-coloured objects such as lychees, yellow plums, roses and white flowers. The more specific idea about the type of spices involved in a given wine becomes clear in the contexts where the terms are used. It is worth noting that spices is not a basic category giving rise to a clear image like cherry or blood do. Rather, it is a category at a superordinate level, i.e., spices can be of many different kinds such as a seed, fruit, root, bark and they are primarily used for flavouring, preserving or colouring food. Rather than giving rise to a visual image, the members of this category are kept together on the basis of what they are, i.e., their constitution, and what they are used for, i.e., their function (see also Chapter 3 in this respect). We take the ontological cross-over of descriptors for the different sensory modalities as reflected in the vocabulary to be symptoms of synaesthesia in the wine tasting event, which we define as joint sensations that are involuntary in the sense

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that we cannot tease them apart. In that sense we may well say that people are “synaesthets” when it comes to assessments of sensory modalities in combination as when we taste wine. The sensory experiences merge and form a whole. Morrot et al. (2001) show that the initial experience of the colour of a wine is capable of hi-jacking all other sensual perceptions to the degree that even professionals in the field may be taken in, and start to describe white wines dyed red by using descriptors that are normally used for red wines. The large body of vocabulary that crosses the modality boundaries is interesting. We find both nominal descriptors, referring to objects of different kinds, and also many adjectival meanings that may be instantiated across the sensory domains, e.g., deep/profundo, soft/blando, big/grande, bright/brillante, light/ligero, thick/grueso, thin/delgado, solid/sólido, strong/fuerte, shallow/poco profundo, sweet/ dulce, smooth/suave, round/redondo, sharp/afilado, dense/denso, warm/cálido, weak/ débil, dark/oscuro, broad/ancho, fat/grueso and hard/duro. The meanings of these words are very flexible and adjustable to the domains where they are instantiated. At a general level, a word such as deep evokes a property of a given dimension such as verticality, with deep and shallow at either end where deep is the lower point, but it can also be associated with other domains with a meaning shift in accordance with that domain. For instance, when instantiated in the colour domain deep relates to dark colours as opposed to bright colours. A deep sound is low as opposed to a shrill sound, which is high, and so on and so forth. In wine language deep is frequently used across all four modalities. In addition to expressions such as deep nuttiness, deep garnet, deep raspberry, deep mouth-coating, deep also directly qualifies the sensory perceptions deep colours, deep scents, deep aromas, deep texture, deep flavours and deep finish. These cross-modal correspondences are typical of most of the property words. For instance, colour descriptors such as black and white are commonly used as modifiers in the descriptions of object descriptors for smell.6 For instance, black fruits, black cherries, black chocolate, black raspberries, black currants, and white flowers, white peaches, white pepper, white fruit, white currants. Interestingly, there are also a couple of cases in our data where white directly modifies aroma without a specification of an object, as in example (9).

(9) The 2001 Chardonnay Marina Cvetic, in addition to its ripe lemon and white aromas and subtle oak spices, manages to combine a tonic acidity to the volume and viscosity of the flavors.

6. This does not only apply to monochromatic, but also to chromatic descriptions. See Table 11 and more explicit instances such as yellow plums in (8).



Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 67

Shen (1997) and Shen & Gadir (2009) have treated property words as synaesthetic metaphorical extensions of the literal meaning. Their argument is that there is a literal meaning from which metaphorical readings extend. For instance, the literal meaning of soft is related to touch, and other uses such as soft colours, soft nose, soft flavours, soft mouth-feel and soft finish involve an extension from touch to vision, smell and taste. What this boils down to is that soft mouth-feel is the only congruent, literal meaning. All other meanings are metaphorical extensions from the domain of touch. This reasoning entails that soft is polysemous across these uses, i.e., has different senses, which is an issue that is not uncontroversial in semantics (Paradis, 2015b). Already in the 1940s in his work on synaesthesia in poetry, Ullman (1945) proposed a sensory hierarchy and a directional principle of extensions in metaphors. The proposed direction is from touch to taste to smell to sound and vision. This proposal has been acknowledged in areas beyond poetry research by scholars interested in sensory meanings and sensory expressions, for instance, Lehrer (1978), Viberg (1984), Sweetser (1990), Shen (1997), Popova (2003, 2005), Plümacher & Holz (2007) and Shen & Gadir (2009). It was on the basis of Ullman’s hierarchy and directional principle that Shen (1997) and Shen & Gadir (2009) developed their Conceptual Preference Principle, which states that the preferred direction of metaphorical mappings is from the lower domains of touch and taste to the higher domains of vision and sound.7 The distinction between the sensory perceptions is made on the basis of closeness to the perceiver. The lower sensory domains (touch, taste and smell) are closer to the perceiver than the higher ones in that they require more or less direct contact with the perceiver. The Conceptual Preference Principle has two entailments, namely (a) that meanings do not extend downwards from say vision to smell, and (b) that the extended or metaphorical senses are different from the source sense. It is not difficult to find numerous examples in our data that challenge the Conceptual Preference Principle. Let us take a closer look at the uses of soft and dark in our corpus data to find out if they behave as predicted by the Conceptual Preference Principle. According to this principle, soft is primarily about touch and the other uses are formed through upward extensions for the other meanings. There is a tacit assumption, not explicitly stated, that when soft is used about smell, taste or colour, soft is polysemous (also about hearing as in soft voice, soft sound). In order to set up a simple test to find out whether these uses are sufficiently different from one another to represent different senses or similar enough to be just readings of the same sense, we may use traditional semantic co-ordination tests. If they are different senses, no 7. See also Traugott & Dasher’s (2005, p. 72) Figure 2.4 for directionality of diachronic change in language along the same lines.

68 Representing wine

zeugma (or pun) will be created when they are co-ordinated. For instance, both the smell and the colour are soft, both the colour and the flavours are soft, both the touch and the colour are soft. The effect is that no strong zeugmatic effect (pun) is created. Hence, when they are instantiated in the different sensory domains, they do not behave as different senses of soft, just different readings of soft. This casts doubts on the claim of Conceptual Preference Principle regarding the polysemous and metaphorical nature of such sensorial correspondences. A corpus study on this topic shows that most combinations of the directionality principle reflect the frequency of these association types, rather than represent universal constraints on synaesthetic transfers (Strik Lievers, 2015). In contrast to soft, for which the alleged source meaning is at the beginning of the hierarchical system, the source domain of dark is vision, which is at the end of the hierarchy. Like soft, dark is also used across the sensory domains. Apart from dark colours, we also have dark aromas, dark flavours, and all kinds of combinations with objects such as dark plum and dark tobacco. This state of affairs poses problems for the directional principle because the target meaning goes from vision to both smell and taste instead of the other way round. Again, for dark traditional semantic truth tests using co-ordination do not give rise to aberrant readings, as we can see in both the aroma and the colour are dark or both the colour and the flavours are dark. Moreover, the cross-sensorial property expressed by dark does not seem to be autonomous enough to have distinct senses either. Yet, it is important to note that when these property meanings combine with entities of different kinds, there is a difference. For instance, descriptions like ?both the aroma and the sky are dark, ?both the flavour and the sofa are soft, or ?both the voice and the sofa are dark are autonomous and cannot be combined without the creation of these strange results. This is a sign that property words such as dark or soft actually do not evoke two senses when they are used to qualify sensory experiences directly, while co-ordinations of sensory experiences and objects create a conceptual gap that is large enough to make the property meanings autonomous and thereby polysemous (Paradis, 2015b). The above discussion highlights another thorny issue, which concerns whether the cross-sensorial uses of descriptors are metaphorizations at all. Metaphor is a Construal of Comparison across Contentful domains (see Chapter 2). The construal involves a mapping across contentful domains where the configurational template is kept constant (Lakoff, 1990; Forceville & Jeulink, 2011; Paradis, 2015a). For instance, Their relationship is at a crossroads is a construal of comparison (i.e., metaphorization) across the domain of a concrete journey and the abstract notion of a relationship. This is made possible through the invariant configuration of a path from one point to another that links the domains and makes them understandable to us.



Chapter 4.  Descriptors of wine across the senses 69

While expressions such as dark aromas, dark colours or dark flavours are configured according to a binary scale structure, where dark is at one end and light at the other, it is hard to see what the Construal of Comparison would be. All of the domains in the examples are concrete primary domains. The correspondences are across these concrete domains and no concrete-abstract correspondence relations are at work. The different perceptions are interrelated in the sensorium. At the conceptual level, the meanings are close and the regions between them are not wide enough to allow for autonomous senses in language. However, if we instead imagine contexts such as dark colour, dark personality or dark story, the metaphorical cross-overs from vision to personality and story involve Comparison across domains where darkness is associated with negative aspects such as sadness or danger, in contrast to its opposite light, evoking positive meanings of happiness and lightheadedness. Just like senses, readings are regions in conceptual space. Senses are distant from one another, while readings tend to cluster in groups, and as such they show different degrees of cohesiveness (Cruse, 2002; Paradis, 2005, 2015a). In cases of substantial distance, we are dealing with sense distinctions proper, i.e., polysemy. The senses of a word form exhibit strong signs of autonomy and are kept apart by substantial boundaries, whereas readings within a sense are only weakly autonomous or not autonomous at all. It is the symptoms of autonomy are responsible for the effects of various definitional tests such as the zeugma test that provide the evidence for boundaries. The different uses of say soft and dark are not as distinct as to be different senses but are just readings of close conceptual representations of sensory meanings. Moreover, the use of object descriptors is of course also important in the context of cross-sensorial transfers and correspondences. The observation that this is pervasive in wine language does not only apply to properties of the sensory perceptions but also to the activation of properties of object concepts used to describe the sensory perceptions. For instance, blackberry, apple, lemon, vanilla, cedar, chocolate and tobacco all evoke the conceptual structures of relevant aspects of their entire meaning potential, i.e., blackberry, apple, lemon, vanilla, cedar, chocolate and tobacco. For instance, the descriptor blackberry is used to evoke this particular smell of the wine, and through the use of this object descriptor, and based on our cross-modal expectancies we may hazard a guess that the wine is a red wine. This guess is substantiated as we get to know what the other descriptors are, i.e., the company the descriptors keep. This is how the descriptors and their meanings are correlated and intertwined. This does not, however, entail that the meanings of object descriptors are polysemous. In the same way as the uses of the words expressing properties such as soft and dark, the nominal descriptors are monosemous. Consider example (10).

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(10) A blockbuster effort, the 2005 boasts an inky/blue/purple colour along with aromas of crème de cassis, blackberries, truffles, fruitcake, and toasty oak. Pure and full-bodied with significant extract, tannin, acidity, and alcohol, this stunning wine should be very long lived.

In (10), the Construal of the meaning of the smell is through the smell of crème de cassis, blackberries, truffles, fruitcake, and toasty oak. They are construed with focus of attention on smell as the salient dimension of the whole object through a whole for part Configuration Construal. The objects crème de cassis, blackberries, truffles, fruitcake and toasty oak are used to evoke properties of these objects. This is a Construal of salience, namely metonymization, which in the case of wine descriptions does not give rise to multiple meanings of the object descriptors but the activation of a zone within a concept, i.e., within monosemy (for a detailed description of the differences, see Paradis, 2004). In other words, they are not cases of metonymy proper, but cases of zone activation. 4.4 Summary In this chapter, we have discussed the many names for wine and the use of descriptors referring to properties and objects in TNs. With examples from our data sets, we show what words and what meanings are relevant in the descriptions across the sensory experiences. We have shown that word meanings used to describe sensory experiences largely operate across the sensory modalities, both with reference to objects and properties. It is argued that this state of affairs is grounded in the synesthetic nature of the sensorium and is not an epiphenomenon of the fact that we are dealing with wine language. It is the cohesiveness of the conceptual structures of sensory meanings that paves the way for syncretism at the lexical level. If we taste something, we also smell it and feel it, and if we see something, we also have an idea what it smells and tastes like (even though the actual smelling, tasting and feeling cannot be experienced in the absence of the object). Yet, in spite of the sensory power of vision as a point of departure for the experience of wine, expressions of vision do not dominate the descriptions in the reviews and the sensory importance of the description and appreciation of the wine drinking event as such, at least not at the face of it, looking at the individual descriptors for the various sense modalities. But, when we go beyond the surface level to shades of meanings that the descriptors express, we see that there are systematic cross-modal overlaps.

Chapter 5

Metaphor



A wine esthete pokes his sensitive beak into a glass of Champagne. Then, head thrown back, eyes closed and visage wreathed in an otherworldly smile, he incants: “I see – I see – yes, I see a young girl in white, barefooted, running across a vast green lawn, long hair flowing.” That’s metaphor. Another initiate sniffs a white wine of questionable provenance. “Broccoli,” he says, and tosses it out. That’s analogy. (Frank Prial, 1988)

Metaphor is symptomatic of people’s systematic ways of interacting with the world. A standard definition of metaphor is that it involves “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5). By means of this transfer of meaning – or mapping, as cognitive metaphor scholars call it – some concepts, activities or things (the targets in the mapping) are understood in terms of other concepts, activities and things (the metaphorical sources) which, although apparently very different, lend some of their internal logic in the process. In verbal interaction, metaphorical mappings may be expressed or realized by linguistic units of various sorts and ranks, all of which point to the figurative quality of a great deal of our understanding of the world. For instance, when we describe a theory as solidly built, we draw upon construction (the metaphorical source) in order to discuss the soundness, strength etc. of such an abstract thing as a theory (the metaphorical target), and this operation is instantiated in the expression. In other words, metaphorical language is based on a conceptual construal of comparison, and when speakers or writers use it they profile the similarity between the source and the target in that comparison. The pervasiveness of metaphor in winespeak makes it difficult to leave it out of the discussion of wine in this book and, therefore, particular metaphors as well as construals such as metonymy are addressed in sections and chapters that deal with this. What this chapter offers, then, is, an overview of the main metaphorical scenarios articulating wine discourse in general. After addressing some of the issues related to metaphor in winespeak, we describe metaphors particularly concerned with the winemaking process found in documentaries and handbooks on wine as well as TNs and, then, proceed to discuss the metaphors used to describe wine as a product.

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5.1

The metaphorical nature of winespeak

While metaphor is pervasive in everyday communication, some topics and their corresponding discourses seem to be more metaphor-dependent than others, and wine is a case in point. However, although in wine discourse metaphor is used to facilitate understanding, it is also one of the reasons why winespeak is often described as unnecessarily pretentious and even “disorienting and sometimes even unappetizing” (Old, 2013, p. 18). And, yet, without metaphor wine would be hard to discuss, which means that understanding metaphorical language is important in order to communicate about, and even buy wine. This may explain the proliferation of books written by professionals for people who want to learn more about wine, metaphor and winespeak. However, distinguishing between metaphorical language and literal, descriptive-only language is not always easy or agreed upon by wine critics. For instance, when explaining the different ways in which wine may be discussed, Old (2013) compares the metaphorical, subjective and evocative flavour of the description in (1) to the factual, objective, dispassionate and user-friendly quality of (2):

(1) This friendly, inky Syrah tastes of stewed boysenberries, with hints of pencil lead and forest floor.



(2) This Sauternes is full-bodied, silky, and sweet, with strong oak flavors and plenty of balancing acidity.

However, contrary to Old’s views there is more metaphorical language in example (2), starting from the fact that describing a wine as full-bodied involves comparing it to an entity with a body, e.g., a living organism, and, therefore, is metaphorical rather than literal. The same is true for balance in that understanding how something as intangible as acidity can balance a liquid demands a mental leap in that it involves thinking of acidity as having animate or mechanical properties. Strictly speaking, the only metaphorical terms in passage (1) are friendly and hints, compared to full-bodied, silky, strong and balancing in (2). In fact, the use of sweet in (2) may sound very objective but, without the addition of quantification, all it says is that a typically sweet wine as a Sauternes is indeed sweet. Finally, when reading (1) we may wonder what stewed boysenberries and pencil lead and forest floor taste like and, therefore, consider them obscure and pompous even if they all refer to canonical aromatics in winespeak and are not metaphorical (as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4). Clearly, some of the metaphors in wine discourse have become so conventional that they no longer feel salient or creative, at least not for people in the wine community. This is the case for the descriptor hints in (1) meaning essentially nothing



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but subtle presence, usually aromatic, and used for describing other products such as food or perfume. This is also the case for the verb age conventionally used to refer to wine’s evolution with the implication of a figurative life cycle that lies at the core of virtually all wine conceptualization. Other terms such as full (in full-bodied) appear to be more difficult both to apply and understand and are, therefore, often included in the numerous – print and online – glossaries and teaching courses available to wine novices. What is interesting is that, to a large extent, the description relies on metaphorical language, which highlights the ontological status of metaphor in winespeak. Consider the underlined terms in these glossary entries from Wine for Dummies (2006): – Tight: A descriptor for wines that seem to be inexpressive. This term can apply to a wine’s aromas and flavors, or to its structure. – Harmonious: A flattering descriptor of wines that are not only well balanced but also express themselves in a particularly graceful manner. – Full: A descriptor for wines that give the impression of being large and weighty in your mouth. A wine’s fullness can derive from high alcohol or from other aspects of the wine. While perfectly intelligible by anybody, neither the terms in bold nor the underlined ones above are literal: Wines do not have a structure in the same way as solid entities do and, therefore, are not large, i.e., do not have a size. In turn, since wine is not an animate being in the same way as humans and animals are, it cannot be expressive or inexpressive. In fact, harmonious, balanced and graceful could be used as near synonyms in certain contexts, which makes the definition circular with no way out of its figurativeness. Finally, fullness refers to the condition of having no empty space within, say, a container and, therefore, applies to solids rather than liquids. In other words, what these entries and their respective definitions highlight is that without metaphorical language it would be impossible to describe wine and talk about it. The metaphors found in wine texts draw upon such diverse experiential domains as architecture, music, cloth making, or nature, which support communication about everything related to wine, from the winemaking process to its final assessment in the tasting event. These domains contribute to convey two main – and radically different – views of wine. On the one hand, wines are living organisms, which may be further specified as plants, animals or human beings. On the other hand, wines are also described as tangible, three-dimensional solid artefacts of various kinds, e.g., buildings, jewels, pieces of cloth or racing cars. Of course, this does not mean that wine critics actually equate wines with such entities, but compare properties of the source domains with the properties of

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the perception of the wine. The expressions used to describe wines are helpful for surveying the most salient domains of experience informing winespeak. Figure 6 (adapted from Figure 2 in Chapter 1) shows the main metaphorical frames found in wine texts. WINEMAKING (PROCESS)

WINE (PRODUCT)

TASTING

PERCEPTION TYPE WINEMAKER PARADIGM

PRESENCE SALIENCY QUANTITY RANGE

TERROIR EVOLUTION VARIETY STRUCTURE

WINEMAKING IS HAVING OFFSPRING → WINES ARE PEOPLE WINEMAKING IS A (NOTWINERELATED) HUMAN ACTIVITY → WINES ARE THE PRODUCTS OF THOSE ACTIVITIES

WINES ARE LIVING ORGANISMS WINES ARE PEOPLE WINES ARE ARTEFACTS • BUILDINGS • MUSICAL PIECES • TEXTILES

WINES ARE 3D ARTEFACTS WINES ARE PEOPLE + language from geometry, spatial dimensions, and motion. SYNAESTHESIA

Figure 6.  The different dimensions of wine and metaphor

Despite our presentation in Figure 6, most metaphors for wine are closely related. For instance, winemaking is a (not vinous) human activity, such as sculpting or cooking, presents a view of wine as the resulting product of that activity i.e., sculpture or dish (for a discussion on metaphor types and their relationships, see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999; Lakoff & Turner, 1989). Our corpus data point to the fact that metaphor in wine discourse is specialized in the sense that some metaphors may be more suitable for discussing certain aspects of wines than others. Thus, the metaphors used for winemaking in Figure 6 are process-oriented, and usually involve the projection of a rich set of elements across domains, which allows for structuring winemaking in terms of seemingly related practices and scenarios, e.g., winemaking is cooking. Other instances of metaphorical language refer to and qualify the products of those practices, and, therefore, are subsumed by the former, richer metaphors (for instance, the metaphor wines are dishes). Our discussion of these metaphors in turns, then, responds to their descriptive purposes.

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5.2

Process-focused metaphors: Winemaking and related practices

Some metaphors draw attention to the combinatory procedures involved in winemaking and present winemakers as manipulating and combining different kinds of substances – from the more specific and tangible to the more abstract. This is because even if we do not usually think of it in such terms, wine is the result of the felicitous combination of certain elements. This part-whole construal of wine is also a natural consequence of the fact that metaphor is grounded in a part-whole configuration of meaning (metonymization). The configurational part receives the focus of attention in the construal of comparison that is constituted by the metaphorization, as outlined and exemplified in Chapters 2 and 4 and shown in the examples in Table 11. Table 11.  part-whole metaphors for the winemaking process wines are part-whole composites English articulated, blend in/into, complete, component, composition, disconnect, element, embedded, ensemble, hold together, intact, integrated, integrity, interconnect, intermingle, keep together, loose, merge, part, proportion(ed) Spanish completo/a, componente, conectar, conexión, conformar, conjugar, conjunción, conjuntar, conjunto, constituido, desligar(se), desmontar(se), despegar(se), dividir, elemento, encajar, enganchar(se), engarzar(se), enlazar(se), formar(se), fusión, ligar winemaking is a manual craft – Unspecific, general craft Eng.: craft, design, manufacture, tinker, put together Sp.: diseñar, ensamblar, forjar, fraguar, combinar – art & modelling Eng.: hew, etch, fashion, mold, shape, sculpt Sp.: esbozar, esculpir, dibujar – making cloth Eng.: intertwine, interlace, knit, weave Sp.: hilvanar, tejer, encaje – cooking Eng.: stew, season, (follow) recipe, mix ingredients Sp.: condimentar, receta, sazonar, sopa de roble

The second metaphorical frame sees wines as animate entities, and offers concomitant views of winemaking, as shown in Table 12. It portrays this practice as analogous to having children and bringing them up or as raising stock.

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Table 12.  Organic metaphors for the winemaking process wines are (people/animals) animate beings English predecessor, woman, teenager, endangered species, horse, stable mate, thoroughbred Spanish predecesor, pura sangre, caballo, potro, toro, ejemplar winemaking is having offspring – wines have a lineage   Eng.: brother, cousin, sibling, sister, son Sp.: casta, criar, familia, gestarse, hermano, linaje, parentesco winemaking is raising stock   Eng.: breed(ing), stable, pedigree Sp.: pedigrí, cruce

These two metaphorical scenarios are described in the following sections. 5.2.1 Combining parts into a whole: The craft of winemaking wines are part-whole entities presents wines as solid, part-whole entities which result from combining – articulating or assembling – several parts or elements in a way which, if done well, is described as balanced or harmonious – two metaphorically motivated terms related to architectural and musical practices, which, as discussed in Section 5.3.2, also involve combining parts into a whole. In (3)–(5) the emphasis is on the components of a wine and the way in which they come together as a whole.

(3) The already assembled, luxury cuvee of 2003 Chateauneuf du Pape […] is a 12,000-bottle blend of 48 Grenache, 36 Syrah, and 16 Mourvedre.



(4) Still showing the awkward flush of youth, yet all the component parts are there.



(5) Lush flavors blend cherry fruit, toasty oak, hints of coconut, chocolate and cinnamon into a complete and delicious whole.

This part-whole view of wine inevitably leads to presenting winemaking as a manual craft involving either the manipulation of raw matter (sculpt, fraguar ‘forge’) or the combination of several elements into a finished whole (tinker, ensamblar ‘assemble’). The ways these views occur in descriptions of wine illustrate various degrees of explicitness and, also, artistic quality. The former dimension is illustrated in the examples below from the General Corpus.

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(6) The superb [wine] was fashioned from a blend of 35% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Tempranillo, and 10% old vine Carignan.



(7) The tannins are soft edged and well integrated […]. A beautifully sculpted wine.

(8) Punzante, esculpido, largo. ‘Pungent, sculpted, long’ (9) Bien dibujado, de mediana intensidad, con muchos matices de fruta y de bien medida crianza. ‘Well-delineated, of moderate intensity, with abundant fruit nuances and well-measured aging.’ (10) [I]t offers abundant quantities of sweet cherry fruit intertwined with flowers and minerals. […] This is a beautifully knit Chateauneuf du Pape. (11) Añada con un extra de maduración que se integra bien. Frescura perfectamente hilvanada al conjunto. ‘A vintage with extra ripeness that is nonetheless well-integrated. Freshness is perfectly woven into the whole.’

The unspecific, general quality of expressions such as fashioned, integrated and medida ‘measured’ in these examples contrasts with the descriptions of wine and its components as sculpted/esculpido, dibujado ‘drawn’, intertwined, knit and hilvanada ‘tacked’. In turn, such specific terms imply a view of wine as a sculpture, a drawing and a piece of cloth(ing) and, therefore, a view of winemakers as the agents of those practices. Cooking is another activity found in descriptions of winemaking. The perceived similarities in these practices may underlie its recurrent use by winemakers, who present their craft through the metaphor winemaking is cooking. The metaphor is also evoked in TNs whenever critics refer to wines as potions, mixtures or, derisively, sopa de roble ‘oak soup’ and assess them as being too raw or having cooked or confected aromas or flavours. Given the pedagogical flavour of the metaphor, its occurrence in documentaries or introductory handbooks on wine is far from surprising.8 The following extracts with cooking similes come from Vincent Gasnier’s handbook A Taste for Wine (example 12), the documentary A Year in Burgundy (examples 13 and 14) and Jancis Robinson’s book Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover (example 15), three works aimed at a general public. 8. The pedagogical role of cooking metaphors may be further illustrated in the following explanation of what the structure or body of wine is: “The structure or body of a wine refers to its ‘weight’. The simplest way to understand this with the soup metaphor: where the weight ranges from broth, the least…to hearty stew, the most. [http://uncorkedinitaly.com/what-is-meant-b y-the-structure-or-body-of-wine/]

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(12) Most Chateauneuf wines are based on Grenache, and the other grapes are used as a kind of ‘seasoning’ to add complexity. (13) Wine is like cooking, the grapes are just the ingredients, winemaking is the cuisine. (14) I’m like a chef with a secret sauce. I won’t tell. (15) I learnt a lot by working two years at Figeac and after that it was like following a recipe. But once you know well your job, and you’ve integrated the technique as a reflex, then you start to work from feeling.

Finally, both the winemaker’s claim to be like a chef, i.e., more than a mere cook, in (14) and the description of growing expertise as turning to work “from feeling” in (15) point to the artistic dimension of winemaking. This is also the approach chosen in the documentary A Year in Burgundy, which opens with the following straightforward question-answer combo: “Where does really great wine come from? From the heart and the mind of those who created it. The finest winemakers are artists.” This artistic rendering of winemaking carries with it an interventionist view of the process whereby wine is the product of winemakers’ active agency and choices. This contrasts, yet at the same time, often co-exists, with a view of winemaking as letting things happen or, as the Burgundy winemaker in (16) puts it, not getting “in the way of wine”. (16) Growing wines is purely academic. There’s nothing artistic about it. For me it’s all very rational [Cartesian]. And, above all, we shouldn’t get in the way of the wine. Our job is just to be a midwife at the birth of the wine. […] [Concerning the vinification method followed] I feel like an artist now. I paint what I like. Nobody tells me what to do. (17) Frowning, he said, “Someone who makes wine is not creative like a painter. You can’t make whatever you want. You can only make what the fruit produced by your soil can give you.”

Both the rejection of the painter analogy in (17) and the description of winemakers’ role as midwifes in (16) point to the organic scenario shown in Table 12 whereby wines are seen as offspring or as animals raised for specific purposes such as horses or bulls. 5.2.2 Raising wines: Organic metaphors for winemaking A radically different view describes wines as animate beings that are gestated and raised. The first metaphor within this scenario paints winemaking as husbandry or raising stock, typically, of noble animals such as horses in the various English



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corpora and horses and bulls in the Spanish TN corpus.9 The metaphor, however, is not instantiated in a straightforward manner, but is an implication of referring to wines as animals, as illustrated in examples like the following: (18) This is another crowd-pleaser from Dave Powell’s impressive stable of wines. (19) Michael has suggested that racehorse, thoroughbred and carthorse might be more appropriate [to describe these three wines]. (20) Somos fanáticos de Santa Rosa, el gran vino de la bodega, pero Estrecho, su nuevo caballo ganador, logra la cima. […] Su jugoso y refinado paladar son el colofón a una gran obra. Sencillamente genial y entre nuestros favoritos. ‘We are great fans of Santa Rosa, the cellar’s great wine, but Estrecho, its new prizewinner, reaches the summit. […] Its juicy and refined palate is the colophon to a great work. Simply brilliant and one of our favorites.’ (21) Tiene taninos finos y casta de tempranillo de buena viña, dentro de un diseño sencillo, orientado a la fruta […]. ‘It has fine tannins and the race of good tempranillo, in a simple fruit-driven frame, […].’

All in all, however, the most pervasive metaphorical schema irrespective of genre and wine community regards wines as human beings and, as such, as having a personality, state of mind and lineage. The latter trait is particularly salient when winemakers talk about their wines. For instance, at a recent wine fair we interviewed producer Germán R. Blanco and tasted his wines. We wanted to verify a point we make in Chapter 8 concerning his having named a wine after his boy Milú. As he was arranging his 10–15 bottles on the counter, our rather casual question was “So Milú is your child, right?” (meaning, “You named this wine after your son”) to which he turned around somewhat short of hurt and said “They’re ALL mine” (as in “Who did you think makes the others?”). A similar attitude is found in documentaries. For instance, in A Year in Burgundy, one of the winemakers confesses playing classical music to his wines since “wine is alive. From the moment you pick the grapes until the moment you drink it, it’s alive. Music calms it as it matures.”, whereas one of the Champenois states that (22) Winemakers think of their wines like their children. They give birth to them, they watch them grow and flourish, they raise them and, like children, they shape and discipline them all the way through to maturity. When we present a wine, we’re presenting a part of ourselves.

9. A recurrent term borrowed from the horse domain is workhorse, used to refer to and qualify both grapes and types of wine that work well in multiple contexts (e.g., Grenache).

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The proximity of the experience of being born and raised in a family may underlie the pedagogical use of the metaphors winemaking is raising a family and wines have lineage and, accordingly, the high occurrence of their instantiations in wine handbooks and documentaries aimed at introducing wine to the general public (examples 23 and 24). The metaphors are also useful to locate wines within a given paradigm or wine set from the same winery in TNs (example 25). (23) You might also come across the younger sibling of this wine, Rosso di Montalcino, which is made from the same grapes but is not aged for as long. (24) Full-bodied and opulently-textured, it is a close cousin to the famed Roussanne Vieilles Vignes of Chateau Beaucastel. (25) De sus hermanos mayores, los “Pedrosa”, hereda cierta suntuosidad de aromas, basada en la crianza y en las buenas maderas. Trago fluido y, como es costumbre en la casa, viveza de estilo clásica. ‘From its bigger brothers, the Pedrosa, it inherits some aromatic unctuousness based on oak ageing and fine oak. Easy on the midpalate and with the house’s trademark classic liveliness.’

Finally, this familial approach to wine may be also exploited in wine commercials. For instance, one of the spots in the 2004 campaign for the red wines from Navarra appellation (Spain) exploits the metaphor navarra d.o. is a family by portraying the whole appellation as a caring father talking to his wine-son about to leave home (for a full discussion, see Caballero, 2104), and using the slogan “Navarra’s reds. Sons of our land”. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss marketing strategies in detail. 5.3

Product-focused metaphors: The structure and behaviour of wine

The metaphors concerned with wine as a product draw upon the scenarios introduced in the previous section, but yield a larger number and, above all, a wider range of instantiations. The reason for this is the range of topics they help discuss, from the evolution and structure of wine to the assessment of the sensory experience it affords (the latter dimension addressed in Chapters 4 and 5). Table 13 offers a summary of the main metaphors used in English and Spanish to describe wine as a product. What is interesting here is that expressions from all categories often co-occur in the same text. They form metaphorical clusters of the mixed type, a co-existence that is neither controversial nor contradictory.10 Indeed, as discussed throughout 10. On metaphor mixing see Kimmel (2010) and the papers in Gibbs (2016), in particular the chapter dedicated to wine (Paradis & Hommerberg, 2016).



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Table 13.  Product-focused wine metaphors wines are living organisms – wines are plants – wines are animals – wines are people wines are three-dimensional artefacts – wines are buildings – wines are textiles wines are dynamic artefacts

this chapter, animate and inanimate metaphors work nicely together in wine description, highlighting different aspects of the wine profile. Thus, while the language related to the animate frame focuses on the wine’s lineage, development, condition, and behaviour, inanimate metaphors are used to describe the structural and textural properties of wine. An exception is anatomical language in the animate set, which also focuses on structure. The different source domains that form the basis for the descriptions of the wine in (26) are added in superscript. (26) A round shape, ripe pear and lemon nose opens motion this medium-weight human/anatomy, full container flavored white. Grapefruit, spice and green apple coat textile the palate, the texture is fairly rich – maybe even fat organism/anatomy for Riesling – but there’s good acidity to support architecture the fruit. Finishes long spatial with white peach and mineral notes music.

In this text, the anatomical term medium-weight describes the wine as a whole, while the architectural support points to the structural importance of acidity, i.e., one of its components. Other specific traits such as the wine’s nose, flavours and finish are assessed in spatial, geometry terms such as round and long, while anatomy and textile language describe its textural properties as fat or coat[ing] the palate. Finally, as described in detail in Section 6.4, the verb opens combines notions of containment and dynamism to express the first impression of the wine’s aromas, and the musical term notes signifies the presence of some noticeable elements in the aftertaste, i.e., the wine’s finish. In short, wines are living organisms generally focuses on the wine as a whole, portraying it as something that is alive and, therefore, always in a process of constant physiological evolution. In turn, wines are three-dimensional artefacts highlights the different parts, elements or components of wine, and is largely reserved to specifications of wine as having a structure and/or a texture that need to be qualified. In the subsequent sections, we describe the form and function of these metaphors, particularly in TNs where the metaphors help articulate the many different aspects covered by the genre.

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5.3.1 Wine’s state and performance: Organic metaphors The most salient and comprehensive metaphor in wine discourse is wines are animate (living) beings, as instantiated by terms such as muscular, full-bodied, aged, longevity, heavy-weight, expressive or backward. Among these, the three last terms suggest a more specific view of wines as people, while the other four express anatomical and physiological properties shared by humans and animals alike. Table 14.  Organic metaphors in TNs wines are living organisms – General Physiology Eng.: age, die, evolution, force, grow, health, life, longevity, mature, vigorous, weak Sp.: cansado, crecimiento, crianza, envejecer, evolución, fuerza, longevo, vida, vigor Anatomy Eng.: body, backbone, corpulent, fat, flesh, lean, legs, meaty, muscular, sinew Sp.: columna vertebral, cuerpo, delgado, esqueleto, gordo, musculoso, robusto Actions Eng.: appear, come, go, jump, leap, leave, lurk, move, run, swim Sp.: aparecer, pasearse, deslizarse, moverse – Human beings Physiology Eng.: adolescent, baby, infant, infancy, junior Sp.: adolescente, bebé, infancia, juventud, longevo Lineage Eng.: brother, cousin, sibling, sister, son Sp.: casta, hermano, linaje, parentesco, raza Personality Eng.: assertive, bold, extrovert, gentle, personality, proud, serious, sexy, shy, stubborn Sp.: amable, arisco, desenfadado, expresivo, franco, huraño, personalidad, sincero, tímido Actions Eng.: caress, dance, glide, kick, massage, nod, play, settle down, sing, walk Sp.: abrazar, acariciar, alzar(se), arrancar, barrer, caminar, deslizarse, saltar Behaviour Eng.: aplomb, attitude, flirt Sp.: atreverse, avasallar, civilizado Gender Eng.: masculine, feminine, virile, voluptuousness, whore, street-walker Sp.: varonil – Animals Eng.: beast, brute, feline, lion, pedigree, predator, stable, thoroughbred, untamed, workhorse Sp.: bestia, bravo, caballo, domado, indomable, pedigrí, toro – Plants Eng.: bloom, blossom, rooted, well-grafted Sp.: agreste, marchito

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Because the expressions referring to both types often co-occur in TNs, the overall view of the wine thus described depends on the level of specificity of the language used. Consider the following passages: (27) The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Madrona Ranch does not possess the power and structure of the 2001, or the sweetness, density, and flamboyance of the 2002, but it possesses abundant concentration, elegance, and finesse. It is a racy, feminine expression of Cabernet Sauvignon. […] Medium to full-bodied, rich, well-balanced, and accessible, I would not be surprised to see this 2003 hit full maturity before its two older siblings. Anticipated maturity: 2007–2020. (28) Precioso color granate y densa lágrima. Algo cerrado de aromas, huraño, debe airearse con energía para que aflore su interesante buqué. Conserva la carnosidad de un vino joven, paso de boca goloso y amplio. ‘Beautiful garnet colour with dense tears. Slightly closed aromatically, standoffish, needs vigorous aeration so its interesting bouquet can emerge. It retains the fleshiness of a young wine, sweetish ample mouthfeel.’

Both examples include both all-species organic descriptors (power, maturity, carnosidad ‘fleshiness’, joven ‘young’) and descriptors typical in the human realm (feminine, siblings, racy, huraño ‘standoffish’), with the latter types of terms carrying the weight of the description and evoking a personified portrayal of wines. The recurrent use of organically motivated language is far from surprising since wine is, indeed, an organic entity. The juice extracted from grapes changes considerably along its life inside oak casks and bottles (a process referred to as breeding or ageing in English and crianza in Spanish)11 and during the act of serving, tasting and drinking it. Indeed, as shown in Table 15, one of the dimensions covered by the metaphor wines are animate (living) beings is the physiology of wine. Table 15.  The physiology and development of wine Focus

English

developmental adolescent, age, alive, baby, dead, states develop, embryonic, evolution, grow, immature, infancy, life, longevity, maturity, old, survival, youth physical state asleep, bloom, blossom, breathe, dormant, fit, health(y), languid, potency, power, prime, sickly, strength, tired, vigour, vitality, weak

Spanish adolescente, bebé, crianza, edad, envejecer, evolución, infancia, inmadurez, joven, longevidad, precoz, viejo/a, vivo/a agotado/a, débil, despertarse, dormir, energía, fatiga, forma (buena, plena, en estado de), fuerza, lozanía, nervio, potencia, reposo, respirar, saludable, vigor, vitalidad

11. Although crianza and ageing refer to the same process, they approach it in different ways, which suggests a different focus in the two languages. The English term ageing points to the process of the wine growing older inside oak casks or bottles, whereas the Spanish term crianza presents the evolution of the wine as a result of a nurturing.

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The physiology of wine comprises its development and physical condition. The developmental stages of wine may be described in general terms (hit full maturity and joven ‘young’ as in examples 27 and 28) or be specified as those typical of human beings (baby/bebé, infancy/infancia, or adolescent/adolescente). This is further illustrated in examples (29) and (30): (29) This wine is still a baby – a giant baby. Inky-black in colour, rich and fruity on the palate, with great concentration and firm, fresh tannins, it’s appealing now but promises a long, rich life ahead. (30) En la boca tiene bastante potencia y acidez, con viveza y nervio, sabroso. Parece tener materia para envejecer y sobreponerse a la madera que ahora es un poco excesiva. Debería crecer en la botella. ‘The palate has power and acidity, lively, with nerve, savoury. It seems to have enough substance to age and subdue the oak, which is a tad excessive now. Should grow in the bottle.’

Furthermore, the physical – health – condition of wine is expressed by means of terms such as forceful/vigoroso, weak/débil, tired/agotado, or healthy/lozano, all of which provide critical information to help decide on an ideal drinking window or a potential purchase of wine: (31) The finish goes on for quite some time, proof that this is a ripe, healthy wine that is hitting its stride. (32) En boca es potente y maduro, la acidez está más mitigada que en otros años como 55 o 64 y parece algo más cansado, pero aun así muestra su enorme calidad […] con un final que ofrece viveza y amplitud. ‘On the palate it is powerful and mature. The acidity is more subdued here than in other vintages such as 55 and 64, and the wine seems more tired, but even so its enormous quality shows […] in a finish that has liveliness and volume.’

The organic metaphor is also used to describe the structure, behaviour and, as already described in Section 5.2.2, the lineage of wine. In fact, some of the jargon used to refer to the structure and/or structural components of wine (basically, alcohol, sugar, acidity and tannins) is anatomically motivated, as illustrated by medium to full bodied and carnosidad ‘fleshiness’ from examples (27) and (28), and shown in Table 16. For instance, the trickles that run down the inside walls of a glass are conventionally referred to as wine’s legs or tears in English and lágrimas (‘tears’) in Spanish (example 28), and the general effect or the weight of a wine in the taster’s mouth is referred to as its body/cuerpo. Accordingly, wines are described as light-, mediumor full-/big-bodied (de cuerpo ligero/medio, con cuerpo in Spanish) or as brawny/

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Table 16.  The anatomy of wine Focus

English

Spanish

elements structure

legs, tears backbone, big-boned, body, brawny, broad-shouldered, burly, corpulent, curvaceous, disjointed, fat, flesh, lean, lightweight, meaty, muscle, muscular, plump, robust, sinewy, slim, spine, svelte, trim

lágrima, menisco, seno carnosidad, columna vertebral, corazón, corpulencia, cuerpo, delgado, descarnado/a, esbelto, esqueleto, hechuras, musculoso, robusto, porte

musculoso/recio, fat/gordo, fleshy/carnoso, or lean, slim or thin/con poco cuerpo/ delgado. Two other common descriptive terms are masculine/masculino/viril and feminine/femenino.12 The following examples illustrate some such terms. (33) Offers an irresistible youthful exuberance, with a plush layer of baby fat over a muscular, firm structure. (34) Un curioso ensamblaje de pinot noir, syrah, cornalin y humagne rouge en el que la uva borgoñona forma claramente el esqueleto, y el resto aportan algo de cuerpo y sobre todo complejidad aromática. ‘A curious assemblage of Pinot Noir, Syrah, Cornalin, and Humagne Rouge where the Burgundian variety unquestionably provides the skeleton and the rest add some body and especially aromatic complexity.’

Finally, the behavioural and kinship properties of wines are usually assessed by language typical of the human realm, as shown in Table 17. Typically, however, personification concerns the behavioural properties of wine, as illustrated by racy and huraño ‘standoffish’ in passages (27) and (28). wines are human beings is mainly cued by adjectives such as aggressive/agresivo, upfront/franco, honest/honesto, demure/shy/tímido, expressive/expresivo, suave/amable or civilized/civilizado, most of which have an unmistakable evaluative flavour. For 12. Against the expectations that readers’ cultural backgrounds may generate, terms such as masculine/feminine are merely descriptive. This is because wines are assessed within a peer context (i.e., in terms of geographical proximity, grape variety, style and vintage), and their assessment often relies on whether wine complies with the expectations derived from what is typical of its peers. For instance, very broadly speaking, Burgundian Pinot Noir and Napa Cabernet can be construed as archetypal for feminine and masculine respectively and, as such, are the standard against which other similar wines will be assessed. However, because of the connotations of these terms, the current tendency is to use other descriptors (e.g., smooth, round and delicate for feminine and firm, powerful and strong for masculine). Naturally, deliberately substituting graceful for feminine and powerful for masculine does not exculpate the practice from bias: our point here is that the use of feminine/masculine is merely descriptive.

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Table 17.  Personification Focus

English

Spanish

behaviour/ personality

aloof, amiable, assertive, austere, belligerent, bold, boring, calm, charmer, cheerful, demanding, demure, discreet, ebullient, effusive, expressive, extrovert, feisty, friendly, generous, gentle, gutsy, honest, inexpressive, intellectual, liberal, modest, proud, provocative, reserved, restrained, reticent, serious, shy, stubborn, suave, uninhibited, unpretentious aristocratic, blue blood, brother, cousin, sibling, sister, son

adusto, alegre, arisco, arrogante, atrevido, austero, avasallador, comedido/a, descarado/a, desenfadado, dócil, educado, efusivo, esquivo, franco/a, generoso/a, honesto/a, honrado, humilde, huraño, impetuoso, jovial, recatado, reservado, serio/a, temperamental, tímido

lineage

aristocrático, casta, hermano, linaje, parentesco, raza, regio

instance, as explained in the Glossary of Wine Terms at RobertParker.com, a backward wine is a young, unevolved, closed wine that is not yet ready to drink or a wine that refuses to release its charms and personality at the time of being assessed, but presumably will do so at some point in time. In contrast, to the more descriptive backward, a dumb wine is also an unevolved, closed wine, but will likely never improve and, therefore, the term is evaluative and more negative than backward. The following examples take the assessment of the wine further: (35) Medium-bodied, lush, and forward, this intense, sexy wine has a sensual, whore-like personality, yet maintains admirable purity. (36) Magnífica base de Cabernet, espléndida madera. El conjunto aterriza en la boca como una delicada dama, deslizándose con elegancia y clase. ‘Excellent Cabernet base, splendid oak treatment. This lands on the palate like a gentle damsel, gliding with class and elegance.’

In (35) whorelike is a hyperbolical extension of the personification schema whereby sensual is understood as a personality trait of the wine, i.e., as subjected to the passions of the body rather than relating to intellectual appeal and, therefore, is oddly compatible with purity (notice the adversative). In other words, understanding whorelike involves the framing of this term in accordance with a hedonistic cline where shy, timid, or intellectual occupy one extreme and forward, extroverted, sensual and, why not, whorelike fall in the other. What such terms mean is that the wines they qualify do not need much effort in order to engage with.

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5.3.2 Wine’s make up: Inorganic metaphors Wines are also presented as inanimate, crafted objects with a particular contour, surface texture and internal structure or design. The two main metaphorical sources involved are buildings and cloth or textiles, as shown in Table 18. Table 18.  Architectural and textile metaphors Focus

English

Spanish

wines are buildings general

building element

force dynamics

bolster, brace, construct, fortify, fortress, framework, ground, hold up, prop up, set up/against, skyscraper-like, solidity, support, sustain, undergird, underpin base, building block, buttress, dovetail, foundation, frame, steel-girder, structure, underlay(er), wall balance, counterbalance, equilibrium, offset, tension, unbalanced

afianzar(se), aguantar, apoyar(se), armado, construcción, firme, firmeza, fisuras (sin), monolítico, reforzar, soportar, sostener anclaje, apoyo, armazón, base, bastión, bloque maestro, estructura, lecho, pilar, soporte, sostén balance, compresión, (des) compensar, equilibrio, desequilibrio, tensión

wines are pieces of cloth(ing) wine’s elements wine’s structure

wine’s texture

cloak, cushion, frock, mantle, ribbon, swath enrobe, interlace, intertwine, knit, mesh, tapestry, weave, wrap coat, lacy, plush, satin(y), silk(y), velvet(y)

capa, manto, ribete, traje, velo, vestir arropar, costuras, entrelazar, entretejer, hilar, hilvanar, tejer, tejido, trama aterciopelado/a, encaje de bolillos, sedoso/a, tapizar

Architecture provides a good number of descriptors used to describe a wine’s structure and the arrangement and/or relationship among the constitutive parts or elements of the wine as a holistic experience which, when equally distributed, is usually qualified as balanced/equilibrado, i.e., by drawing upon the architecture-related field of force dynamics. (37) Ripe and sweet-tasting, with enough fruit to balance the firm tannin structure that rises like an impenetrable wall on the spectacular finish. (38) Equilibrio y armonía del conjunto, de su acidez y soporte alcohólico. ‘The wine has balance and harmony between its acidity and its alcoholic backing.’

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The main use of the metaphor wines are buildings is to refer to wine’s constitutive elements in construction terms. This is illustrated by reference to acidity, alcohol and tannins as the building blocks, foundation or base of the wine in English, and anclaje ‘anchor, bolt’, bloque maestro ‘master block’ or pilar ‘pillar’ in Spanish, as shown in the following examples. (39) It’s all supported by a tensile structure. (40) [p]owerful and sporting a steel-girder construction, this seems […]. (41) This wine has enough buttressing acidity to render it fresh and balanced. (42) El toque de casis, la mermelada de frutillos o el limpio recuerdo de fruta tropical hacen de bloque maestro […]. Es un vino con estructura, carnoso […]. ‘The touch of cassis, the berry jam, and a clean tropical reminiscence act as keystone […]. It’s a wine with structure, fleshy […].’ (43) [B]lanco sencillo pero con cierto armazón de fruta. ‘A simple white but with a certain fruit frame.’ (44) Miel y limón en un aroma con soporte mineral muy marcado. ‘Honey and lemon are part of the minerally-buttressed nose.’

The architectural metaphor also focuses on the wine as a whole, described as built/ construido, buttressed/reforzado, backed up/soportado or fortified by all or some of its properties: (45) Racy acids and firm tannins work in tandem to prop up the bulky dark fruit, creating a structured, delicious mass. (46) [w]ith penetrating flavors of lemon, lime and cream buttressed by a hint of pie crust. (47) Bien armado, con cuerpo y taninos firmes ‘Well assembled, with body and firm tannins’ (48) [c]ombina el mineral del terruño, la fruta almibarada […], todo conjuntado, sin fisuras. ‘[it] combines the minerality, the syrupy fruit […], all well integrated, without fissures.’

Finally, the architectural metaphor is also used for evaluation purposes, which may be done by means of architectural proper terms such as monument/monumento, monolithic/monolítico or laberinto ‘labyrinth’ or by means of force dynamics language. The former is the case with passages (49) and (50) and the latter is illustrated by examples (51) and (52).



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(49) A magnificent edifice of a wine, elegant and refined in structure […]. (50) [u]n vino que no es prototípico del estilo clásico de rioja, algo monolítico. ‘[a] wine that is not prototypical of the classic Rioja style, somewhat monolithic.’ (51) Concentrated with real poise thanks to a balance of fruit and acidity. (52) Quizás el vino pase por un momento delicado de evolución y con el tiempo las aristas se vayan puliendo, pero ahora mismo le falta equilibrio. ‘Perhaps the wine is undergoing a delicate stage in its evolution, and with time those edges may get polished, but right now it lacks balance.’

The structure of wines is also referred to in textile terms, i.e., as their fabric, cloth/ tejido or weave/trama which, as seen in Section 5.2.1, results from activities such as knitting, weaving or interlacing or, in Spanish, entrelazar ‘interweave, intertwine’, entretejer ‘interweave, intertwine’ and hilvanar ‘tack’ elements such as fruit or tannins. Besides allowing wine writers to avoid repetition, the co-occurrence or, as referred to in metaphor research, mixing or diversification13 of architectural and textile metaphors in wine assessment points to the basic or primary metaphor organization is physical structure (Grady, 1997), a metaphor that is motivated by the whole-part image schema briefly introduced in Section 5.2.1. Of course, the difference between such metaphors in wine discourse and the ones discussed by Grady (1997) as relying on the primary metaphor [abstract] organization is physical structure is that in wine texts both source and target are physically grounded concepts. As it is, the most conspicuous uses of textile language involve, on the one hand, jargon terms used to describe wine in the visual stage of tasting and, on the other, language used to describe the texture of the wine on the taster’s palate. As shown in (53) and (54), the former is illustrated by the Spanish terms capa and ribete, in English cape or robe and rim respectively, which refer to the intensity and opacity of the colour of the wine inside the glass and are important indexes of its grape composition and/or age: (53) A glance at the beautiful purple-blue robe and a whiff of the silky, seductive nose, and you know you have arrived in the promised land of ‘true’ Burgundy. (54) Rojo rubí de capa media-alta, ribete teja. ‘Deep ruby with a brick-red rim.’

13. For a discussion on several metaphor clusters, see Lakoff & Turner (1989), Goatly (1997), Semino (2008). For an overview on metaphor diversification in genre contexts, see Caballero (2006) and Kimmel (2010).

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Interestingly, elements other than colour such as tannins and even the whole aromatic profile of wine may also be described as pieces of clothing, e.g., as a cloak or frock, and presented as enveloping, enrobing or dressing it up. This rendering of wine elements as pieces of clothing may also relate to the personified view of wines discussed earlier and illustrated in the following passages: (55) Enticing ripe fruits envelop this wine in a rich cloak of red fruit, chocolate […]. (56) An extraordinary wine, and not just because it wears its 16.4 alcohol so well. (57) Un vino bien vestido, de color picota, cubierto. ‘A well-dressed wine, deep cherry colour.’ (58) De aquel potro desbocado poco queda en Manu. Ahora viste un traje aromático elegante, rico en especias […]. ‘Little remains in Manu of that wild foal (of the past). Now it wears an elegant aromatic suit, rich in spices.’

Indeed, one of the most memorable and explicitly metaphorical wine evaluations involves the textile expression shown in passages (59) and (60), borrowed from Napoleon’s explanation of his approach to ruling a country: (59) Intricate and dry, this single-vineyard beauty feels easy and silky, but there’s an iron fist in that velvet glove. (60) Textura finísima, taninos sedosos, que esconden una gran potencia: puño de hierro en guante de terciopelo. ‘Very fine texture, silky tannins concealing great power: an iron fist in a velvet glove.’

These examples also specify a useful distinction between structure and texture by referring to the inward (the wine’s core) and outward (the wine’s texture) attributes of a wine via the mouthfeel as an iron fist/puño de hierro and velvet glove/guante de terciopelo respectively. In fact, the prototypical use of textile metaphors in TNs is to describe what wine feels like inside the taster’s mouth, i.e., its texture, as in examples (61) and (62). (61) It’s drinkable now, but really needs a few years to unwrap a bit, and the oak mantle will probably always be heavy. (62) Envuelve la boca con el agradable manto de su expresivo tanino. ‘It coats the palate with the pleasant robe of its expressive tannin.’

As shown here, texture can be expressed by means of adjectives such as silky, velvety, satiny, plush in English and aterciopelado, encaje de bolillos or sedoso in Spanish, verbs such as cushion, tapizar ‘carpet, upholster’ and arropar ‘wrap, tuck’ and nouns such as tapestry or mantle/manto.

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5.4

The dynamics of wine: Motion language in TNs

Wine tasting is a dynamic process where, after leaving the bottle, wine is agitated, swirled, sniffed and inhaled before being swilled, slurped and gargled by the taster, making its way through his/her palate and, finally, getting either ejected or drunk. This dynamism is also reflected in the way tasting stages are referred to, e.g., the palate’s entry/entrada and paso de boca ‘mouth passage’ or recorrido ‘trajectory’,14 and, above all, descriptions of the aromas and flavours of the wine as sneaking up, gliding, or paseándose (going for a walk) in the taster’s nose and mouth. Indeed, the latter use is particularly salient in TNs, mostly because of verb-less quality of the genre (Robert Parker being an exception to this, as discussed in Chapter 7) Consider the following passages: (63) This well-priced offering got off to a slow start in our tasting. For a short while, it just sat there in the glass, doing nothing. Gradually it opened up to reveal lots of oak influence […]. But what really impressed were the flavors of black cherries and tar that glided across the palate upon masses of soft, enveloping tannins. (64) Un vino de dorados colores y brillantes reflejos que llegan al ambarino. Muy complejo de aromas, sobresalen notas de fruta exótica […]. De dulce y delicada untuosidad, inunda la boca con elegancia y su dulzor permanece sin atisbo de pesadez ni empalago […]. ‘A wine of golden hues and bright reflections reaching amber. Very complex aromatics, with outstanding exotic fruit notes […]. Of sweet and delicate unctuousness, it floods the palate with elegance and its sweetness lingers without being remotely heavy or cloying.’

The motion verbs in these passages help describe the sensory profile of wines as this is perceived throughout the tasting event, from the visual stage (llegan in 64), the attack (got off, opened up) and palate (glided, inunda) to its finish (permanence). Now, the dynamic portrayal of wines does not rely solely on verbs, but also involves lexical categories such as adjectives (quick out of the gate) and nouns (full-throttle, andadura ‘trajectory, course’), as shown in (65) and (66). (65) Quick out of the gate, with vibrant pear, pineapple and apple aromas, then picks up speed, delivering full-throttle apple and citrus flavors all wrapped around a sturdy mineral core.

14. The dynamic connotations of the Spanish noun trajectory contrast with the staged-focused only, and stationary (i.e., only remotely suggestive of motion processes) flavour of the English term midpalate even if both terms are used for similar purposes.

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(66) Calidad aromática que comienza su andadura hacia las notas animales y de reducción. ‘Aromatic quality that starts its course/path towards animal and reduction notes.’

All in all, however, the main body of motion descriptions involves verbs, as shown in Table 19 where we display the most frequent motion expressions from the General Corpus. Table 19.  Most frequent motion language in English and Spanish Words

English

Spanish

verbs

linger, follow, lead, come + Preps, open, emerge, underlie, lift, burst, carry, explode, mingle, accompany, start, pick up, close, unfold, give way, brim, go on, join, expand, stand, drive, go, ooze lift, full-throttle supple, expansive, -driven, intermingled

aparecer, envolver, acompañar, abrirse, sobresalir, entrar, quedar(se), discurrir, salir, resaltar, dar paso, llegar, surgir, fluir, desplegar, inundar, ir, desembocar, acariciar, dejar paso, pasar paso, recorrido, entrada envolvente, fluido/a, presente

nouns adjectives

Motion language fulfils two purposes in TNs. On the one hand, it helps reconstruct and recontextualize the tasting event in written form; on the other, it helps describe the sensory experiences afforded by wine. It is used to express the suddenness, intensity and persistence of a wine’s aromas, flavour and texture, as fully addressed in Chapter 6. The contribution of motion language to recontextualizing the tasting event is suggested by the way it occurs in the rhetorical structure of TNs. This is shown in Table 20. The most recurrent strategy for describing the first impression of the wine in the nose and/or mouth in both English and Spanish is the use of verbs that express outwards and upwards motion (open/abrirse, emerge, salir ‘go out’) and verbs that combine upward directionality with force (surge/surgir, inundar ‘inundate’). This is natural if we consider the shape of the containers for wine such as decanters and stemware. (67) Explosive ripe, luscious fruit bursts from the glass in the pungent nose. (68) Apricot and oak aromas jump from the glass, […]. (69) Uva fresca, miel, almizcle: la uva moscatel salta al olfato. ‘Fresh grapes, honey, musk: muscat grape jumps at the nose.’ (70) La nariz es un carrusel de aromas que van surgiendo sin pausa. ‘The nose is a carrousel of aromas that keep surging without pause.’

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Table 20.  Motion language and tasting stage in English and Spanish The wine’s nose Eng. Sp.

open, burst, explode, emerge, start, accompany, follow, give way, jump abrirse, salir, surgir, inundar, entrar, acompañar, dar paso, dejar paso, entrada

The wine’s palate attack (first impression) Eng. open, come, start, ooze Sp. entrar, entrada, inundar evolution (mid and rear palate) Eng. expand, unfold, drive, pick up, follow, underlie, go, carry, accompany, give way, lead, mingle, join, come, stand, lift, intermingled, -driven, supple, expansive Sp. paso, recorrido, discurrir, ir, pasar, fluir, acompañar, dar paso, acariciar, dejar paso, desplegar, sobresalir, resaltar, aparecer, envolver, envolvente, fluido, presente finish or aftertaste Eng. go on, linger, close, emerge, expansive Sp. llegar, desembocar, quedarse, aparecer

Nevertheless, most motion language occurs in descriptions of the taste and texture of wine, particularly in the evolution, i.e., the mid-palate stage. The choice of verb depends on what is discussed. Thus, the sequence of elements in a wine’s aromatics is often described by means of verbs such as drive, lead, give way/dar paso/dejar paso, accompany/acompañar or follow/seguir, whereas verbs like join/unirse, sobresalir and resaltar ‘stand out’ are used whenever there is an element or quality worthy of attention. This is illustrated in examples (71)–(76). (71) Aromas of toasty, smoky oak carry through on the palate, joined by flavors of coffee and prune. (72) Ripe fruits give way to refreshing acidity, dark chocolate and tannin. (73) Black fruit flavors with a backing of dusty tannins accompany tart cranberry notes. (74) Aroma de buena intensidad, con alguna sensación no muy limpia que se va marchando y da paso a sensaciones lácteas (mantequilla). ‘Aroma of good intensity, with some not-too-clean impressions that eventually leave to give way to dairy impressions (butter).’ (75) Entrada frutosa, envolvente, con maderas que acompañan. ‘Fruity entry, enveloping, with accompanying oak notes.’ (76) En boca resaltan las notas especiadas. ‘In the mouth spicy notes stand out.’

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Verbs that express motion in combination with extended contact (expand/expandirse, unfold/desplegar or caress/acariciar) and similarly concerned adjectives (supple, fluido ‘fluid’ or envolvente ‘wrapping’) qualify a good – pleasant and full – palate, and do so in a more holistic, synthetic way. (77) [T]his is intense, vibrant and unfolds beautifully across the palate. (78) A very supple mouthfeel follows with wonderfully firm, but not biting, acidity. (79) En boca no pierde la frescura, se abre y despliega suculentos sabores y aromas a grosella. ‘In the mouth it doesn’t lose freshness, it opens and unfolds succulent flavours and aromas of red currant.’ (80) Dulzor que acaricia el paladar, envolvente. ‘Sweetness that caresses the palate, enveloping.’

Finally, descriptions such as go on, close or expansive and llegar ‘arrive’, desembocar ‘flow/lead into’ or quedarse ‘stay, remain’ are mostly found in descriptions of the finish where they usually mark the endpoint of the wine’s trajectory in the mouth: (81) A refreshing value Chenin Blanc that closes very clean, surprisingly long. (82) Con cuerpo, suavidad y sequedad, para desembocar en un final muy largo y persistente. ‘With body, softness and dryness, to flow into a very long and persistent finish.’

In short, motion language and, particularly, motion verbs help wine critics describe the organoleptic sensations concerned with smell, taste and mouthfeel in dynamic, rather than static terms. This use is congruent with the very dynamics of the tasting event in that it (a) presents wine tasting in an orderly fashion and (b) describes the evolution of the properties of the wine along the process and it also takes care of the challenges of expressing sensory experiences in a way that can be understood by readers. Figure 7 illustrates the relationship between choice of motion verbs and the goals of the genre as suggested by their insertion in the rhetorical structure of TNs. The high frequency of such language in the genre also gives credit to the cognitive linguistics postulate that we are pre-disposed to dynamism (see, for instance, the discussion on fictive motion in Langacker, 1986, 1987; Talmy, 1996, 2000; Matlock, 2004; Caballero, 2007, 2017). Indeed, the motion patterns found in TNs represent a highly idiosyncratic use of fictive motion whereby the evocation of particular ways of moving is used to communicate the smell, taste and texture of wine.

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most frequent verbs + tasting event

colour

burst, emerge, explode, start, open/abrirse, entrar, salir, surgir, inundar

nose

lead, drive, carry, follow, accompany, pick up, give way, join/discurrir, fluir, dar/dejar paso

palate

• attack • mid-palate • aftertaste/finish

mingle, unfold, linger, hold, go on/ expand/envolver, desembocar, alargarse, quedar(se) desplegar

Figure 7.  Motion verbs and rhetorical structure of TNs

5.4.1 Motion metaphors in TNs Some of the motion verbs found in TNs carry entailments related to the attributes of the entities other than wine whose movement they typically describe. The information that is conveyed by such verbs contributes, in the first place, to a richer construal of the properties of the wines and, in the second, to reinforcing some of the metaphors used in their description. The most salient case concerns verbs such as jump, kick, run, dance, sneak, swim, creep or punch in English, and acariciar ‘caress’, apalancarse ‘plant oneself, overstay’, estirarse ‘stretch out’, pasearse ‘amble’, pulular ‘swarm’ or saltar ‘jump’ in Spanish, all of which evoke agents whose bodies can move. This animate portrayal is sometimes reinforced by the context of the verbs, which may consist of explicit comparisons of wines to animate agents or rely on expressions that point to the anatomical parts involved in the movement expressed by the verb: (83) The splash of acid [in this wine] keeps the flavors on their toes (and dancing on your tongue) through a smooth, lingering finish. (84) Like a gymnast, this lithe white glides across the palate […]. (85) El conjunto aterriza en la boca como una delicada dama, deslizándose con elegancia y clase. ‘The ensemble lands on the palate like a gentle damsel, gliding with class and elegance.’

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Furthermore, verbs like unfold, fold, extend/extenderse or expand/expandirse bring to mind the metaphor wines are pieces of cloth, as shown in the following: (86) This is a richly textured red wine that unfolds its ripe flavors like a thick quilt. (87) Su excelente dulzor se extiende por el paladar […] como un manto de terciopelo. ‘Its excellent sweetness extends across the palate […] like a velvet mantle.’

While congruent with some of the metaphorical schemas in wine discourse, this use of motion verbs is ultimately related to two other construals: synaesthesia and metonymy. The hypothesis that the expressions may be synaesthetically motivated derives from the very nature of the experience they verbalize, i.e., wine tasting, which is accessed via the basic senses of smell and taste, yet is communicated by means of expressions typical of another sensory modality (albeit more complex since it involves other senses as well) such as motion. This attempt is inherently cross-sensory and is precisely what synesthetic metaphors are about, namely to map information across sensory domains or modes (Day, 1996; Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001; Yu, 2003). Moreover, although we, animate beings, are able to perceive motion by moving ourselves, motion detection involves the sense of vision – including the detection of differences in manner of motion. If we keep in mind the kinaesthetic and visual quality of translating smell and taste experiences into motion, the motion patterns in the corpus may well be seen as a specific case of synesthetic metaphor. However, if we consider the motion specifics and differences across the motion verbs found in the corpus, motion patterns may not only be synaesthetically motivated, but also appear to be related to metonymy. This finds support if we bear in mind the emergent meanings conveyed by the verbs in the expressions. Thus, in the same way that nose and palate do not refer to an ‘anatomical’part of wine but to two stages in wine tasting, verbs such as kick off and sail on help critics express the intensity and duration of the wine’s aroma(s) and flavour(s) as these are encountered in the initial and final stages of the tasting process i.e., the wine’s attack and finish. For, of all aspects that may be involved in the actions denoted by motion verbs, i.e., the particulars of the location where the motion is effected, the agentive or non-agentive quality of the motion, the manner of motion etc., these are only concerned with a few characteristics of the act of moving itself (force, abruptness, speed or continuity of motion) which are, then, mapped onto sensory domain. In other words, the use a verb like pop in a description in a TN does not concern the whole displacement denoted by the verb, but two of its salient properties, namely suddenness and force, which also characterize the organoleptic properties of the wine. Put differently, as happens with many other metaphors, the motion expressions found in wine commentary rely on a metonymic selection of certain features from the semantics of the verbs

Chapter 5. Metaphor 97



involved in the expressions – the whole idea of displacements evoked by the verbs provides the point of access for those traits. This is congruent with the view of metonymy as a construal of salience, that is, as evoking or highlighting particular aspects of a given entity, concept, or situation (Panther & Radden, 1999; Radden & Kövecses, 1999; Ruiz de Mendoza, 2000; Panther & Thornburg, 2003; Paradis, 2004). Likewise, in order to portray smell and taste (both crucial aspects in wine assessment), manner-of-motion expressions serve as perfect constructions that reflect the drinking process in a way that is felicitous to how we experience what is going on in the nose and the mouth and also help wine critics describe the most salient properties of the wine at issue in a highly economical way. In short, motion expressions in TNs are cases of metonymization and thus construals of salience. Since the verbs are used to translate discrete sensory experiences into words via such a holistic, kinaesthetic experience as motion, many of them may also be seen as cases of synaesthetic metaphor. 5.5

Summary

In this chapter, we have seen some of the metaphors that motivate many of the expressions used in TNs, and have explained their use as responding to the rhetorical goals of the genre. In addition to playing an important heuristic role in wine discourse, metaphors in winespeak are also theoretically challenging in many ways. For instance, a core assumption in cognitive approaches to metaphor is that abstract thinking is heavily determined by the functioning of the human body, i.e., our concrete experiences in and with the world provide the basic data for understanding abstract, non-concrete concepts. Nevertheless, although helping our understanding of the most abstract via the most concrete is one of the most salient properties of metaphor, this does not rule out the concreteness of both the source and target in certain metaphors, typically those involving various modalities or senses (vision, hearing, touch, or taste). An extreme example of the latter is synesthetic metaphor, which, as discussed in this book, maps information across sensory domains or modes. Both the concreteness and multimodal quality of some metaphors are important for discussing the language used by critics in TNs and, at the same time, problematize Lakoff & Johnson’s (1999, p. 249) claims that “human beings find phenomena they can see, hear, feel, taste and/or smell easier to understand and categorize than phenomena they cannot. It is perceptibility that makes the former phenomena concrete, and the lack of it that makes the latter abstract”. In fact, very often the situation in winespeak seems to be the reverse: wine critics need to draw

98 Representing wine

upon experiences other than smell and taste to categorize and verbalize these. Of course, the description of wine as a living organism or, more specifically, as a human being in wine discourse is fully congruent with its organic, physiological properties; yet, many other terms apparently from the human, textile or architectural domains are, in fact, used to express the sensations provoked by wine in the drinker’s nose and mouth in that they involve perception through the senses rather than abstract concepts or qualities. This does not mean that some of the metaphors cannot – through repeated use in textual interaction – be further extended and, thus, conform to the metaphorical frames discussed earlier. However, regarding those frames as conceptually rather than cross-sensory would betray the nature of the experience metaphorically portrayed and communicated.

Chapter 6

The grading and evaluation of presence



Writing about music, it has been said, is like dancing about architecture. The same might be said for writing about wine tasting. Words are a poor substitute for the electric reactions of your senses when experiencing taste for yourself. (Hemming, 2014)



Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing. (Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia, 1844–49)

This chapter provides some lists of the vocabulary used by wine critics for expressing the amount and degree of presence in wine and explains their origins as well as their use in TNs. At a very basic level, talking about wine the presence of substances in wine involves describing, on the one hand, their formation and, on the other, how those substances are perceived by the experiencer. These two aspects are mediated by the distribution of the substances – their integration and balance – and their degree of noticeability within the whole. Figure 8 schematizes this situation. In spite of the fact that experiencing the presence of substances in wine is a holistic and integrated process (see Section 3.1 in Chapter 3), we divide the experience into two parts in this chapter for the sake of examining presence according to whether the traits described are more related to the wine itself or are more subjective in that they bring in the personal appreciation of the wine taster. The traits included in the wine-as-a-product and in the experiencer sections in Figure 8, thus, represent two sides of the same coin, and we keep them apart as distinct phenomena for explanatory reasons. Thus, when we discuss the language used for expressing presence from the perspective of the wine, we describe the higher or lower perceptibility of the elements and describe the vocabulary of quantity and range. In turn, our discussion of the expressions that deal with the intensity and/or persistence with which things in wine are perceived represents a shift of perspective, and deals with expressions from the point of view of the experience of the wine. This chapter is a continuation of our discussion in Chapter 4, and provides a more fine-grained view to the description presented there. It starts by introducing the vocabulary related to presence in wine, which includes terms that refer to the elements in wine, i.e., its ingredients, as well as terms more concerned with

100 Representing wine

Wine as a product acidity, sugar, alcohol, glycerine .... flowers, fruit .... Spotting things in wine +/− QUANTITY amount abundance, some, no, bags of +/− RANGE range, array, kaleidoscope

Experiencer

PRESENCE

(SALIENCY,

NOTICEABILITY)

present, obvious, marked, distinct

Feeling the things in wine +/− INTENSITY intense, subtle, faint, soft +/− PERSISTENCE persistent, haunting

Figure 8.  The basics of experiencing wine

measuring and/or modifying their presence in the whole (Section 6.1). This covers quantity and range as well as expressions that add an axiological, more subjective and evaluative component to their description, for instance, when the amount of acidity in a wine is qualified as adequate/adecuada, perfect/perfecta or exquisite/ exquisita. In Section 6.2, we present the vocabulary used to express the quality of the wine experience from the taster’s perspective, i.e., the expressions used by critics to express the intensity and persistence of the aromas, flavours and mouthfeel of wine. The chapter finishes with Section 6.3, which is devoted to the use of motion expressions as mediators of degree and evaluation. 6.1

Noticing and assessing presence in wine

The notion of presence and the related dimensions of quantity and range or scope (of alcohol, fruit, acidity etc.) are critical in wine commentary because they regulate differences among wines of the same style, vintage, winery or appellation. Thus, while a lab analysis provides objective measurable data about a wine’s contents, a taster assesses the perceived presence and amount of those components



Chapter 6.  The grading and evaluation of presence 101

as relative to one another. The best example is how the level of alcohol may be perceived as higher or lower in two wines of different acidity levels: a wine at 15% alcohol can be harmonious and pleasantly warm if its acidity levels balance such a quantity of alcohol, whereas another wine at 14% with insufficient acidity can taste hot and excessive. Of course, a chemical analysis will accurately pin-point those 14% and 15% and a taster may reasonably mistake them, but the taster’s verdict regarding balance in the wines is far more useful to the prospective consumer because the alcoholic content of a wine, on its own, does not mean anything quality wise. Given the importance of the composition and ideal amount and integration of elements in a wine, it is reasonable to expect numbers and figures offering accurate information about such things in TNs. However, although some critics do include detailed percentages of the grape varieties or levels of alcohol and acidity, most information about these matters is conveyed in less precise ways. The following quote from a TN written by Robert Parker is revealing in this regard: “For statisticians, [this wine] is a blend of 70% Tinto Fino (Tempranillo), 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 15% Merlot”, where by explicitly addressing “statisticians” he hints at the lack of relevance of that information for hedonistic purposes and, therefore, is conspicuously absent in many TNs. For instance, of all the expressions playing the role of quantifiers in the English General Corpus only 944 out of 8,754 include numbers and percentages, and the same is true in the Spanish General Corpus where we only find 25 cases out of a total of 4,933 quantifiers.15 This scarcity of figures does not mean that critics do not quantify the intensity and persistence of the aromas, flavours and mouthfeel of the wines. However, as shown in example (1), this is typically done through non-numerical expressions.

(1) Mineral and tinged with beef blood on the nose, then showing solid berry flavors accented by herbal notes on the palate. Develops meaty tones on the finish.

Here the presence of aromas and flavours is expressed by aural (and musical) terms such as notes and tones, and the higher or lower amount and/or intensity of some such elements relies on language typically used to express visual traits (tinged) and sound (accented). Naturally, the language in TNs is intrinsically concerned with expressing what we discern in wine and what this experience is like; however, this is more salient in expressions like the ones illustrated in (1), all of which refer to the elements in a wine and, most interestingly, how their presence is perceived by the taster. Moreover, while notes and tones only point to the presence of herbs and meat in a wine’s bouquet, adjectives such as tinged and accented tell the reader that the elements referred to were perceived as subtle rather than strong. Put differently, 15. Actually, the Spanish Guía Peñín specifies the varietal composition of most wines but this is done under the name of the wines, not in the text of the TN proper.

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degree is part and parcel of the descriptors used for describing wine. Table 21 provides a panoramic, general view of the language used to refer and qualify presence in English and Spanish TNs. Table 21.  Expressions of presence in English and Spanish presence vs absence Eng.:

Sp.:

absence, accent (N, V), apparent, bury, character, characteristic, compete, conceal, contain, content, cover, discern, discreet, distinct, dominate(d), dose (N, V), emphasis, emphasize, evidence (N, V), evident, fade, have, hide, highlight (N, V), hint (N, V), impression, -infused, jarring, lack (N, V), mask (V), note, noticeable, notion, obscure (V), obtrusive, obvious, outshadow, perceptible, predominant, predominate, presence, pronounced, quality, screeching, shrill, spike (N, V), sting, streak, strident, suggestion, tease (N), tinge (N, V), tone, touch, trace, unobtrusive, whiff, wisp acento, acentuar(se), acusado, adivinar, aparente, apreciable, apreciación, apunte, ausencia, carácter, carecer, contener, destacable, discreto, distintivo, dominante, dominar, dominio, echar de menos/en falta, eco, enfatizar, esconder, evidente, evocación, exacerbado, exento, gobernar, haber, imperar, imponerse, llamativo, mandar, marcado, matiz, ningún, nota, notable, notar(se), notorio, observar(se), perceptible, percibir, presencia, presidir, protagonista, punta, punto, recordar, recuerdo, reinar, relevancia, relucir (a), sensación, sugerencia, tener, tono, toque, traza, vestigio

quantity Eng.:

Sp.:

high, huge, low, filled with, full, loaded, pack (V), austerity, generosity, generous, bags, buckets, (a) few, abound, abundance, any, big, bit, bite, enough, excess, immensity, in spades, innumerable, laden, large, lavish, less, level, lick, light (Adj), little, load(s), lot(s), masses, massive, medium, mid, more, most, mouthful, much, multiple, myriad, oodles, opulence, opulent, pile, pinch, rich, richness, riddled with, short of, shortage, sizeable, so much, some, sparse, speckled with, splash, stuffed with, substantial, sufficient, ton(s), too many/much, wealth, exuberant, exude, burst (N, V), cascade (N), bubble with, gush, drizzled, glimpse, glow alto, bajo, cargado, colmado, lleno, rebosar, repleto, austero, comedido, derrochar, generoso, prudencia, algo (de), alguno, corto en/de, cuantioso, demasiado, dosis, enorme, enriquecer, escasez, escaso, exageración, exagerar/do, exceder, exceso, exuberancia, exuberante, faltar/falto, gran, grande, mas, masivo, mayor, media/o, mediano, medido, menor, menos, mucho(s), opulento, pequeño, pizca, pletórico, plus, pobre, pobreza, prodigo, profusión, profuso, rico en/de, sinfín, sobrado, suficiente, súper, amplitud de

range Eng.:

Sp.:

tapestry, kinds, assorted, blend, collection, combination, concoction, kaleidoscope, medley, panoply, panorama, rainbow, range (N, V), smorgasbord, sorts, span (V), spectrum, symphony, variety, web arco, repertorio, festín, abanico, catálogo, cesto, colorido, conglomerado, conjunto, diversidad, diverso, elenco, ensalada, gama, mezcla, mundo, oferta, paleta, panoplia, registro, serie, sinfonía, variado, variedad



Chapter 6.  The grading and evaluation of presence 103

The classification in Table 21 is intended as a user-friendly, descriptive schema since, as seen in Chapter 4, sensory experiences and the language used to talk about them often involve more than one sense modality and, therefore, also focus on several of the aspects briefly introduced so far. While terms such as presence, lack or variety only, and unequivocally, convey one thing, other expressions blend information of various sorts. For instance, soplo ‘blow, breath’ blends small amount with low intensity, spike draws attention to the clear, discernible, focused quality of the element it quantifies (despite its small quantity), and a gush of fruit and tannin or a dusting of tannin combine different measures of quantity and intensity. Indeed, if we bear in mind the rather short length of TNs, the use of highly compact, economical terms is far from surprising. By way of illustration, consider the following passages: (2) Concentrated, rich wine with spicy tannins, a bit of meatiness and some typical Sangiovese character – despite the presence of the Cabernet in the blend, the noticeable oak and the deep, extracted colour this isn’t just yet another ‘international styled’ wine.

(3) Lengthy finish has a nectar-like sweetness and a pinch of nutmeg.



(4) The palate is rich and dense with lush fruit, hiding a whack of tannin.

(5) Excelente acidez en boca, pero poca materia y pocos sabores. ‘Excellent acidity but little stuffing and few flavours.’

(6) Cuando se ha oxigenado, empieza el festival de aromas que van apareciendo, uno tras otro sin parar. Una explosión de sotobosque con trufas, hongos, algo de volátil. ‘After sufficient aeration a festival of aromas begins, endlessly succeeding one another. An explosion of underbrush with truffles, mushrooms, some volatile acidity.’

The underlined expressions in these passages exhibit various degrees of explicitness on the one hand, and of focus on the other. For instance, noticeable, presence, a bit of, some, poca ‘little’, pocos ‘few’ and algo de ‘some’ are very explicit and, at the same time, solely focused with presence and quantity. In contrast, rich, deep and explosión ‘explosion’ in (2)–(6) are less explicit, yet more informative in that they also express quantity (here, abundance) and intensity. This is also the case of pinch and whack, two nouns that convey the force or intensity with which the quantity of nutmeg and tannin is perceived and the focused, clearly discernible nature of this perception. These terms also point to the multimodal quality of both wine experiences and the language used to describe them. For instance, whack originates from the sound made by a sharp and swift blow and, therefore, combines aural and tactile information, and pinch is a tactile term used to measure the amount of nutmeg felt

104 Representing wine

in the mouth.16 Finally, el festival de aromas in (6) is concerned with quantity and range and, at the same time, presents aromas as something positive, happy and festive. This abundance, joyful, somewhat ‘riotous’ portrayal is further reinforced by its predication in dynamic terms as que van apareciendo, uno tras otro sin parar where the non-stop quality of the aromas is both lexically (uno tras otro, sin parar) and grammatically conveyed through the use of the progressive, van apareciendo, to underscore duration proper. Such expressive cases appear to be more informative and, probably, more helpful for readers than a little and abundant in the TN genre. A closer look at Table 21 reveals that many expressions used to refer to or quantify presence in both English and Spanish construe the meanings in many different ways, as nominal, verbs adjectives and modifiers. The items are also intrinsically cross modal and, in many cases, imagistic and construed as metonymisations and metaphorisations. While imagery applies to both English and Spanish, the resulting expressions in the two language show some differences. The next few sections zoom in the notion of presence and describe the vocabulary used to communicate all its dimensions in English and Spanish TNs. 6.1.1 The vocabulary of presence (and absence) Both the English and Spanish parts of the General Corpus include vocabulary solely concerned with presence, construed as nouns (presence/presencia, absence/ ausencia, lack/falta), verbs (have/tener, miss/carecer, lack, poseer ‘possess’) and adjectives (absent, present, carente ‘lacking’, exento ‘’, inexistente ‘non-existent’). In the presence category we also find evidence/evidencia (and the derived adjectives evident/evidente), obvious/obvio, on full display, obtrusive and unobtrusive, prominent/destacado, llamativo ‘salient, noteworthy’ or notable, all of which also convey the higher or lower perceptibility or noticeability of the things present in wine and, therefore, call attention to the taster or experiencer. This is even more evident in the terms shown in the lists below. a. Eng.: apparent, detect, detectable, discern, discernible, evoke, indicate, notice (V), noticeable, perceptible, reveal, sign (N), signal (V) b. Sp.: adivinar, advertir, apercibir, apreciable, apreciación, apreciar, apuntar, atisbar, captar, detectar, distinguir, echar de menos/en falta, encontrar, entrever, evocar, imperceptible, inapreciable, indicar, indicativo, indicio, intuir, notar(se), observar(se), percepción, perceptible, percibible, percibir, presumir(se), rastro, reconocible, recordar, sentir, signo, ver(se), vislumbrar

16. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.

Chapter 6.  The grading and evaluation of presence 105



A look at each set reveals that this type of expressions are more varied in Spanish, where we also find the term recuerdo ‘memory, remembrance’ frequently used to refer to presence (947 instances in Spanish and none in English), i.e., used as an alternative for the relational pattern ‘there is/are some…’. The following examples illustrate the way indexical, taster-oriented language appears in TNs.

(7) Intense resin-laced minerals and bacon fat can be discerned in the boisterous aromatics of the […].



(8) Evoluciona muy bien, apenas se intuyen nuevos aromas, gana en armonía fruta-madera y, sobre todo, en densidad y refinamiento a su paso. ‘It is evolving very well, hardly any new aromas are discernible, it is improving in fruit/oak harmony, and especially in density and refinement’

(9) […] bastante dominado todavía por la madera, aunque se adivina una fruta interesante ‘still oak-dominated though interesting fruit can be intuited’

Other expressions for presence typically belong to domains other than wine, i.e., point to the role of imagery in the vocabulary. Table 22 displays the terms and groups them according to their sensory or metaphorical source domains. Table 22.  Sensory and metaphorical source domains in the language of presence hearing Eng. Sp. sight Eng.

Sp.:

accent (N), jarring, note, overtone, strident, tone, undernote, undertone acento, acorde, desentonar, eco, estridencia, hacer ruido, nota, notita, tono afterglow, beam, be lost, bury, character(s), clarity, clear, clean, conceal, cover, definition/defined, delineation/delineated, dotted with, fade, focus, glimpse, glisten with, glow, hide, highlight (N), mark (V), mask (V), obscure (V), opaque, outshadow, overlay, overt, punctuate, shading, smothered, streak, tinge (N, V), tint, trace, unmask adorno, aparente, apunte, atisbo, borrar, borroso, brillante, brillantez, brillar, brillo, camuflar, carácter, claridad, claro, cubrir, definición, definido (Adj), definir(se), destapar, desvelar, difuminar/difuminado, difuso, enmascarar, esconder, esplendoroso, expuesto, halo, huella, iluminar, impronta, marcarse, marcado, matiz, nitidez, nítido, pincelada, punto, puntito, ocultar, oculto, patente, (a) relucir, remarcar, revelar, subrayar, tapar/tapado, transparencia, transparente, traslucir, vistoso

touch Eng. edge, jolt, kiss, lashing, lick, prickly of, punch, shot, smack, spike (N, V), sprinkled, sting, tease, teasing, touch, wallop Sp. azote, golpe, golpeo, palpable, pellizco, piquito, punta, puntita, sutileza, sutilidad, toque, toquecillo, toquecito, traza, vestigio

(continued)

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Table 22.  (continued) smell Eng. Sp.

whiff N/A

multisense Eng. blast, explosion, fireball, flourish, impression, mouthburst, whack Sp. chispa, dejo/e, explosión, impresión, sensación, soplo artefacts Eng. line, ribbon, studded with, trimmings, whammy, wisp Sp. detalle nature Eng. cocoon, wave, nugget, wash(N) Sp. avalancha, baño, brisa, brizna, nube, torrente organism – human Eng. compete, discreet, dominance, dominate, dominant, flair, overbearing, predominate, predominant, prevail Sp. abrumar, acosado, cohibir, delatar, discreción, discreto, dominar, dominador dominante, dominio, gobernar, imperar, imperante, imponerse, inhibirse, mandar, presidir, prevalecer, primar, primacía, protagonizar, protagonismo, protagonista, reinar cooking/food Eng. -infused, garnished, helping Sp. aderezo, aliñado cognition Eng. fillip, notion Sp. evocación, evocar, reconocible, recordar, recuerdo communication Eng. hint (N, V), nuance, suggestion Sp. sugerencia motion Eng. appear, dissipate, distant, lurk, sneaky, submerged, undercurrent, undertow, twist Sp. acudir, agazapado, aparecer, aflorar, desaparecer, despuntar, intermitente, resaltar

A look at the cross-modal terms in this table reinforces, on the one hand, some of the claims made in Chapter 4 on the flexibility of some language in sensory descriptions and, on the other, the frequent use of motion language in TNs discussed in Chapter 5. Another interesting thing about some such expressions is the fact that they often collocate with certain wine elements, among which acidity stands out, particularly in the English corpus where terms such as high, low, good, enough,



Chapter 6.  The grading and evaluation of presence 107

sufficient, insufficient or scarce belong to expressions that qualify acidity or refer to its effect on the wine. Consider the following passages: (10) Smooth and harmonious […], focusing its blackberry, anise and toasty-peppery flavors in a solid beam that keeps shining through the finish. (11) It [the wine] shines bright with focused tropical fruit flavors underlaid with tart citric acids. (12) A lightning bolt of acidity jolts the palate, while the apple and citrus notes fight to emerge. (13) Exotic version, exhibiting pineapple, coconut and citrus notes backed by screeching acidity. (14) […] predominio de las notas cítricas y manzana. Estimula el paladar, lo ilumina y alarga con un final amargo. ‘dominated by citrus and apple notes. Stimulates the palate, illuminates and prolongs it with a bitter finish.’

As illustrated in these examples, acidity in TNs is largely described in terms that point to cross modal mappings such as the congruent (upward) transfer touch→taste instantiated by terms like fresh, crisp, tangy, piercing or searing. There are, however, incongruent (downward) mappings too, such as sound→taste, instantiated by less frequent expressions such as jarring or screeching acidity. These examples are effective, clear, and fairly transparent because harmony (from music) is a recurrent metaphor to help understand balance in wine, and therefore a high-pitched note (for that is how acidity would be interpreted) can ruin harmony in the same way as inordinately high acidity can harm the balance of wine components. However, the ultimate transgression in terms of describing the acidity in a wine is sight→taste. There is a veritable wealth of terms referred to light, such as bright, beam, shine, shimmering, vivid, clarity, streak, laser, flashlight, high-beams, etc. Of these, bright is by far the most commonly used and, in fact, quantitatively it is only second to the perfectly congruent fresh in absolute terms for the task of describing acidity in wine. Acidity is also described as shining on the other elements of wine (tannin, alcohol, fruit) or allowing them to shine by balancing them. This is so to the extent that even when acidity is very intense, it is advertised as a positive feature that guarantees a long life to the wine. The following passage illustrates this point: (15) The difference between this and the typical Carneros bottling is intensity; the fruit is more focused. It’s the difference, say, between a flashlight and a laser.

Thus, whereas a flashlight floods and loses reach, a laser is the ideal of zero dispersion as well as concentration and intensity and, therefore, evokes the highest

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precision. While examples (10)–(14) are mainly concerned with quantifying presence and, to some extent, intensity, the main function of (15) is to describe and evaluate the role of acidity. 6.1.2 The vocabulary of quantity While cross modality and imagery appear to motivate an important amount of the expressions concerned with presence and, to a lesser extent, range (addressed in Section 6.1.3), the only aspects of quantity that might be considered imagistic are abundance and shortage. As also happens outside the wine domain, both of them are often qualified by means of height and size adjectives (high/alto, low/bajo, large/gran(de), small/pequeño, ajustado ‘tight’) and language that portrays wines as three-dimensional containers loaded/cargados, packed or stuffed/llenos with things. Imagery may also underlie the cases where large quantities are expressed in an exaggerated, hyperbolic way by means of nouns such as scads or adjectives related to fluids such as awash or drenched. Likewise, in Spanish we find fluid-related terms such as mar ‘sea’, raudales ‘torrent’ or riego ‘watering, flow’, the cooking term festín ‘feast, banquet’ or the more colloquial terms brutal and por un tubo (literally, ‘through a pipeline’), all of them used to express large quantity. Table 23 shows the language concerned with quantity in English and Spanish TNs. Table 23.  The expression of quantity in English and Spanish Quantifying language Eng.: abound (V), abundance, abundant, added, addition, additional, amount, any, austere, austerity, balloon, bit, bite, brim (V), certain, chock-full, chunk, considerable, copious, cram (V), deal, deficiency, degree, dollop, drop (N), dusted with, dusting, enough, excess, excessive, extra, (a) few, filled with, fistful, full, fullish, fullness, further, generosity, generous, glimpse, glow, gobs, gram, great, jam-packed, laden, less, level, lick, load(s), loaded, lot/lots, mid, minimal, minimum, minor, moderate (Adj.), modest, modicum, more, most, mouthful, much, multiple, nary, no, none, number & fraction/percent, oodles, overload, pack (V), percent(age), pinch, pinpoint, plentiful, plenty, portion, preponderance, quantity, rich, richness, riddled with, saturated with, saturation, shedful, shortage, significant, so much, some, sparse, speckled with, splash, sprinkled with, stacked with, stuffed with, substantial, sufficient, too many, too much, ultrarich Sp.: (un) poco/a, abundancia, abundante, abundar, abusar, algo (de), algún(o), añadido (N), apenas, ápice, austeridad, austero, bastante, calibrado, cantidad, cierto, comedido, conciso en, considerable, copioso, cuantioso, demasiado, dosificado, dosis, escasez, escaso, extra, faltar/falto, ganar, generosidad, generoso, grados, gramo, limitada, lleno, mas, masivo, medido, menos, mil, mínimo, moderado, modesto, muchísimo, mucho(s), nada, neta, número y símbolo de porcentaje/ciento, parco, pizca, plus, pobre, pobreza, poquito, porcentaje, precisión, preciso, prodigar, prodigo, profusión, profuso, proporción, prudencia, prudente, recatado en, repleto, restar, rico en/de, riqueza, saturar, sobrado, sobrar, suficiente, tanto, todo, volumen,

(continued)



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Table 23.  (continued) Spatial – dimensional language Eng.: ample, amplify, amplitude, big, bubble with, bulky, elevated, enormous, gush, hefty, high, huge, immense, immensity, large, light, little, low, massive, medium, predominate, predominant short (of), sizeable Sp.: acrecentar, ajustado, alto, amplio, amplitud, aumentar, bajo, cortedad, cortito en/ de, corto en/de, derramarse, disminuir/disminuido, engrandecer, enorme, extenso, gran(de), inmenso, inundar, justo, justito, largo, mayor, media, mediano, menor, pequeño, predominancia, predominante, predominar, predominio, pulular, sobrepasar Hyperbolic language Eng.: abyss, avalanche, awash, bags, boatload(s), bonanza, buckets, burst (N, V), cascade, cornucopia, countless, drenched with, drizzled, effusive, endless, exuberance, exuberant, exude, fistful, freighted, galore, giant, gush, in spades, innumerable, lavish, mammoth, masses, massive, monster, monstrous, myriad, opulence, opulent, pile, scads, a spate of, ton(s), tremendous, unending, wealth Sp.: aluvión, bestial, brutal, cargado, colmado, derrochar, descomunal, escandaloso, exageración, exagerar/do, extremada, exuberancia, exuberante, festín, incesante, incontinencia, infinito, innumerables, magnificencia, (un) mar de, masivo, múltiple, multitud, opulencia, opulento, pletórico, profusión, raudales (a), rebosar, rebosante, riego, sinfín, súper, tonelada, tremendo, (por un) tubo Axiological language Eng.: adequate, admirable, alluring, amazing, appealing, appropriate, arresting, astonishing, astounding, attractive, average, awe-inspiring, awesome, beautiful, better, breathtaking, brilliant, classy, colossal, compelling, dazzling, decent, delightful, dizzying, enchanting, enjoyable, enticing, enviable, excellent, exceptional, exciting, exquisite, extraordinary, extravagant, fabulous, fair, fantastic, fascinating, fine, formidable, freakish, glorious, good, gorgeous, great, impeccable, important, imposing, impressive, incredible, interesting, judicious, just-right, lovely, luxuriant, luxurious, luxury, magnificent, marvelous, near-perfect, nice, notable, ostentatious, outstanding, perfect, phenomenal, pleasant, pretty, prodigious, proper, real, reasonable, remarkable, right, satisfying, sensational, sound, spectacular, splendid, staggering, striking, stunning, stupendous, sublime, sumptuous, super, superb, super impressive, supernatural, surprising, surreal, terrific, thorough, total, tremendous, unbelievable, uncanny, unheard of, unreal, unsurpassed, untold, well, wonderful Sp.: razonable, aceptable, acertado, acierto (con), adecuado, admirable, agradable, apropiado, asombroso, atractivo, bien, brutal, bueno, calidad, categoría (de), colosal, con sabiduría, conseguido, correcto, curiosísimo, curioso, delicioso, elogiable, encantador, encomiable, escalofriante, especial, esplendido, estupendo, excelente, excepcional, exquisito, extraordinario, extrema, fantástico, formidable, genial, glorioso, gozoso, gratificante, grato, impecable, imponente, importante, impresionante, increíble, inmejorable, interesante, interesantísima, juicioso, logrado, magistral, magnífico, maravilloso, mejor, meritorio, optimo, original, originalísimo, perfección, perfecto, portentosa, primoroso, prodigioso, puro, respetable, sabio, sensacional, soberbio, sorprendente, superlativo, supremo, total, verdadero

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In addition to terms typically concerned with quantity such as some, no, abundance or quantity itself in both languages, in English we also find the more colourful balloon, bite, dollop, drop, dusting, glimpse, glow, lick or splash, all of which add something else to the notion of presence, as shown in the following passages. (16) Its spice-laden white fruit aromatics give way to a seamless, sensual character riddled with waves of butter, spices, and creamed pears. (17) [T]his bubbles with vibrant fruit like a mouthful of cassis syrup […] (18) [T]his Pinot opens with ripe strawberry/cherry fruit, masterfully speckled with toast, espresso and cola notes […]

Interestingly, there is more than just quantity here and there is a very visual quality to this language. For instance, in riddled with waves (of), the focus is on the whole wine which, as a fluid, can be described as made of waves of different aromas. This is functionally similar to speckled with, where the image is of a random pattern of dots and, therefore, the visual is privileged again, even more than in the similar expression sprinkled with also found in the corpus. Moreover, this is speckled with … notes, which combines visual and aural language. Finally, bubbles with is further qualified by the adjective vibrant, which suggests that the emphasis is more on the frenzy of activity (these aromas seem to be alive) than on quantity alone. Finally, as for presence, some quantifiers seem to collocate with certain wine components rather than others. For instance, the combination of light and temperature intrinsic to glow in (19) may well motivate its colocation with alcohol, i.e., with a substance typically described in terms of heat. Moreover, tactile terms such as dusting and lick appear to befit elements whose appreciation also involves the sense of touch, such as tannin and acidity in (20) and (21). (19) Plenty of fruit extract. Palate round and full with a glow of alcohol on the finish. (20) [T]his is a lively, fresh, vivid wine with a dusting of tannin […] (21) […] light bodied, with a brisk lick of acidity

While still highly colourful, these examples are more sober than other expressions that express abundance in unmistakably hyperbolic terms such as the colloquial bags, boatloads, galore or tons or the even more imaginative abyss, awash, buckets, cornucopia, mammoth and tremendous in English and aluvión ‘downpour’, bestial ‘beastly’, brutal, escandaloso ‘scandalous’, festín ‘feast’, incontinencia ‘incontinence’, (un) mar de ‘a sea of ’ or tremendo ‘tremendous’ in Spanish. Some of these are illustrated in the following passages. (22) An abyss of black pepper on the nose, with some whiffs of white cotton. (23) The tannins are mammoth, but with a fine steak or breast of duck, they’ll sing.

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(24) Escandaloso en aromas de fruta en sazón, flores que inundan la copa. ‘Scandalous in its ripe fruit aromas, flowers flood the glass.’ (25) Aromas frescos. Ahí arranca la fruta madura, la incontinencia mineral (volcán) ‘Fresh aromas. It is there that the ripe fruit takes off, the mineral incontinence (volcano).’

The hyperbolic quality of these quantifiers is very clear, even if it can also be dangerous as such language opens the field to further subjectivity on the part of reviewers. Put differently, while colourful choices are necessary for engaging readers in the more or less personal writing styles of critics, expanding the range of quantifiers also makes for more drama and a certain sense of tongue-in-cheekfulness. Consider, for instance, the contrast between abyss and whiffs in (22), or the incongruence of having a singing mammoth in (23). All in all, however, many such highly colloquial terms (bags, tons, inundar ‘inundate’) have become common in contexts where expressivity is a must, for instance, sports commentary and reviews, advertising and, as is the case here, texts concerned with discussing food and drink. 6.1.3 The vocabulary of range Finally, some terms are concerned with expressing the abundance of a certain element while also pointing to its complete, comprehensive quality. This is the case of the terms grouped under the range label and displayed in Table 24. Table 24.  The expression of range in English and Spanish Eng. Sp.

all kinds of, assorted, assortment, blend, collection, combination, mélange, mix, mixture, panoply, range (N, V), sorts of, span (V), spectrum, variety amalgama, complejidad, conglomerado, conjunto, diversidad, diversificar, diverso, espectro, mezcla, mundo, oferta, panoplia, serie, variado, variedad

colour/painting (→ sight) Eng. rainbow, kaleidoscope, kaleidoscopic, panorama, monochromatic Sp. gama, paleta, caleidoscopio, colorido music/performance (→ hearing) Eng. medley Sp. repertorio, sinfonía, festival, antología, registro, elenco, monótono 3-d artefacts Eng. sachet, tapestry, web Sp. arco, abanico, bagaje, catálogo, cestillo, cesto, escaparate, manojo, carrusel

(continued)

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Table 24.  (continued) cooking/food Eng. concoction, salad, smorgasbord Sp. festín, ensalada motion Eng. array, branch out, fan out Sp. desfile, despliegue

As shown in this table, rainbow, panoply or panorama in English and abanico ‘fan’, sinfonía ‘symphony’ or ensalada ‘salad’ in Spanish are concerned with scope rather than amount, which may well explain the use of sight-related and, in the case of Spanish, colour-related terms. The following examples illustrate some of these expressions. (26) A rainbow of fruit on the nose, from berries to cranberries to orange peel, with hints of toasted oak. (27) Impressive levels of weight and complexity. Kaleidoscopic aromas of fruit, spice and flowers followed by […]. (28) Paleta aromática muy diversa, con notas de fruta exótica, tostados […]. ‘Very wide aromatic palette, with notes of tropical fruit, toasty oak […].’ (29) Extremadamente especiado: clavo, canela, pimienta negra. Cueros finos, fruta negra. Un caleidoscopio aromático […]. ‘Extremely spicy: clove, cinnamon, black pepper. Fine leather, black fruits. An aromatic kaleidoscope.’ (30) Su perfume maduro, envolvente, sin prejuicios, lleno de colorido frutal (cereza, fresón) es su mejor baza. ‘Its mature, enveloping, and prejudice-free perfume, packed with fruit colour (cherry, strawberry) is its best asset.’

Here we find language concerned with presence, e.g., the unspecific levels and notes, the combination of presence and low intensity in hints, and expressions that convey both presence and range such as rainbow, colorido ‘colour’, paleta ‘palette’, kaleidoscopic and caleidoscopio – the latter two also potentially expressing change. The width of this scope or range is implicit in the choice of these terms as well as in the inclusion of the list of components before or after them, and is also explicated by qualifying paleta aromática as “muy diversa” in (28). Table 24 also points to metaphor as the main motivator of most of the language concerned with range in the TN corpora (as seen in Chapter 5).

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6.2 Expressing intensity and persistence in wine As repeatedly pointed out so far, perception is not objective or homogeneous, but is a complex phenomenon that mostly relies upon intensity and persistence. Both are particularly relevant in the assessment of wines in TNs, which relies upon the critics’ perception of two core attributes of the experience of the wines, namely the higher/lower intensity of the aromas, flavours and mouthfeel of wines and the longer/shorter durability or persistence of those features. Like with the notion of presence, describing the intensity and persistence of aromas and mouthfeel involves both language unequivocally referring to those dimensions (intensity/ intensidad, persistence/persistencia) and less straightforward, more imaginative expressions such as rapier-like, bouncy, cañonazo ‘cannon shot’ or rabioso ‘furious’ for intense aromas and flavours and resonant, haunting, silencio ‘silence’ or fugaz ‘fleeting, shooting’ for persistent ones. Table 25 shows the expressions found in the TN corpora, displaying them in terms of sense and metaphorical sources. Table 25.  The expression of intensity and persistence in English and Spanish intensity Eng. Sp.

intense, intensity, intensify, subtle, subtlety amortiguar, exacerbar, exacerbado, intensidad, intenso, intensificar, intensísimo, sutil

hearing Eng. accent (V), accentuate, crescendo, echo, emphasis, emphasize, fanfare, loud, low-key, modulate (V), muted, pronounced, tone, screeching, shrill, shrillness Sp. acentuarse, cañonazo, en crescendo, enfatizar, estrepitoso, restallante, rotundidad, rotundo touch Eng. hit, suffixes -laced, -kissed, -edged, incisive, grip, rapier-like, piercing, thump (V), prickly, sharp Sp. abrumador, impacto, leve, levedad, mitigado, contundencia, contundente sight Eng. Sp.

highlight (V), outshine, radiant, light (V), lightning, spark (V), shade (V), sunburst, underscored, vivid apagar, tenue, deslumbrante, chispa, chispeante

multimodal (energy and/or light → sight, hearing, touch) Eng. jolt (V), detonate, electric, electrified, erupt, explode, explosive, subdued, buffer (V) Sp. cañón, matizar, matizado, estallar, explotar, explosivo, incendio organism – human Eng. enliven, moderate, overpower (V), understated, nuanced Sp. crecerse, ensalzar, exaltar, rabioso, vago, (con) pegada

(continued)

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Table 25.  (continued) spatial/dimensional artefacts Eng. build, augment, heighten, enhance Sp. N/A motion Eng. bouncy, burst, rush Sp. avivar el paso, pujante persistence Eng. Sp.

last (V), nº + minutes/seconds, persist, persistence, persistent duradero, perdurar, eterno, inacabable, interminable

hearing Eng. echo, resonate, resonance, resonant, reverberate Sp. resonancia, resonar, silencio sight Eng. Sp.

N/A estela, imborrable

spatial/dimensional artefacts Eng. gigantic, interminable, endless, length, lengthen, lengthy, long, prolonged, short, shorten Sp. largueza, larguísimo, largo, largura, longitud, alargar(se), corto, acortar(se), cortito, amplio, prolongarse, prolongado, breve, extenso, dilatado motion Eng. extended, extensive, go on, stop, haunting, linger, trailing, quit Sp. tardar en desaparecer, (sin) cesar, (sin) descanso, fugaz, instalarse

Clearly, most expressions concerned with intensity are intrinsically and unsurprisingly sensorial, i.e., are commonly used to express experiences related to the senses. What is interesting here, however, is the aptness of aural, tactile and visual language to express the degree of aromas and flavours of the olfactory and gustatory experiences. This cross-modal quality is most evident in expressions that combine information accessed by various senses such as detonate or explosive/explosivo, all of them conveying a mixture of aural, visual and tactile information at the same time. (31) Juicy mixed plums on the palate get a strong kick of black pepper […] (32) Destaca el pellizco acido que arrastra toda la armonía del conjunto. ‘An outstanding acid pinch propels/drives the harmony of the whole.’

intensity can also be expressed by means of metaphorical language, particularly expressions typically used for qualifying human beings (moderate, understated, rabioso or the boxing expression con pegada ‘with punch’) and motion language (bouncy or avivar el paso ‘quicken the pace’).



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As for persistence, it may be straightforwardly described in terms of seconds or minutes, as shown in examples (33) and (34). (33) Its prolonged, satiny finish reveals an ethereal lemon-laced mineral quality that seamlessly saturates the palate for 40 seconds. (34) Its marzipan, buttered toast, and creamed mineral flavors linger on the palate for 45 seconds or more.

However, only 41 instances with second and 26 with minutes, mostly from the Parker set of the General Corpus, were found in the English corpus and none in the Spanish one. As it is, the numerical assessment of persistence is less frequent than cross-modal, sensory language, typically aural terms that refer to vibrating, continuous sound such as resonate/resonar or reverberate or spatial and motion expressions such as long/largo, prolonged, alargarse ‘lengthen’, dilatado ‘dilated’, extended, linger or instalarse ‘settle’, all of them also concerned with continuity and length or duration. Indeed, it is through motion language that intensity and persistence are often expressed, as discussed in the next section. 6.3

Assessing the quality of presence through motion

As seen in Chapter 5, the aromas, flavours and mouthfeel of wine are often described in dynamic terms by means of motion language. Naturally, drinking wine is a dynamic event, which may indeed motivate its description by means of motion language. This is particularly salient in Spanish TNs where the temporal sequence is clearly delimited in that reference to the drinking stages typically involves terms such as apertura ‘opening’ or entrada ‘entry’ (and the corresponding verbs entrar ‘enter’ or arrancar and despegar ‘take off ’), and the mouth stage is known as the paso ‘progression’ or recorrido ‘trajectory’. Other terms concerned with the drinking sequence are avanzar ‘advance’, dar lugar ‘lead to’, dar/dejar paso ‘make/give way to’, desembocar ‘flow/lead into’, desfilar ‘parade’, desplazarse ‘move’, discurrir ‘pass, run, flow’ (N, V), entorpecer ‘slow down, impede’, proseguir ‘continue, go ahead’, recorrer ‘go over’, sucederse ‘follow’, sumarse ‘join’, transcurrir ‘go, pass’, tránsito ‘circulation’, trasladarse ‘move’ or volver ‘return, go back’, all of them frequent in Spanish TNs. In English we also find terms such as entry, exit, path or route, yet these are much less frequent. In addition to helping reconstruct the dynamics of the tasting event in textual form, motion expressions and, particularly, motion verbs help critics express notions that are intrinsic to wine (presence and the dimensions related to it) as well as extrinsic to it, i.e., concerned with the taster (intensity and persistence). These are discussed one after the other in the next sections.

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6.3.1 presence dimensions and motion As with any other type of expressions, motion language is used to refer to the presence of things in wine as well as to the quantity and range of those things. Table 26 displays the terms from the English and Spanish corpora thus concerned. Table 26.  The expression of presence, quantity and range through motion presence versus absence Eng. accompaniment, accompany, air out, appear, back off, bob, bring out, burrow, chime in, come through, comingle, conjoin, converge, corral (V), disappear, dissipate, make an appearance, lift (N, V), lurk, pop up, reappear, reemerge, return, show + prepG, sneak, sneaky, submerged, stealth, stick out, surface, tower over, towering, twist (N), undercurrent, undertow, waft (N), whoosh Sp. abrirse paso, acompañar, acudir, aflorar, agazapado, agregarse, alzar(se), aparecer, aparición, asomar(se), asomo, brotar, desaparecer, desmarcado, desmarcarse, despejarse, despuntar, desvanecerse, disiparse, disolverse, dispararse, esquivar, hacerse hueco, hacerse presente, interferencia, interferir, intermitente, presentarse, realzar, reaparecer, rebrotar, resaltar, resalte, resurgir, retornar, retorno, rodeado, sacar, salir, salpicar, saltar, saltar a la vista, sobreponerse, sobresaliente, sobresalir, solapar(se), súbito, surgir, unirse quantity Eng. avalanche, bristle (V), bubble with (V), dash, draught, drip (with), gush (N, V), inundate, flood, ooze (V), overflow, pervade, permeate, teem with Sp. derramar(se), destilar, elevado, inundar, invadir, oleada, sobrepasar range Eng. array, branch out, broaden, fan out, welter Sp. desfile, desplegar, despliegue

Despite the arguably important role of such language in wine assessment, a caveat is in order. Forced to assess and describe several thousand wines per year, usually in batches of similar wines, critics often resort to strategies of lexical variation so that their readers do not get bored with almost identical notes (see also Lehrer, 2006), even if people do not necessarily read TNs sequentially since most publications usually classify TNs according to wine type and region rather than date of evaluation. However, the consequences of the desire for lexical variation sometimes translates into critics’ overuse of motion expressions. This is applies to patterns such as come across + adjective, run + adjective or the verb ride which, in many cases, may well be replaced by neutral or copular verbs like be, there to be, appear, feel, taste, smell or, more accurately, by the expression can be, discerned/perceived. The next couple of passages illustrate this use of motion verbs.



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(35) This is a mutt of a white, an unexpected blend of Colombard, Riesling and Sauvignon that comes off like Gewurz at first blush. (36) Despite 14% alcohol, this Gewurz comes across as rather light in weight and deceptive.

These coexist with more expressive language dealing with the presence and range of the elements perceived in a wine, as illustrated in the following examples. (37) Tannins punch through on the finish, with a minty note, adding to this wine’s power. (38) Deep, loaded palate impression leavened beautifully by sneaky acidity. (39) So aromatic, the accents almost suggest mint and pine, then the flavors fan out to reveal honey, grapefruit and black currant […]. (40) Tiene un desarrollo rectilíneo en boca, con eje de tanino fresco y mineralidad sobre la que asoman apuntes florales […]. ‘It has a rectilinear development in the mouth, with an axis of fresh tannin and minerality upon which floral hints stick out.’ (41) La fruta madura (moras, arándanos) se encuentra bien integrada en una madera que no despunta. ‘Ripe fruit (blackberries, blueberries) is well integrated with oak that does not stand out.’ (42) […] las sensaciones son gratas porque se despliegan una serie de matices de fruta madura (pera, níspero, manzana asada) ‘[…] sensations are pleasant because a series of ripe fruit nuances unfolds (pear, loquat, baked apple).’

While these examples may be discussed as mainly concerned with expressing presence (punch through, asoman), saliency (sneaky, despunta) and range (fan out, se despliegan), some of the underlined expressions evoke more than one of those notions, typically presence and saliency since the latter always involves the former. Thus, sneaky and asoman combine presence and subtlety, i.e., some saliency but not too intense or overpowering, whereas despunta in (41) and, above all, punch through in (37) are more assertive saliency-wise. Finally, while punch through evokes the forceful, intense quality of the element thus predicated, sneaky and asoman work in the opposite direction. They indicate low intensity.

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6.3.2 intensity and persistence through motion Generally speaking, critics’ use of motion language in TNs seems to follow their need to communicate the higher or lower intensity of the aromas, flavours and mouthfeel of wine, and the longer or shorter persistence of those features. Table 27 displays some of the expressions concerned with these two notions. Table 27.  The expression of intensity and persistence through motion intensity Eng. ascend, boost (N), bouncy, bump up, buoy (V), burst + prepG, cascade (N, V), climbing, cruise (V), dance (V), drop off, dynamic, dynamism, explode, fall, fast ball, glide, heave up, hit, jostle, kick, peak (V), penetrate, penetrating, poke through/out, power (V), pulsating, pulse (V), pump + prepG, punch (V), push, ratchet up, rev up, rise, rush (N, V), shake, shoot, snappy, soar, step up, surge, swarm, sweep (N), swirl (N), toe (V), tumble, waft, zing (N) Sp. ágil, agilidad, arrancar, arrastrar, avivar el paso, bajar, barrer, ímpetu, penetrante, pujante, pujanza, subido, subir persistence Eng. continue (V), cut short, distance (for a long, some), expand, expansive, go away, linger, quit, recede, remain, trail (V), stay, stop short, stretch out, tail off Sp. estirarse, evanescente, expandirse, expansivo, explayarse, extenderse, fugaz, instalarse, interrumpir, mantenerse, marcharse, (sin) descanso/parar/pausa, (con) parsimonia, permanecer, permanencia, quedarse, refugiarse, seguir, volatilizarse

intensity and persistence are usually correlated to tasting stages, and this correlation is particularly salient in the first and last stages of wine tasting: while a wine’s attack is measured in terms of the intensity of flavours and aromas, its finish concerns persistence. The following passages belong to the beginning of the description of the sensory experience described in TNs and are concerned with the intensity of different attacks: (43) [wine] explodes from the glass with pulp-laden apples and salty minerals. (44) Apricot and oak aromas jump from the glass, […] (45) It kicks off with the purest scent of smashed berries […] (46) Sorprende la agilidad con que fluyen los aromas a fruta y minerales […] ‘It is surprising the agility with which the fruit and mineral aromas flow’ (47) Uva fresca, miel, almizcle: la uva moscatel salta al olfato. ‘Fresh grapes, honey, musk: muscat grape jumps at the nose.’ (48) La nariz es un carrusel de aromas que van surgiendo sin pausa. ‘The nose is a carrousel of aromas that keep surging non-stop.’



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Here we find intensity expressed by means of verbs that combine motion and force (explode, kick off, jump, saltar ‘jump’, surgir ‘surge’), nouns related to the motion effected by animate and non-animate entities (agility, carrousel), and the prepositional phrase sin pausa (‘nonstop’), which qualifies motion already in progress and, therefore, combines the intensity intrinsic to surgir with the persistence inherent in the tense and post-verbal modification. The persistence of wine’s aromas and flavours, i.e., wine’s length, is typically ascertained in its aftertaste or finish, the last stage in the tasting procedure and, therefore, it is also typically found at the end of TNs. Among the expressions used to convey long persistence and, hence, positive evaluation, we find verbs and nouns expressing motion on a horizontal plane, e.g., extend/extenderse, stretch out, expand/expandirse, and with respect to permanence, e.g., linger, go on/seguir, stay/ permanecer, suppleness, trail, permanence/permanencia) and also adjectives, e.g., sustained, trailing, expansive, supple. In addition, we also find more innovative, descriptions where wine and/or its properties are presented as vehicles (a boat and a car in (49) and (50)) and people (examples (51) and (52)) by means of the verbs used to describe their aftertastes: (49) Medium-bodied and very long on the finish, it just keeps riding into the sunset. (50) Nicely balanced and long on the finish, leaving a trail of spice and minerals in its wake. (51) Magnifica estructura, inunda la boca de sabores y aromas que se instalan durante largo tiempo. ‘Magnificent structure, inundates the mouth with flavours and aromas that settle in for a long time.’ (52) Fino en su tanino, sabroso en el recorrido, carnoso y con un final abrazado por una agradable calidez. ‘Fine in its tannin, flavourful in the trajectory, fleshy and with a finish hugged/ embraced by a nice warmth.’

All in all, motion appears to be particularly useful for describing the texture or mouthfeel of wine. One way of doing this is to focus on the wine as a whole and describe its progression along the palate: (53) As big as it is, it’s a silky wine that glides across the palate. (54) So elegant and refined, powering its way across the palate with a fireball of intensely concentrated lime, kiwi, pineapple […]. (55) It jolts the palate with the purest extract of ripe limes, green apples and minerals.

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(56) Fruta roja y pirazinas de entrada: promete, pero muy caído en boca. ‘Red fruit and pyrazine on entry: promising, but seriously drooping in the mouth.’ (57) En boca se abre y expande con una agilidad pasmosa. ‘In the mouth it [wine] opens and expands with an amazing agility.’

Critics’ choice of motion expression correlates with the more or less forceful, intense quality of the wine’s palate as a whole. This quality is relative. It is deemed positive or negative in agreement with the critics’ expectations of the wine and the paradigm the wine represents, which shows in the diversity of terms used to praise the palates above (smoothness in (53) and power in (54) and (55)). The second and most common way of assessing a wines’ palate is to focus on what an outstanding textural component feels like within the whole, as shown in the following passages. (58) Distinctive, very monolithic, clean, pure and crisp, with fresh fruit zipping along the palate. (59) Juicy mixed plums on the palate get a strong kick of black pepper […] (60) Irrenunciable regusto a regaliz que se desprende de su cuerpo carnoso pero ágil. ‘Undeniable liquorice aftertaste that falls off its fleshy but nimble body.’

Given the importance of tactile impressions when describing the palate or mouthfeel of wines, the use of verbs that combine motion with touch or contact is far from surprising, e.g., glide, jolt, arrastrarse, expandirse. This also happens with the use of adjectives such as sneaky to qualify acidity (which portrays it as a creepy creature) and the use of kick as a quantifier. The description so far has focused on some of the patterns found in English and Spanish TNs regarding the use of motion expressions in the genre. Although many motion expressions are used to describe the olfactory, gustatory and tactile profile of wines in critical tasting stages and, therefore, tend to occur in certain places of TNs, critics may also use them to describe specific aspects of the wine and, therefore, insert them in any relevant textual stretch. The choice of verb in these cases is largely determined by the property of wine as perceived in the tasters’ nose and mouth irrespective of whether this happens in the initial, middle or final stage of the tasting procedure. This is shown in the following examples: (61) The tannins are soft, but there is a boost of firm acidity that suggests ageability. (62) Rippling with sweet apricot, honey and citrus aromas and flavors that revolve around a core of laserlike acidity […]



Chapter 6.  The grading and evaluation of presence 121

(63) En el final retorna un deje de verdor. ‘A trace of greenness returns at the end.’ (64) Boca algo plana que al final se resuelve con la aparición súbita de la acidez. ‘Mouth a bit flat that in the end resolves with the sudden apparition of acidity.’

A final point worth considering is the fact that wine is an entity in constant evolution, not only during the phase inside the cask or the bottle but also during the very act of drinking it. Indeed, some motion expressions are concerned with the changes undergone by wines in the very tasting process. This is also a good way to appreciate the use of motion language in full, and the forceful quality of the resulting descriptions. Consider the following TNs: (65) Packed tight with bright, vivid, penetrating fruit, this strikingly flavorful wine starts with lovely scents of citrus, orange peel and tangerine and takes off from there. It moves into still more complexity, with traces of diesel, talc and flower petal. Think Viognier, Gewürztraminer and Riesling, blended and punched up with a full-bodied, lingering finish. (66) En nariz despliega un amplio catálogo de aromas que lo hace interesante (repostería, membrillo, caja de puros y especias). Durante el paso por boca se percibe una estructura en la que aparecen los recuerdos de fruta de hueso madura. Al final quedan los matices de su paso por la barrica. ‘In the nose it unfolds a wide catalogue of aromas that make it interesting (bakery, quince, cigar box and spices). During its passage through the mouth, we can perceive a structure where evocations of ripe stone fruits appear. In the end nuances of its passage in oak barrels remain.’

These two TNs rely on a combination of motion expressions that describe wines from the beginning to the end of the tasting procedure, starting from the attack (start, take off, despliegue), then the palate in its various stages (move into, paso de boca), and the finish (lingering, quedar). Expressions of motion are also used to describe the presence of single elements (penetrating fruit, aparecen recuerdos), and even refer to the wine’s aging in oak (paso por barrica in (66)). Their combined presence makes a strong argument for the importance of motion language in wine description and assessment in both English and Spanish in spite of the fact that these two languages are typically seen as opposites motion-wise in other contexts.

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6.4 Summary In this chapter we have provided a panoramic view of the vocabulary used for expressing and quantifying the notion of presence in wine. This is a critical notion in wine description and evaluation since the greater or lesser amount, scope and ratio of components such as sugar, acidity or alcohol underlies the differences among wines both outside and inside the same typology or paradigm, region or grape varietal. Interestingly, despite the critical role of such things in wine commentary, they are rarely assessed in numerical terms, e.g., clear percentages of acidity or alcohol are not frequent in TNs. Rather, presence quantity, range or persistence are discussed through cross-modal and metaphorical language borrowed from diverse domains (e.g., sight, hearing, or motion), which portray aromas and flavours as vibrating, continuing sounds (resonate/resonar or reverberate), spatial and dynamic entities (long/largo, prolonged, alargarse ‘lengthen’, dilatado ‘dilated’, extended) or animate beings (linger, instalarse ‘settle’). Some such terms unequivocally refer to those dimensions (presence/presencia, quantity/cantidad, intensity/intensidad, persistence/persistencia), while some others are highly conventionalized (the musical term note/nota, the tactile tone/tono or touch/toque or the visual highlight, tinge or trace), and still others are less straightforward and more imaginative (rapier-like, bouncy, cañonazo ‘cannon shot’ or rabioso ‘rabid, furious’ for intense aromas and flavours and resonant, haunting, silencio ‘silence’ or fugaz ‘fleeting, shooting’ for persistent ones). What all these terms show is that, as repeatedly pointed out so far, perception is not objective or homogeneous. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon that encompasses different variables and/or dimensions (e.g., saliency or scope of presence), and different points of view (intrinsic to wine as an object and pointing to the experiencer role) and that conflates information of various sorts in a single expression, as profusely illustrated by the cross modal terms in this chapter as well as in Chapter 4 or the metaphorical expressions seen here and in Chapter 5.

Chapter 7

Rhetorical strategies to achieve credibility in wine assessment



The most influential critic in the world today happens to be a critic of wine. He is not a snob or an obvious aesthete, as one might imagine, but an ordinary American, a burly, awkward, hardworking guy from the backcountry of northern Maryland, about half a step removed from the farm. His name is Robert Parker Jr., Bob for short, and he has no formal training in wine. (Langewiesche, 2000, p. 2)

Many consumers around the world rely on wine critics rather than on information from producers when seeking information and advice to guide their preferences (Charters, 2007), which prompts the question of what those critics do to come across as trustworthy in the wine community. Drawing upon the discussion in Hommerberg & Paradis (2014) and its precursors (Hommerberg, 2011; Paradis, 2009a), this chapter expounds on how credibility and authority are articulated in TNs from the Wine Advocate written by Robert Parker. In this regard, the chapter links back to Chapter 3 and our description of the rhetorical structure of the TN genre. The reason for taking a closer look at Robert Parker’s TNs is his unprecedented impact on the way in which wines are discussed and consumed worldwide and his enormous popularity among consumers, which has influenced the production of wines as well. Thus, a favourable review by Parker may have a direct effect on the wine-producers’ selling figures on the steadily growing global market (Langewiesche, 2000; McCoy, 2005; Nossiter, 2004). Parker’s powerful position in wine tasting and wine communication and his global success rest on his exceptional sensory abilities and background knowledge as well as on his rhetorical skills and the persona he has created for himself. In order to explore the construction of credibility in Parker’s TNs, it is necessary to understand the social and discursive practice in which these specific texts have come about. As we have seen all through this book, wine reviewing does not only involve descriptions of experiences, but also knowledge about the ways in which the wines have been produced, where they come from, their grape composition and chemical processes. In order for any wine critic to be able to issue evaluations and

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recommendations, it is critical to be able to predict the development of the wine and its future qualities. Part of the socio-cultural setting is the writer’s persona, his (in this case) talents and reputation in the community. In the next section, we use the Specific Corpus of TNs written by Parker and revisit the structure of the texts in order to see how the different tasting events are represented with respect to the techniques used to achieve high credibility. We do this on the basis of six orthogonal values, namely activity, participants, space, time, source of evidence and mode of knowing. 7.1

The representation of the events described in wine reviews

Generally speaking, the TNs in our Wine Advocate database contain information about three main events, namely the production event, the tasting event and the consumption event as shown in Table 28, which presents Parker’s review of Château Trottevieille. Table 28.  The review of Château Trottevieille, Saint-Emilion, Bordeaux Production event

Tasting event

Consumption event

Kudos to proprietor Philippe Casteja, who has produced the finest Trottevieille I have tasted. A blockbuster effort,

the 2005 boasts an inky/blue/purple colour along with aromas of creme de cassis, blackberries, truffles, fruitcake, and toasty oak. Pure and full-bodied with significant extract, tannin, acidity, and alcohol, this stunning wine

should be very long lived. Anticipated maturity: 2012–2030+.

This table illustrates the linear ordering of the actual events in the order in which they occur in the real world. In the subcorpus used in this chapter, which consists of 200 TNs, all of the texts (100%) describe the tasting event, almost all of them (90%) the consumption event and 60% of them the production event. We analyse and compare the three events in terms of six event values: activity, participants, space, time, source of evidence and mode of knowing. Those values are general values of events, originally set up by Cornillie (2009), which we have adapted for our purposes of analyzing and distinguishing the different events described in the TNs, as shown in Table 29. The top row displays the order of events as they occur in time in the real world and the right-most column gives the values applicable to the three different events. The first column describing the production event gives information about the type of activity, the participants and the spatial location, i.e., the place of production for the production event. The time frame of the production event is the past in relation to what is understood to be the text’s now, i.e., the tasting event. The information

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Table 29.  The component parts of the events addressed in wine reviews Values

Production event

Tasting event

Consumption event

activity participants

Wine production Wine and producer

Wine tasting Wine and taster

space time source of evidence

Local space Past External sources

Here Now Perceptual organs

mode of knowing

Hearsay

Direct visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile perception

Consumption Wine and unknown consumers Unknown space Future Inferences based on production, tasting, and previous experiences Predictions

about the production event emanates from sources external to the tasting event, in which Parker himself was not involved. The mode of knowing about the production event can be characterized as hearsay, i.e., as information obtained from a third party in written or spoken form. Next, the tasting event involves the taster (the reviewer) and the wine. The event is the text’s here and now. The source of evidence is the writer’s perceptual organs and the mode of knowing is direct in the form of visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile experiences. Finally, the consumption event takes place in the future and time, space and participants are all unknown entities. The source of evidence, on which assessments with regard to ideal future drink time are inferential in nature, relying on the production information, the perceptual experiences of the wine and the critic’s previous experiences of similar wines or the same wine. The mode of knowing is based on predictions and expectations. In the next few sections, we zoom in on the representation of each of the three events in Parker’s reviews. We relate the events to how they are represented in order to explore facets of the representation that grant credibility to Parker’s texts. We start by describing the data from the point of view of the phases along the horizontal axis and then we switch the point-of-view to the variables along the vertical axis of Table 29. 7.2

The horizontal axis: The different events

In this section, we describe the different events on the horizontal axis of Table 29, namely the production event, the tasting event and the consumption event, and analyze the different parts in the light of how credibility is achieved in the descriptions and assessments of the wine in these different phases.

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7.2.1 The production event The course of events in the real world necessarily starts with the production event, which precedes the tasting event and the consumption event. This is also the order normally followed in TNs, as shown several times in this book. Reference to the production event is not given in all TNs. In the subcorpus examined in this chapter, 60% of the TNs start with a note on the production of the wine, as in passage (1) shown in Table 28, but we also find examples where the representations of the production event is conflated with the tasting event, as in (2). (1) Kudos to proprietor Philippe Casteja, who has produced the finest Trottevieille I have tasted. A blockbuster effort,

(2) The whites include a big, sweet, pear, mineral, pungently aromatic 2004 Hermitage blanc. A blend of 65% Marsanne and 35% Roussanne, it offers abundant quantities of honeysuckle and hazelnut notes […]

In example (1), the information about the production event appears in the first sentence and there is also a follow up in the second sentence, linking to the tasting event. The reviewer refers to the producer by name, which indicates that he has exact knowledge. This naming is combined with a strongly positive assessment, kudos, and the finest Trottevieille I have tasted, which suggests that the reviewer has a lot of experience of the wines from this producer and his assessments can therefore be trusted. Even though hearsay is normally considered the least trustworthy source of information in the reliability hierarchy (Viberg, 2001, p. 1306), the kinds of exact and personally communicated facts from trustworthy sources can be understood as incontestable and verifiable information. In (2), however, the TN begins with an olfactory description of the aromatics of the wine followed by a statement about grape varieties and their proportions, which relates to the production event. Here the critic takes care to provide the exact proportions, which is an indication to the readership that he knows what he is talking about. In some reviews, exact figures are accompanied by comments such as “13% alcohol (according to the proprietor, Madame Denise Gasqueton)”, in which case the name is also used to bestow credibility. The critic signals that he has direct hearsay knowledge about the wine production through personal contact with the proprietor. Also, when no names are mentioned, the exact figures are there to indicate that the reviewer did not obtain this information through the encounter with the wine but via hearsay through personal communication. Another mode of creating a sense of reliability is the mention of the producers or the consultant oenologist accompanied by a description of them or of the actions performed by them as in passages (3)–(5).





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(3) No one in Bordeaux has made greater progress in taming the extraordinary potential of this noble terroir than Alain Vauthier, an obsessed perfectionist if there ever was one.

(4) Proprietor Patrick Maroteaux, president of Unions des Grands Crus Classes, is pulling out all the stops to make Branaire as alluring as several of the Leovilles and Ducru Beaucaillou […] (5) Young Stephan Chabord is trying singlehandedly to resurrect the image for sparkling wines from St.-Peray.

In a contrastive comparative and superlative frame as in (3) Alain Vauthier is described as an obsessed perfectionist if there ever was one and nobody in Bordaux has made greater progress in taming the extraordinary potential of this noble terroir. In (4) Patrick Maroteaux, whose epithet is president of Unions des Grands Crus Classes is pulling out all the stops to make Branaire as alluring as several of the greatest wines in Bordaux. In spite of being young, Stephan Chabord is trying singlehandedly to resurrect the image for sparkling wines from St.-Peray. These examples highlight the importance of both established and up-and-coming protagonists in the wine world at the same time as their hard work is praised through very positively valenced expressions. Next, the production event is not only located in space but also in time. As we can see in (4) and (5), the critic takes care to describe the hard work as on-going through the use of the present progressive aspect (is trying and is pulling out all the stops). Timewise, we know that the production phase took place in the past, but in spite of this, the past tense of the finite verb is only used occasionally when the reviewer describes the production of the wine. Instead, if the description of the production phase includes a tensed verb phrase, it is the present perfect that is used, as can be observed in Table 28 and in example (6).

(6) […] this tiny garagiste operation has fashioned a provocative blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc with 13+% alcohol.

Like the past tense, the present perfect places the event in past time, i.e., prior to the tasting event which is the deictic centre – the now of both the event and the text. The choice of the present perfect is rhetorically important, because, unlike the past, it is not detached from now. On the contrary, the present perfect signals the relevance of the past event for what is going on at present. The contrast between the two temporal expressions is that the former includes a finite verb in the present, while the latter locates the event in the past. The past tense creates a divide between the tasting event and the production phase. This divide has a negative effect in that it is likely to be interpreted as if the reviewer distances himself and refrains

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from being accountable for his descriptions and assessments. Consider (7) for a comparison to (6).

(7) […] this tiny garagiste operation fashioned a provocative blend […]

There are also cases where the critic avoids the use of a tensed verb altogether and uses elliptical expressions instead. In those cases, the link between the production and the tasting event, between the then and the now, is maintained through reference to the same entity, i.e., the wine. This is the case in (8) where the elliptical construction qualifies it (the wine), which is the first element of the description of the experiences of the wine. (8) A blend of 85% Merlot (from 70-year old vines) and 15% Cabernet Franc, it exhibits aromas of white chocolate, espresso roast, sweet blueberry and raspberry fruit […]

Not only does this technique ensure the temporal link, but it also establishes a causal connection between the grape varieties in the production phase and the visual, olfactory and gustatory properties of the wine in the tasting phase. This becomes particularly clear if we compare the effect of passage (8) to the effect of the constructed example (9) where the link is broken through a sentence boundary. (9) Les Asteries is a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc. It exhibits aromas of white chocolate, espresso roast, sweet blueberry and raspberry fruit […]

In the next section, we move on from the production event, located in another place in the past, to the here and now of the text namely the tasting event. 7.2.2 The tasting event As already noted, the description of the tasting event normally comes after the description of the production event. This part is the core of the TN. While TNs always include a description of the tasting event, the production and the consumption events may not be included. Passage (10) illustrates the representation of a tasting event. (10) Its inky/blue/purple hue is accompanied by scents of blueberries, white flowers, and black currants. Deep and rich, with a wonderful minerality, abundant nuances, fresh acidity, and stunning concentration […]

As shown in this example, the representation of the tasting event includes the wine’s visual experience (its inky/blue/purple hue), the olfactory experience (scents of blueberries, white flowers, and black currants) and the gustatory experience (deep and



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rich, with a wonderful minerality, abundant nuances, fresh acidity, and stunning concentration). The descriptions of these experiences are ordered in the same way as the tasting proceeds, starting with sight, then smell and finally the experience in the mouth, which includes taste and texture. In (10) all the stages of the wine tasting event are addressed. This is, however, not always the case in all TNs. For instance, in this particular data set of 200 TNs, reference to the taste and mouth-feel of the wine appears in 95% of the texts and olfactory reference in 90%, while visual impressions are addressed only in 50% of them. As to spatial and temporal location, the report on the tasting practice is the deictic centre of the text – its here and now. The description reports on an event that takes place in one and the same place and the description is given in the present tense in almost all the reviews. In this data set, this is true of 99% of them. In other words, example (10) is a typical description also from a temporal point of view. According to Langacker (2009, p. 202), the use of the present tense in texts profiles a situation that is described as coinciding with the time of speaking or writing. It thereby conveys a feeling of immediacy that comes with a sense of epistemic control of present-time states and events. Along the same lines, Brisard (2002, p. 265) states that the present tense in English relies either on direct experience of a state or an event at the time of speaking or writing, or a state that is always true, as it were. Fairclough (2003, p. 152) refers to the latter phenomenon as the “timeless present”. We take the use of the present tense in TNs as a means of drawing the readers into the reviewer’s current perceptual experiences because they are presented in the text as if they coincide in the tasting and the writing event. Yet, not only are they presented as if they occur here and now, but through the simple present, they are also timeless and generic states. The tasting event thus becomes an experience that the critic shares with his readers. In other words, they have the ground in common. As noted by Thibault (2004), a typical feature of wine reviewing is that it includes a high number of elliptical constructions in which the finite verb is elided. Since this is not the case in Parker’s TNs, this is shown in (11) through an example retrieved from the Decanter. (11) Dark ruby. Deep. Precise notes of fruit and spice. Complex and inviting. Dried plum character and a nutty, savoury palate.

Just like the description of the tasting event in (10), the descriptors in (11) are presented in the same order as the different perceptual experiences of the tasting procedure. The visual impression (Dark ruby. Deep) is followed by the depiction of the wine’s smell (Precise notes of fruit and spice. Complex and inviting) and, finally, the gustatory observations (Dried plum character and a nutty, savoury palate). In spite of this same principle of ordering, the Decanter TN differs markedly from the one

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in (10) in that there is no finite verb. Even though Thibault’s (2004) analysis suggests that genre-aware readers automatically infer a present tense verb where there is none, the absence of an explicit realization of time makes the sensory description staccato-like and more difficult to make sense of for the reader. The reader has the feeling that the text has been automatically produced without direct involvement of a human taster and writer. In this respect, Parker’s presentation in (10) is very different from the one published in Decanter in that, as a reader, you have the feeling that there is a person of flesh and blood that is accountable for the assessment of the wine and this, in turn, helps to make sense of its description. These aspects are all of crucial importance for whether the reader finds the reviewer and his text trustworthy. As already pointed out, the timeless present reports on an experience that is a stable component of our conception of what happened and the reader will be drawn into the shared writer/reader experience that is set up in the text (Brisard, 2002; Jaszczolt, 2009). In other words, the use of the present tense, or more precisely the simple present tense, implies that the readers will have the same experiences as the reviewer when they engage with the wine and also every time they do so since its qualities are presented as permanent attributes. This generic effect of the simple present is contrasted with the effect of the present progressive in (12). (12) The 2005 […] is exhibiting a deep ruby/purple colour along with notes of sweet, mineral-laced black cherries […]

Like (10), where the verb is the simple present, the present progressive in (12) also portrays the event as a here-and-now experience. The difference between the construal of a state using ‘exhibit’ in the the present progressive is that the simple present is unbounded (see Configurations in Table 2 in Chapter 2) in time and because of that the interpretation is one of timelessness. The construal of a state expressed through the progressive form induces a boundary on the state with the effect that the event is restricted to a limited time span relating to the actual tasting event, which in turn restricts the interpretation to a reviewer’s experience at that point in time in contrast to the shared reviewer/reader enterprise and the lasting potential of the assessment for the future. In contrast to the TNs in Decanter and similar texts from many other sources, the TNs in the Wine Advocate are always tensed and in the majority of cases expressed through the simple present. The choice of unbounded or bounded configurations of aspectuality in the present tense is clearly of significant rhetorical importance. We see the simple present tense as a persuasive strategy used by the critic to convince his readers of the acuteness of his impressions, descriptions and assessments, which contributes to the construction of an authoritative textual persona and a view of the judgements as stable irrespective of the circumstances relating to the taster and the tasting situation. In other words, the sensory descriptions are conveyed as general and timeless truths.



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As already mentioned, almost all representations of the tasting event make use of the simple present. The past tense is not used. For the purpose of finding past tense representations, we made use another data set from the Specific Corpus comprising 1,000 wine reviews. Among them, we found only a handful in which the past tense was used. (13) [T]he 2003 Crozes-Hermitage blanc from Albert Belle was acidified, tart, and green. (14) There is not much to get excited about here. The 2003 Côtes du Rhône Villages was clipped and shallow. (15) The 2004 Crozes-Hermitages was of average quality with high acidity, vegetal personality, and little texture or concentration.

What all these examples have in common is that they are clearly negative assessments of the wines. The past tense conveys the critic’s epistemic distancing from the wine that is described and assessed. The information is presented as remembered rather than directly accessible to the critic at the time of writing with the implication that he is only responsible for the validity of his judgements as a tasting event in the past. This point in time is unrelated to the deictic now or the near future. The simple past tense profiles bounded situation which is brought to a close. There is a gap between the past and the present. The wine may very well develop and give rise to different experiences at the time of reading or at some other point in time, but the critic was not happy with the wine at the time of the tasting event and is unwilling to make prediction about its future development. Furthermore, another characteristic of the TNs examined is that the sensory descriptions are depicted as if they took place without the involvement of the critic. This way of describing the event has two important rhetorical functions. In the first place, it draws the reader’s attention away from the fact that what is communicated is the critic’s subjective experience (Potter, 1996, p. 150). Second, it engages the reader in that she/he is placed on a par with the critic as a remote sensing individual, as illustrated in (16)–(18). (16) [T]he 2005 […] boasts super intensity, a deep, full-bodied, powerful palate, silky tannin, beautiful purity, a fragrant perfume, and a mineral-laden backbone with moderate tannin. (17) Aromas of crushed rocks, sweet cherries, dried herbs, and notions of raspberries and blacker fruits jump from the glass of the 2003 Canon-de-Brem. (18) Deep, sweet black currant fruit interwoven with smoky herb, graphite, and licorice aromas emerge from this delicious, supple, fleshy 2003.

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The representations of the tasting events without explicit mention of source of knowledge are persuasive in the sense that they seem to block alternative descriptions and the one presented is the one and only (Potter, 1996, p. 106). The critic adopts an omniscient perspective. The impressions are presented without any explicit indication of the source of knowledge on which the descriptions are based, and the evidential source is concealed. As readers, we know that these renderings are recontextualizations of the social practice of the tasting event. If we compare the description of the tasting event to the description of the production event, we note that there are quite a few differences that indicate that the source of information has been accessed through the senses in the tasting phase, while the source of information in the production phase emanates from external sources, namely hearsay, and the production phase comprises numerous exact facts, such as a provocative blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc with 13+% alcohol in (6) seen earlier. In contrast, the descriptions of the tasting phase are less technical. Consider passage (10) again. (10) Its inky/blue/purple hue is accompanied by scents of blueberries, white flowers, and black currants.

In addition to the everyday colour words blue and purple, the adjective inky conveys additional information about the degree of clarity of the wine. The visual appearance of the wine could in principle have been given using The Natural Colour System (NCS), which provides technical codes for different nuances in the colour spectrum that may be used for more specific and objective communication about nuances in the colour domain. Through the use of this system it would have been possible to capture the subtle colour shades. For instance, representing the nuances of red from brick red to purplish red as follows: S3060-Y90R (brick red)-S3060-R20B (ruby/purple)-S3060-R40B (inky/blue/purple) (see Anishchanka et al., 2015 for treatments of colour identification and naming for different brands). Such technical terms are, however, avoided in the representation of the sensory experiences. Again, this is suggestive of the fact that the evidence is based on a human experiencer rather than by an external source. Moving from visual descriptors to olfactory descriptors, we observe that object descriptors are pervasive, as in (19). (19) Its inky/ruby/purple colour is followed by sweet aromas of spring flowers interwoven with black cherries, cranberries, cassis, plums, and hints of forest floor, wet rocks, and new oak.

All of the descriptors in (19) are physical, biological objects with relatively stable spatial properties. It is, however, not the visual properties that are profiled and



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made salient in this characterization, but primarily the olfactory properties (see also Chapter 4). The possibility of using chemical terminology providing exact formulæ, e.g., 1-octen3-ol, is avoided here too for the simple reason that such descriptors would not mean anything to the readers. Again, this points to the fact that a human experiencer, rather than technical instruments, is responsible for the description. The olfactory representation is usually followed by a description of the wine’s gustatory properties. As pointed out several times in this book, this order of representation is iconic with the order of the inspection of the wine in the tasting event, which enhances the credibility of the critic’s participation in the practical event and facilitates the imaginability on the part of the reader. The gustatory phase does not only involve taste proper but also tactile properties, i.e., the sensations of the touch of the wine against the palate and the tongue as well as the sensation of its weight in the mouth, i.e., the wine’s body. The final stage of the gustatory phase also involves an internal olfactory dimension, namely the sensation of the vaporization of the wine after it has been swallowed or ejected. This phase is referred to as the aftertaste or the finish. In most cases, it is difficult to distinguish these different dimensions in TNs, and the impressions are often conflated under the rubric of palate, which reduces the description of the tasting event to three parts: colour, nose and palate. The overall observation in the data set discussed here is that olfactory impressions include a large number of different object descriptors, which form the main part of the descriptions of the smell of the wines (as is obvious from the representation in the Aroma Wheels in Chapter 3). The gustatory descriptions rely more on property descriptors in the form of adjectives such as round, light, heavy, soft, dry, and participles and derived nominals of different kinds such as textured, oily or layered, as shown in (20). (20) [T]his tasty, round, moderately tannic, succulent, low acid Pomerol. Lush, medium-bodied, and sensual […].

The sensorial mode of knowing is considered first-hand information and, therefore, a reliable source of information in contrast to second-hand, hearsay information and inferences from external sources (Viberg, 2001). In this context, it should be borne in mind that the credibility of Parker’s wine descriptions is underscored by the widespread belief that his “sense of taste and smell must be extremely special” (McCoy, 2005, p. 141). Based on Parker’s media image, his descriptions are therefore likely to be interpreted as more reliable reflections of reality when he presents a wine as having the aromas of for instance camphor, creosote, plums, black cherry liqueur, currants, licorice and pain grille than if a random wine consumer would say the same thing.

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7.2.3 The consumption event In this section, we take a closer look at the representations of the consumption event, which is the part where the critic issues predictions about the wines. The consumption part may include the critic’s expectations about the wine’s development, its consumption span and/or its prime drinking time. Some wine critics also include references to prospective consumers and recommendations of dishes that are considered to go well with the wine (Caballero, 2007). The consumption part of the TNs in our sub corpus typically just includes a reference to the wine’s recommended consumption span, which is the case in 90% of the texts. This information can also be seen as a recommendation to the readers to take action and buy the wine already at the time of reading or when it is at its best. This interpretation is supported by the fact that unfavourably oriented TNs do not offer a drink time specification. Paradis’ (2009a) research on the construals of prime time recommendations in the Wine Advocate shows that the information in this part of the review is normally delivered in one of three formats: as declarative constructions, as imperatives or in the form of noun phrases. In our 200 reviews, 170 include drink time recommendations, of which 68% are declaratives, while imperatives make up 25% and noun phrases are rare, only occurring in 7% of the reviews. The imperatives as well as the noun phrase constructions are shown in (21) and (22) below. (21) Drink it over the next decade. (22) Anticipated maturity: 2013–2026.

Paradis (2009a) provides further subcategorization of declarative constructions, which shows that 28% of the declaratives are middle constructions, 32% are passive constructions and 40% are made up of other types of simple declaratives. These three categories are shown in (23)–(25). (23) It should drink well for 5–6 years. (24) […] it can be enjoyed over the next 10–15 years. (25) It is […] capable of lasting 15–20 years.

Example (23) is what is known as the middle construction (see the discussion in Chapter 4). Paradis (2009b) centres specifically on the middle constructions and proposes that they constitute the linguistic manifestation of the complex interpersonal function of recommendations, where the speaker tells the addressee what to do for the benefit of the addressee him or herself, rather than for the speaker, which is the case in requests. The imperatives are different from all the other types of constructions in the representations of the consumption event because they exclude the



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speaker from the readers that are being addressed by the recommendation. Noun phrases as well as middle constructions and other types of declaratives, including passives, do not incur such a restriction, but position both the critic and the addressees in the same group as possible future consumers of this wine. While the real world consumption event involves the addressees of the reviews, the formulations used to represent the consumption event highlight a property of the wine rather than involving an active human participant. Van Leeuwen (2008, p. 66) captures this phenomenon by means of the term deagentialization, which highlights the idea that the linguistic construction represents actions as brought about in other ways than by human agency. Paradis (2009a, p. 70) shows that the middle constructions are particularly useful for expressing recommendations because the way they are construed make them iconic with the consumption in the sense that they foreground the undergoer of the event (in this case the wine) and background the actor (the critic who issues the recommendation). Now, this is also the case in the representation of the tasting event, but since the reviewer relies on first-hand information from his own senses for the descriptions, the backgrounding of himself and the foregrounding of the undergoer, i.e., the wine, in the consumption event has the opposite effect. In the genre of TNs, it seems correct to assume that the critic thereby indicates that the status of the wine is beyond his epistemic control because the drinking event will take place in the future and the recommendation is directed to people whom he has no information about. What distinguishes the representation of the consumption event from the representation of the production and tasting events is that the mode is irrealis. What is expressed is a prediction of the status of the wine in the future. All statements about the future are expressions of potentiality. Just because something is possible or even likely to become true, there is still a chance that it may not become true (Jaszczolt, 2009, p. 33). While the restriction in epistemic certainty can be taken for granted since this part of the TNs deal with future time and unknown space, it is worth pointing out that this is encoded in various ways in the dataset. In addition to verbs whose main function is to express epistemic modality, like should and can in examples (23) and (24), the representation of the consumption also includes a number of other textual cues, which are indicative of this restriction in epistemic certainty. Morover, in most cases time specifications are imprecise and cover a large time range, as shown above in (23)–(25). Further examples of such restrictions in epistemic certainty are provided by (22), where anticipated clearly points to the uncertainty of the future, and (25), where capable indicates that while the wine has the necessary requisites, there is no guarantee that it will actually develop according to expectation. It is also of interest to consider the kinds of evidence that underlies predictions of the future. The question is how Parker can achieve credibility when he

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predicts the consumption span of the wines that he recommends. The strategy in the vast majority of the cases is to hide the impression of the person who makes the assessment. This is done through the construals of the consumption recommendations where there is no animate actor who issues the recommendation. Either the wine itself is the subject of the recommendation as in (23)–(25), or the wine is the actor-like subject in the middle construction, as in (24), or there is no subject as is the case for the imperative construction and the noun phrases, as in (21) and (22) respectively. Clearly, the critic prefers to abstain from accountability for the predictions simply because by nature such assessments are made on shaky grounds. In order to achieve credibility, it is necessary to take up a non-committal attitude and leave the rest to the addressees. This caution is evident though modal markers of uncertainty such as should, can, capable and anticipated. Comparing the representation of the production and tasting events, we note that the consumption events do not feature strong indications of a reliable source of evidence. What is noticeable, however, is that sometimes the reviewer makes use of elliptical constructions, the role of which in this part is to comment on the experiences and to connect the representation of the consumption event with the representation of the tasting event, as in example (26). (26) Long, rich, and moderately tannic with surprising weight, it should drink beautifully for 7–8 years.

In (26), descriptors of the wine’s taste and mouthfeel (long, rich, moderately tannic, surprising weight) are textually linked to the prediction of its timescale for consumption through the shared subject (it). Through the inclusion of the gustatory and tactile descriptors derived from the tasting experience, the critic indicates that those experiences form part of the evidence on which the prediction is based. Consider a slightly tweaked, constructed example (26), where the link to the tasting event is weakened through the division into two different sentences. (26) Bolaire 2005 is long, rich and moderately tannic with surprising weight. This wine should drink beautifully for 7–8 years.

Obviously, a lot can happen between the moment of the tasting event and the prime drinking time. There are several different possibilities of future development of for instance a wine that is considered as dull in the tasting event. It may remain dull, become duller or evolve into a pleasurable experience when it matures. In order for consumption recommendations to come across as credible by the addressees, the writer needs to have additional knowledge that is not exclusively derived from the particular experience at hand, but based on a capacity to compare the present experience to previous experiences with similar phenomena as in (27).



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(27) Based on previous vintages, it will undoubtedly require 10–12 years of cellaring.

Although there are a few instances, where explicit reference is made to previous experiences, this information is mostly left implicit, and the plausibility of the prediction rests on the audience’s contextual knowledge about the reviewer, in this case Parker’s outstanding ability and longstanding experience with other wines of the same type. According to McCoy (2005, p. 116), Parker has precisely the kind of experience that is required to be perceived as credible: “Parker’s secret weapon was his ability to mentally compare the wine in front of him with all the other wines of the same type he’d ever tasted over the years”, i.e., 10,000 wines a year for more than thirty years. 7.3

The vertical axis: Space, time and source of knowledge

In this section, we discuss the aspect of credibility, shifting the perspective from the three events on the horizontal axis of Table 29 to the values on the vertical axis and describe the most important implications for how credibility of the reviews and the reviewer is achieved from the point of view of the activities and the participants, space and time, and the source of evidence and modes of knowing. We make use of the same examples to illustrate the different aspects across the two perspectives. 7.3.1 Activities and participants The representations of the three phases of the tasting event in the reviews are all different with respect to the activities and their participants. As we saw in Section 7.2.1, the descriptions of the production event vary quite a lot. A common way is to present the information of the activities and the participants of the production event using non-finite, subordinate clauses or elliptical constructions, which are linked to and function as circumstantial extensions of the constructions used to represent the tasting event, as in example (8). This allows the presentation to be highly condensed, leaving implicit the production process as well as the participants. (8) A blend of 85% Merlot (from 70-year old vines) and 15% Cabernet Franc, it exhibits aromas of white chocolate, espresso roast, sweet blueberry and raspberry fruit […]

Where the process is realized with a finite clause, action verbs with the wine producers in the role as very competent and potent actors stand out as characteristic of the representation of the production event, as in (4).

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(4) Proprietor Patrick Maroteaux, president of Unions des Grands Crus Classes, is pulling out all the stops to make Branaire as alluring as several of the Leovilles and Ducru Beaucaillou […]

The characterization of the actors in the production phase as named, potent actors boosts the subsequent evaluations by the critic in the tasting event, where the reviewer is invisible and issues his assessments as an all-sensing god. The descriptions of the tasting event are most often instantiated by the use of stative descriptors, profiling the properties of the wine as the most salient participant, but the wine is also an active participant as the agentive source of the sensory experiences on the part of the critic. Consider (16), (17) and (19) again. (16) [T]he 2005 […] boasts super intensity, a deep, full-bodied, powerful palate, silky tannin, beautiful purity, a fragrant perfume, and a mineral-laden backbone with moderate tannin. (17) Aromas of crushed rocks, sweet cherries, dried herbs, and notions of raspberries and blacker fruits jump from the glass of the 2003 Canon-de-Brem. (19) Its inky/ruby/purple colour is followed by sweet aromas of spring flowers interwoven with black cherries, cranberries, cassis, plums, and hints of forest floor, wet rocks, and new oak.

In (16) the wine is profiled as an entity with human properties, and thereby capable of boasting about its own properties, i.e., super intensity, a deep, full-bodied, powerful palate, silky tannin, beautiful purity, a fragrant perfume, and a mineral-laden backbone with moderate tannin. In (17), the aromas of the wine have a life of their own. They are capable of jumping from the glass to the receiver, i.e., the critic. The wine is the actor and the critic is the undergoer in this set up. Again, in (19), the properties of the wine are in focus in parallel with a construal that highlights the iconicity between the tasting event and the order of presentation in the TN. In other words, the properties of the wine perform the role of the self-propelled actor. The person, who is the actor/experiencer in the real world event, is not visible in any of the descriptions. This way of representing the activity and the participants of the tasting phase serves the rhetorical function of drawing the addressee into the described event as fellow experiencers. The transfer of the actor role onto the wine is also a characteristic of the representation of the recommendation for consumption. Although the event represented by the text involves future consumers of the wine, human participants are not represented in the surface form of the texts. Instead, the action is transferred from the human participant (the critic or the future consumer) to the participant that undergoes the action (the wine) is portrayed as performing a more or less active role in the future consumption event.



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7.3.2 Space and time The basic requisite of the production event is that it took place somewhere else in the past as seen from the tasting event, i.e., the deictic centre of both the social and the discursive practice. In order to uphold the link between the tasting event as the present, deictic point with the past event related to the production of the wine, the preferred presentational form is through the present perfect. As already discussed, the effect of using the simple past, rather than the present perfect, would be a construal of the two events as disconnected. The link between the production event and the tasting event is not only maintained through the present in the past (6) or sometimes through the present tense (5), where the progressive aspect enhances the producers on-going efforts or verb-less extensions (2). All of them highlight the relevance of the past event in another place for the tasting event of the wine in question.

(2) The whites include a big, sweet, pear, mineral, pungently aromatic 2004 Hermitage blanc. A blend of 65% Marsanne and 35% Roussanne, it offers abundant quantities of honeysuckle and hazelnut notes.



(5) Young Stephan Chabord is trying singlehandedly to resurrect the image for sparkling wines from St.-Peray.



(6) [T]his tiny garagiste operation has fashioned a provocative blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc with 13+% alcohol

In most cases, the representation of the tasting event follows the representation of the production event. The verb in the simple present serves the purpose of locating the presentation of the perceptual event temporally. The portrayal of the perceptual experience without a tensed verb has previously been observed to be a characteristic feature of TNs (see Thibault, 2004) is clearly avoided by Robert Parker. By means of the simple present tense, the reader is drawn into the writer’s perceptual experiences, which are construed as immediately accessible to the reviewer at the time of writing. Consider (10). (10) Its inky/blue/purple hue is accompanied by scents of blueberries, white flowers, and black currants. Deep and rich, with a wonderful minerality, abundant nuances, fresh acidity, and stunning concentration […]

In addition to creating shared attention, the simple present in these descriptions also functions to portray the described experiences as a situation that is always there, irrespective of taster and tasting situation. This is the timeless and universal interpretation of the simple present, as in statements such as ‘a glass of red wine at lunch prevents heart attacks’. In the simple present, the recommendation to drink a

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glass of red wine at lunch reads as if it is true at all times and all places. A conscious cognitive effort by the addressees is required in order for them to conceptualize the described situation as a particular individual’s perceptual experience at a specific moment in space and time. The final part of the TN is the representation of the consumption event, which issues an estimation of the ideal time slot for consumption, as in (23). A basic requisite of the consumption event is that it is temporally anchored in the future in an unknown place. (21) Drink it over the next decade. (23) It should drink well for 5–6 years.

The prediction for ideal drinking time and the unknown space, where this will take place, is realized by means of lexical and grammatical markers, such as auxiliaries pointing to the future as in (23) or the imperative mood, which is necessarily about the future. In addition, auxiliaries and imperative construals are combined with temporal specification in the form of a generous range of time for consumption. All these types of expressions serve the purpose of locating the message in an epistemologically uncertain would-be reality with a decrease the degree of epistemic control by the reviewer. The description of the location for the production event is not always mentioned because this is information that the reader can retrieve from other sources based on the key words in the heading of the tasting note, such as A Bordeaux Blend Dry Red Table wine from St Estephe, Bordeaux, France. There is no information about where the actual tasting took place, or where the prediction about the future happened. This means that the spatial information has to be inferred by the reader. In sum, we conclude that the spatial and temporal aspects are there, irrespective of whether they are realized through language or not. We have shown that in the case of temporality, time indicators are most often explicitly stated in the texts, while the spatial specifications are not. 7.3.3 Source of evidence and modes of knowing For analytical purposes, a distinction was made between the source of evidence and the mode of knowing. We assumed that the evidential underpinnings in the representation of the production event is not based on the reviewer’s personal experience taking part in the production of the wine but on evidence that emanates from sources that are external to the reviewer, namely producers and other people dealing with the production of the wine such as oenologists. The mode of knowing can therefore be established as hearsay, and is only rarely realized by overt markers

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in the texts. Instead, the representation of the source of knowledge often involves technical specifics such as percentages of grape varieties. This information is likely to be based on external sources and not a perceptual experience. Consider (10). (10) [T]his tiny garagiste operation has fashioned a provocative blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc with 13+% alcohol.

Next, the tasting event is fundamentally distinct from the production event in terms of evidentiality and modes of knowing. The mode of knowing informing the sensory descriptions is direct visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile perception and the source of evidence is the critic’s own senses of vision, smell, taste and mouthfeel. The representation of the tasting event does not include overt markers, for instance, perception verbs signalling the mode of knowing or any explicit mention of the fact that the reviewer’s perceptual organs are the source of evidence. The credibility of the sensory evidence is implicitly endorsed by the widespread tales of Parker’s extraordinary sensory capabilities Finally, the part of the texts devoted to the representation of the consumption event relies on expectation as the mode of knowing. The source of evidence on which expectation builds is an intricate system of inferences based on information about production-related aspects as well as direct sensory perceptions and wide-ranging previous experience of the development of similar wines. This is, however, rarely expressed overtly in the text. The readers’ contextual knowledge about Parker’s activity as a wine taster (as presented by the author on The Wine Advocate webpage as well as in the media) helps to create credibility with respect to this mode of knowing. 7.4

Summary

This chapter offers an analysis of the construction of credibility in the discourse of wine through a detailed study of the TNs written by an extraordinarily influential reviewer, namely Robert Parker. We investigate the representation of the three different events and the three different parts of the texts, namely the production event, the tasting event and the consumption event. Our analysis focuses on a number of variables that are likely to be important explanatory elements for how Robert Parker achieves credibility. The values include the types of activities taking place and the participants taking part in the events. They are also concerned with when (time) and where (space) the activities took place, where the reviewer gets his information from (source of evidence) and how the information was retrieved (mode of knowing). All these aspects are in the light of what techniques the reviewer makes

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use of to produce a credible account where he clearly signals when he is certain or uncertain about what he is saying. This way this chapter links back to Chapter 2 and the description of the rhetorical structure of TNs in Chapter 3. Various textual cues justify a number of general conclusions regarding this reviewer’s capacity to induce credibility among his readers. The examination of the descriptions of the perceptual experience into component parts highlights the reviewer’s ability to make fine-grained sensory distinctions, which contribute to the profiling of a discursive persona as a reliable expert. The portrayal of the tasting event in the texts promotes a conscientious reviewer who is dedicated to giving exact witness statements, not only about the sensory effects of the wines, but also about the objective, taster-independent qualities of the wines. Exact factual presentations of technical details about the production of the wines contribute to the description of a meticulous persona. (28) The home estate of the brilliant, world-renowned oenologist, Michel Rolland, and his equally talented wife, oenologist Dany Rolland, Bon Pasteur’s 2003 has turned out extremely well for such a challenging vintage, better, in fact, that many Pomerol estates with higher pedigrees. Sweet black raspberries, cherries, and smoky herb aromas jump from the glass of this tasty, round, moderately tannic, succulent, low acid Pomerol. Lush, medium-bodied, and sensual, it will benefit from 1–2 more years of bottle age, and should drink well for 12–14.

Example (28) nicely shows how the production, tasting and consumption events are seamlessly connected with one another. The TN reproduces the inferential flow through activities, participants, times and spaces from the talented producers, through the talented wine taster to his recommendation about the wine’s future development. The TNs promote the conceptualization of the tasting event as a joint writer-reader experience by means of linguistic resources such as temporal marking, which functions to provide a representation of the wine that is stable across tasters and tasting situations, thereby advancing a feeling of shared reader/ writer attention in the tasting experience. The use of the simple present and middle transitivity patterns employed by the reviewer to capture the tasting event, draws attention away from the fact that what is describe is one person’s subjective impression of a wine at a specific moment in time. This type of description and assessment comes with a validity claim that rules out alternative descriptions and elevates the reviewer’s personal perceptual experiences to the status of general truths.

Chapter 8

The market individuation of wine

 

Wine is to women as duct tape is to men, it fixes EVERYTHING! (Tanya Masse, Stripping Away the Insanity of Life and Parenthood! (Volume 1))

Wine is often characterized as a prodigious substance with properties that heal the soul and inspire poetry, though not always the good sort. Charged with all kinds of symbolic connotations, it is often personified and, as such, even presented as the offspring of winemakers. However, these must make a living and feed their real children, which means that wine needs to be advertised and sold like any other commodity. The difference with other products is that wine is promoted as a distinct and unique product in a saturated market where both supply and demand have increased exponentially in the past decades, though not equally at all price levels. The promotion of wine is discussed in two chapters. The present chapter is devoted to the process of individuation of a wine for the market, from the choice of name to the final packaging, as planned by the people responsible for its marketing. The chapter is organized in two parts that address the different aspects of wine’s individuation as a commercial product, i.e., naming and packaging. This is followed by Chapter 9 where we describe the ways wine is advertised in magazines from different countries, and address related scholarly issues, namely the difficulties involved in using metaphor, metonymy and visual synaesthesia in wine adverts. 8.1

The marketing of wine

From the point of view of marketing, the successful promotion of a substance locked in a glass bottle is a complex feat that entails an initial leap of faith on the part of the consumer. With minor reservations, it is comparable in cross-modal difficulty to the perfume industry and, like it, involves making choices with regard to the wine’s name, packaging and advertising format. A decisive first step takes place at the moment of choosing a name since, if naming any product is a major marketing decision, a wine’s name is one of the very few things a consumer can know before purchasing it. In turn, the choice of a name partly determines the paths and possibilities of marketing campaigns, and certain names condition

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typographic choices for the wine’s label. Label and bottle constitute a second level of promotional identity, and the choices are seemingly infinite: label or no label, label size and format, material, with or without windows cut into it, use of colour, embossing or textures, bottle shape, format, glass colour, capsule or not, wax seal or not, screwcap or cork, cork material, grade, and length, etc. These are decisions that need to be made, sometimes settled during a family dinner, and other times placed in the hands of marketing professionals who may have never set foot in a vineyard. In order to discuss these matters, we have used the following corpora: wine names have been retrieved from a corpus of 9,800 Spanish wines (as collected in the 2013 edition of the Guía Peñín de los Vinos de España), the labels and packaging correspond to a corpus of 3,000 wines from all over the world, and the advertising techniques draw upon 12,700 pages from 96 issues of the major specialized magazines published in 2015 and 2016 in the UK (Decanter), the USA (Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine) and France (Revue du Vin de France). The broader issues addressed in this chapter are largely concerned with the role of visual elements in labels, the visual-verbal dynamics in wine packaging, and the multimodal interplay between the promotional genres and the verbal discourse of the TN. In this regard, we attempt to answer two basic questions: Which are the major naming and packaging strategies? In contrast to purely verbal TNs, does the ability to use multimodal strategies for bottles and labels change the characterization of wine? For regardless of what can be done in terms of bottle shape and weight, label and naming, the fact is that the three senses that matter the most in wine tasting – and, by implication, wine selling – are still missing. A more specific series of questions to answer would include the following: 1. Do names and labels have the ability to make up for this lack? And, if they do, how do they do it? 2. Is metaphor as relevant in wine naming as in TNs? 3. What role does metonymy play? 4. Which are the most recurrent source domains in these metaphors? 5. Is personification as pervasive in naming and labels as in TNs? 6. Which features are exploited? How? The real interest of this chapter, however, does not lie in how it manages to force wine into categories established for other products like cars, toothpaste or insurance policies, but in how it presents wine as a singular product that invites original promotional strategies, from naming to advertising. To begin with, metonymy is possibly more pervasive in the context of wine than elsewhere because, as a liquid, wine spends its entire life inside a number of containers that traditionally stand for

Chapter 8.  The market individuation of wine 145



it – as it is, the longest portion of many wines’ life happens inside a bottle, identified by a label that acts as a veritable ID card.17 This is even more relevant when we consider that winespeak is plagued with metonymy as well and, therefore, the metaphors used for advertising wine are largely metonymically enabled. Moreover, as images need to constantly evoke other modalities (touch, taste, smell), our analysis is heavily contaminated by schemas and mappings that do not fit easily into established taxonomies. 8.2

Choosing names for wines

There is a veritable sea of wine out there. Consumers typically know a few brands, enthusiasts a few thousand. Coming up with the right name for a new wine may not necessarily amount to getting half the job done, but it certainly is a good start. Recent scholarship on onomastics in marketing emphasizes the importance of brand names as “symbolic capital” (Danesi, 2006, 2011; Kremer & Ronneberger-Sibold, 2007; Sjöblom, 2016; Sjöblom et al., 2013; Wochele et al., 2012), which “should be considered as resources and assets in themselves” (Tent, 2017, p. 1). Among the major naming strategies we can distinguish between literal and figurative ones, the former being by far more frequent even if, of course, so-called literal strategies may well respond to the metonymies wine for source (e.g., Chateau Latour is produced at Chateau Latour) and wine for producer (e.g., the Eulogio Pomares range of wines is made by Eulogio Pomares) discussed in Chapter 4. The ultimate literal approach is numbering the different releases chronologically, as happens with the wines of Equipo Navazos, whose bottlings of Sherry and Montilla-Moriles wines appear in the series named La Bota de… and have reached number ninety-one in May 2019. Figurative strategies confirm many of the metaphors discussed in Chapter 5, i.e., present wines as living organisms, human beings and three-dimensional objects such as jewels, textiles or buildings. Table 30 shows these two types of strategies.

17. The importance of name and label cannot be overstressed: Spain alone released around 15,000 different wines in 2016, and the final 2016 issue of The Wine Advocate included 6,000 reviews from all over the world.

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Table 30.  Naming strategies Literal strategies: use of real referents for wine/winery names – Toponyms: Pazo Barrantes, Abadía da Cova, Sierra Cantabria – Winery names and author signatures: Naia, Roda, Jean Leon, Albet i Noya Figurative strategies – Wine traits verbalized in TNs: L’Equilibrista, Perfume de Sonsierra, Aire – Personification: Neonato, Tío Pepe, Celia, Waltraud

In the next few sections we discuss these strategies. 8.2.1 Literal naming strategies The single most popular strategy seems to be the use of toponyms, i.e., the names of those locations directly or indirectly associated to winemaking, probably because geographic origin is crucial and defining for many wines. For instance, in our corpus of 9,800 Spanish wine names, the most recurrent strategy is a seemingly endless series of variations around the names of vineyards, plots, terroirs, castles, manors, palaces, abbeys and monasteries, towns, villages, hamlets, parishes, riverbanks, creeks, brooks, orchards, prairies, mountain ridges, forests and so on and so forth. A brief list of real-life examples of such places might include the following: Abadía Retuerta, Castillo de San Diego, Cortijo Los Aguilares, Masía Carreras, Viña Norte, Pazo Señorans, Clos Mogador, Casa Cisca, L’ Ermita, Dehesa del Carrizal, Dominio de Tares, Pago de Carraovejas, Finca Sandoval, Hacienda Monasterio, Lindes de Remelluri, Arroyo de Tórtolas, Altos de San Esteban, Coma d’ En Pou, Sierra Cantabria, Cumbres de Abona, Palacio de Bornos, Bosque de Matasnos, Quinta Sardonia.

Indeed, estate names themselves could become the object of study: Chateau This-and-that and Domaine So-and-so take us back to the very successful Bordeaux/ Burgundy model after which many emerging winemaking regions in the world would like to fashion themselves – but not everybody can afford a real castle. Interestingly, the lack of a castle has given emerging regions unprecedented freedom to resort to more creative naming strategies and, as discussed in this chapter, many are definitely making good use of it. The second most popular strategy is to use the winery name, which is often that of the owner, yet is not a case of personification. A distinction must be made in this respect between the widespread strategy of branding a product with its author’s name (which is more a signature, itself not dissimilar from brands like Peugeot, Winchester or Sheaffer) and a more explicit or deliberate personification of the product. For the same reason, we do not force an architectural metaphor in every



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Chateau name: those are to be understood as toponyms as they merely designate the location of the vineyard. 8.2.2 Metaphorical naming strategies Conversely, many wine names appeal figuratively to some of the aspects and features of wine commonly verbalized in winespeak, i.e., the target in the metaphors and metonymies thus involved. Among these, the most frequent aspects involve metonymical names that range from simple traits like a wine’s aromas to relatively complex notions such as balance. For instance, wine aromas are invoked by names such as Pétalos del Bierzo, ‘Petals of Bierzo’, Milflores ‘Thousand flowers’ or ‘Mille-fleur’, Perfum ‘Perfume’, or Perfume de Sonsierra ‘Perfume of Sonsierra’. Other virtues such as gracefulness may be triggered by names like Bailarina ‘Ballerina’, and a beautiful illustration of balance (no matter how literal) is achieved by L’equilibrista ‘The funambulist’. More basic concepts such as body are recalled by names like Aire ‘Air’ or the playful El Gordo ‘Fatman’ and MMM after Mucho Macho Monastrell. Such naming strategies fall within diverse degrees of multimodality. Sometimes the strategies are purely verbal, with no visual support on the label, as happens with the white wine called Bailarina, and some other times, visual and verbal as in the illustrated labels of L’equilibrista; or ambitiously multimodal as in the entire packaging concept of Perfume de Sonsierra, which consists of a 75cl cubic bottle of dark blue glass, with label and stopper resembling a perfume bottle. If, on the other hand, we focus on the domain sourcing the naming strategies, there is one metaphor that permeates all genres and modalities of winespeak, and that is personification. As summarized in Table 31, personification is instantiated by the use of human first names, stages in human life, professions or titles and gender traits. Table 31.  Personification strategies First names – Offspring – Ancestry – Historical figures Life stages – Youth – Maturity – Old age Professions – Aristocratic titles and jobs Gender

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Using first names reinforces the schema wines are human beings, and because wines are the pride and joy of winemakers they are very often named after their offspring, their ancestors and even historical figures. Indeed, the idea that the winemaker (male or female) gives birth to a wine is deeply instilled among the trade: the process can be so laborious, physically intense and obsessive that many connotations of production and even craft are often eschewed in favour of a language that speaks of a more intimate relationship with the resulting wine. In this context, it is not surprising to find that some wines have been named Neonato ‘Neonate’ or Primogénito ‘Firstborn’. Indeed, in Spain, wines named after the real offspring (sons and daughters) of the winemaker/producer abound: María from Bodegas Remírez de Ganuza, Celia and Inés from Bodegas Vizcarra, Cuvée Cecilia from Finca Sandoval, Milú by Germán R. Blanco, Mateo by Charlotte Allen, Martí from Albet i Noya, etc. In similar fashion, there are numerous wines named after ancestors, sometimes going back several generations, who are thus honoured for starting the business, teaching the current owners/winemakers the necessary skills or instilling in them the love for wine. This kind of homage is frequently found in the names of both wineries (Bárbara Forés, Casa Aurora wines, José Pariente) and wines: Carmen (including a portrait of Benjamín Romeo’s mother on the label), Nuria Claverol (Sumarroca). A case in point of the use of ancestors’ names is old Sherry and Montilla-Moriles. In those regions cellar masters rarely start from scratch but, rather, inherit a working solera, and therefore the use of names belonging to the previous generation such as Tío Diego ‘Uncle Diego’, Abuela María ‘Grandmother María’, or Abuelo Diego ‘Grampa Diego’ for their products is far from surprising – after all, the wine was there well before the current winemaker. Outside the family domain, Sherry houses are also fond of using well-known names that suggest an old age to which supposedly the solera dates back. Noé ‘Noah’ and Matusalem ‘Methuselah’ are hyperbolical and tongue-in-cheek, but others refer to the protagonists of historic episodes in the area, many of them contemporaries of the Sherry boom in the early Nineteenth Century, like Wellington, Napoleón, Emperatriz Eugenia, Obispo Gascón, Cardenal Cisneros and a long etcetera. Age is another aspect of wine often mapped from the human domain. A textbook, and comprehensive, example in this respect is Bodega MATSU in Toro (Spain). In a clever rewriting of the three traditional categories of Spanish reds (roble, crianza and reserva in increasing age at release), they have launched the wines in their portfolio by means of names and labels that personify them using head shots of men from three generations dressed as peasants. Thus, the youngest wine El Pícaro ‘The Rascal’ is described as cheeky, daring and unpredictable; the slightly older El Recio ‘The Sturdy [one]’ is described by the winery as serene,



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resilient and experienced; finally, the oldest El Viejo ‘The Old Man’ is associated with plenitude, wisdom and balance, i.e., knows the land, understands the language of the elements. This multimodal combination of name and portrait was welcome in its day as a bold advertising strategy in that the front labels did not even mention the names, but merely showed the face of each character. Notably, the three names mix a personality trait (pícaro), a physical descriptor (recio) and a measure of age (viejo).18 A third subtype of personification can be found in the very popular attribution of a nobility title to a wine’s name. A truly large number of Spanish wines are named after some (largely masculine) barón (‘baron’), conde (‘earl, count’), duque (‘duke’), marqués (‘marquis’), príncipe (‘prince’) or even rey (‘king’): Barón de Chirel, Conde de Los Andes, Duque de Medina, Marqués de Alella, Príncipe de Viana, Reina de Castilla, etc. Such names are usually little more than toponyms since those titles used to be inevitably attached to estates, and they certainly do not suggest the active participation of the bearers of said titles in the process of winemaking.19 In any case, as often happens with metonymies, the choice of name reveals the will to privilege one aspect over another. After all, there are specific estate names for those titles (baronía ‘barony’, principado ‘principality’, ducado ‘duchy’…) and they were not chosen. A different story is that these days some of those titles are invented or bear no relation whatsoever to the estate or winery such as Marqués de Cáceres. Another personification schema consists of presenting wines as women. a wine is a woman is – rather stereotypically – built around the politically sensitive concept of graceful or feminine wines, namely lighter whites, rosés and some sparkling wines. As it is, in the popular imagination, the line is often blurred between feminine styles and wines, and wines for women. A clear example of stereotyped naming gender-wise is the line-up of a Spanish producer which includes three reds, a rosé and a white: Dandy, Gentleman, Hipster, Lady, Candy (where Lady is a rosé and Candy a white). Again, there seems to be a clear conflict between the world of fine wine and the supermarket shelves that women are apparently supposed to 18. Naturally, not all references to age are necessarily instances of personification. At a broader level, wine is conceptualized as a living creature, with a life cycle, a physiology, etc. In this context, “youth” can be instantiated by clever metonymies in certain regions by playing with words. In Toro (Spain) the name of the appellation means ‘bull’ and thus a local winery (Bodegas Toresanas) has called its young red Novillo ‘bull calf ’. Bodegas Monasterio de Corias makes use of a similar personification strategy. Located in a monastery, they produce a young red named Novicio ‘novice’. 19. Conversely, some aristocrats are indeed making wine in Spain now; some of them after their own name, such as the Marqués de Griñón.

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roam, as well as a stereotyping of women’s taste in matters of wine. Inés and Celia after the daughters of J. C. Vizcarra are full-bodied reds, but when winemakers give their wines female names they usually choose whites and rosés. This is the case of whites such as Bailarina, Maga, Rosalía, Marieta, Alba, Waltraud, María Sanzo, the cava Anna de Codorniu and, certainly, most manzanillas, e.g., Aurora, Macarena, Señorita, Gabriela, Maruja, Lucerita, Pastora, La Gitana, Micaela, La Kika, Señorita Irene, Juncal, La Rubia or La Bailaora. These contrast with traditionally masculine finos such as Don Fino, Tío Pepe, Tío Mateo, Capataz, San Patricio, Valeroso, Don Zoilo, or César. The next section covers the different strategies employed to make the actual bottle and label more attractive for consumers, all of which are closely related to naming since most shoppers learn about a wine’s name as they read it from the label at retail, perhaps even holding the bottle in their own hands. 8.3

Packaging wine

Packaging encompasses the entire multimodal concept of wine as a product: the visual elements (bottle, label, cork and capsule) interact with the verbal element (the name on the label) and are largely determined by the name’s capacity to condition promotional efforts in one direction or another. While name, bottle, label, cork and capsule may seem to be quite a lot of variables to play with, in fact, not even the sum of them all gives any indication of the quality of the contents. And, yet, no matter how rich or how limited the variations on these few elements may be, virtually all wines need a name, bottle, label, stopper and seal of some sort, which means that even the best wineries need to pay attention to such elements. It is new producers and emerging regions that feel the greatest pressure to persuade consumers that their wines may be worth trying and, accordingly, it is also among them that we find the most original labels and packaging strategies, regardless of the quality of the wines. On crowded supermarket shelves, no matter how good a wine might be, if it cannot visually seduce potential shoppers, if its looks cannot earn it an opportunity, consumers will never know what they are missing. Thus, as Evans (2016) claims, “The first job when the consumer is standing in front of the shelf is to convince them to buy this wine, not that one. […] But then you have to deliver the expectations in terms of quality. It’d better be good, because if it isn’t they won’t ever buy it again”. The different elements involved in wine packaging are discussed in the ensuing sections.



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8.3.1 Wine bottles Bottles are, by far, the most conservative element in wine packaging: winemakers have been experimenting with wine stoppers for decades and nowadays screw caps and synthetic corks have joined the traditional natural cork tops, but nobody has yet designed any serious alternative to the traditional glass bottle.20 Indeed, the most common bottle shapes are usually synonymous with the regions that originated them, for instance, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace/Rhine, Champagne, Jura’s clavelin, Tokaj or Port and Sherry. The bottle itself is the only unquestionable component in wine packaging, and together with the label they constitute the ultimate metonym for any graphic representation. A container is essential, and until recently, bottles protected the wine among other things by sheltering it from harmful light. An undesirable consequence is that instead of displaying the wine the bottle hid it from our sight, further accentuating the mystery. Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of transparent glass to better highlight the colour of whites and roses, at the expense of sunlight protection provided by dark green or brown glass. Regardless of their many different shapes and sizes, like the wine they contain bottles are anthropomorphized, i.e., are described as having a bottom, shoulders, neck, mouth and lips. Unsurprisingly, the two most frequent formats for red wine bottles are already culturally conditioned to help cast preliminary impressions about the contents: very roughly speaking, Bordeaux-type bottles are characterized as masculine (i.e., like their contents) versus Burgundy-type bottles which are as feminine as the wines inside are supposed to be. This is both a matter of involuntary association and visual imagination related to the bottle curves and their distribution; what in Bordeaux is interpreted as shoulders in Burgundy is perceived as hips. A recent phenomenon illustrates this beautifully: as the percentage of Garnacha in the coupage of La Montesa (a red Rioja) has kept growing through successive vintages, the winery has decided to shift from a Bordeaux to a Burgundy-type bottle. With extra Garnacha the once Tempranillo-dominated blend has become lighter in colour, more perfumed, more Rhone/Burgundian. Hence the change to a now visually informative bottle. Compare both bottle/label combinations in Image 1. An interesting, and more recent, strategy that appears to derive from the anthropomorphization of both wine and bottle involves dressing up wine bottles as if they were people. A classical – and typical – example is Fino Tío Pepe, whose 20. Bag-in-box and similar alternatives are indeed popular, but also restricted to wines of modest prices and comparable quality, seldom the case of our original 12,000-wine corpus. In all our corpora we have tried to stick to wines that are reviewed (or at least reviewable) by critics. (A 5-liter box of some of those wines would cost more than a small car and nobody knows how it would develop over the course of two decades). We have indeed limited ourselves to a certain quality spectrum, as we admit later, in Chapter 11.

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Image 1.  La Montesa from Bodegas Palacios Remondo

bottle is often dressed in a red jacket and hat, thus reinforcing – or playing with – the human name of the wine. The craziest characterization, however, belongs to a White Grenache wine from Méntrida (Spain). Tired of hearing that their project must be madness, the producers decided to call their wine Loco ‘Madman’ and the bottles were accordingly marketed dressed up in a white cloth straightjacket in lieu of a label (Image 2).

Image 2.  Loco by Bodegas Canopy



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This can be understood as a case of personification in tune with the bottle-dressing tradition, even though here the prop replaces the label for a proper commercial release, but of course, here the straightjacket must be understood as referring to a personality trait or mental condition of the producers, which is metonymically transferred on to the wine itself. Extending the madness metaphor, some gift sets come in a padded case evocative of the padded cells associated with mental institutions. 8.3.2 Wine labels The label is the most important thing in a bottle because it is the ID card of a wine. Accordingly, no matter how small, labels are fertile ground for multimodal creativity – more so if we take into account the growing number of wines in the market. Label design is increasingly put in the hands of professionals, who may be responsible for the entire corporate identity of the winery. While the minimum legally required information varies from country to country, the one thing shared by all labels is the provision of name, producer, vintage, alcohol levels, some geographic indication of origin and acknowledging the presence of sulphites in the wine. Such data are usually distributed between the front and back labels in bottles that have both. Primary information is hardly ever relegated to a back label but occasionally certain images demand that it be. There are countless ways to divide the even more numerous approaches to label design but, from a purely functional perspective, the strategies may be grouped as falling within two main types: informative and eye-catching. The former are efficient, sober, elegant at best; the latter foreground themselves and look self-conscious, flamboyant, even irreverent. Regarding the first strategy, most fine wines display a simple combination of typography and logo or typography and heraldry on their labels, and sometimes just typography – though this may range from plain Roman capitals to extraordinarily intricate German Gothic fraktura. Indeed, it may be argued that among top-quality wines any visual excess could backfire and detract from the (reputed) seriousness of the content. However, because this simplicity has been construed as desirable, it is often copied by lesser producers and by now it says nothing about the potential quality of the contents. As to eye-catching strategies, while aggressive marketing can often be too obvious, the creativity race need not detract from the quality of the contents. Market studies have established that the conflict between seriousness and fun seems to be a generational issue. For instance, in the USA, millennials are drinking more wine than any other generation before them and, according to a 2015 Gallo Wine Trends Survey, they are four times more likely than Baby Boomers to make wine purchases

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based on the originality and creativity of the labels (O’Hara-Plotnik, 2016). Still, for top quality wines these strategies are often at odds with respectability: overdesigned operations still look suspiciously like efforts to compensate for whatever may be lacking in quality. Particularly clever is the illusion of no label. When producers decide to go without a paper label they are not playing with less-is-more aesthetics. In fact, committed wine lovers have learned to cherish the look of white paint on bottles, often even more than reputed labels, for when winemakers bring bottles to exclusive dinners or tastings, there are usually no labels, or at least they use provisional inkjet labels made for the occasion. The sense of privilege in sharing these can overcome the excitement of even better bottles; the exclusivity derives from the fact that such wines are not commercially available in their present state. White chalk or paint is a relatively common cellar practice in different regions where a wine undergoes many different provisional stages (think Champagne, Sherry, Madeira, Port), and the marks go from single strokes to dates or full names. Sometimes these are simply covered by the final label. Simply put, for wine lovers white paint on glass is not a sign of recklessness but a mark of exclusivity. Therefore, it makes sense that some producers imitate it as part of their branding for commercial releases (cf., François Mikulski in Burgundy, whose transparent labels display a type of print that resembles white chalk, or A Pita Cega in Spain, which suggests handwriting with nail polish). Among the many other successful styles, we find labels that help visually illustrate concepts borrowed from winespeak. Such is the case of L’Equilibrista ‘The Funambulist’ in Image 3, a range of one white and two red wines whose labels feature a landscape of orchard fruits or red and black berries (different choices for the different wines) and above them a funambulist crossing the label on a tightrope. This is a beautiful illustration of the concept of balance and, therefore, the visual representation of a metaphor verbally cued by the wine’s name. Originality and creativity in wine labels might deserve a book of their own, but here we are going to limit ourselves to one example because it is such a revealing case. Irreverence is a welcome aspect of humour as a sales strategy and, surely, the same generation that finds classic labels boring and stuffy are comfortable with parodies of these. A case in point is Bodegas Canopy (from Méntrida in central Spain), which released a wine called Castillo de Belarfonso after an invented castle, and played with the expectations that, in the wine industry, every producer must display a castle image on the label. Having no castle of their own (Belarfonso simply blends the names of owners Belarmino and Alfonso), they decided to feature an inflatable one, like those bouncy castles for kids, in the label of their entry-level red (Image 4). Here we have an emerging region, a winery that produces labels going all the way to € 50, and a sustained irreverence and originality in branding – these are the same people who gave their white wine a straightjacket.



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Image 3.  L’equilibrista by Ca N’Estruc

Image 4.  Castillo de Belarfonso by Bodegas Canopy

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Some wine names are inextricably associated to specific label designs, forming a coherent multimodal whole. For example, to name a wine Boarding Pass and use a copperplate hand underneath the image of a castle might make little sense, but to print the label in low-resolution block capitals as in a real boarding pass where the data correspond to origin, variety, vintage etc. is simply genius. As shown in Image 5, “From” is answered “Australia”, “Class” is “Red wine” and there is even a playful luggage tag with the barcode around the neck of the bottle, making the wine an excellent export candidate as it would figuratively be anybody’s “ticket to Australia” (metonymically, via its characteristic Shiraz wines). This invites a metonymy country/region for wine, a recurrent marketing message of the sort “Taste a country/region.” The bid for humour is further emphasized by the use of a perfectly unrelated “Open this end →” indication.

Image 5.  Boarding pass

Another tool available to creatives is the back-label. As there is no legally required information that cannot appear in the front label or the neck of the bottle, back labels are mainly a matter of design nowadays – even if they have long been used to print the producer’s own tasting note of the wine, itself a marketing strategy. Generic TNs included in the back-labels of wines of supermarket-quality level have long been the object of popular derision, and are by now a classic of marketing spoof, because they would all invariably claim that the vintage in question was the best to date, and the wine would pair well with all sorts of possible dishes. Some back labels, however, are put to good use, and provide information about the vineyard, the vintage and winemaking process, the winery history, or a little of each. For instance, Australian producers d’Arenberg have traditionally managed to fit a remarkable wealth of information and anecdote in the long, narrow back labels of their wines. Telling a story helps consumers relate. Conversely, mystery works just as well, and for decades the pioneering producers of the rebirth of the Priorat region in Spain used no back label at all, only the appellation seal (which was really annoying in the nineteen-nineties, when consumers were starved for information about their projects). Beyond objective data, the descriptive compulsion is almost always



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contaminated with evaluation and promotion, and so when TNs that appear in back labels are authored by the winemaker or the marketing department, they are hardly ever useful. An exception may be the still relatively rare instances when they are borrowed from some reliable critic – in which case, they are usually accompanied by a number rating. Even then, it is not uncommon to find heavily edited TNs as well as ratings referred to a different vintage of the wine contained in the bottle, a fact that is usually acknowledged but in truly small print. Since they are typically useless, humour has taken their place, and self-parody at least appeals to the consumer on a radically different level. The following has been extracted from the back label of a red wine produced in Jumilla, Spain, called Monastrellisimo, and is a remarkable example of a winery’s exploitation of humour and consumers’ complicity:

(1) Tinto de fuerte color, rojo púrpura intenso con ribetes violáceos, muy expresivo y afrutado en nariz con taninos vivos en boca y con gran estructura. Como si te digo que…unos leperos vampiro, de buena familia, lo recolectan sólo en noches de apareamiento del cernícalo real mientras escuchan Chiquetete (los leperos). Acto seguido se fermenta en barricas de tungsteno construidas por glamurosos enanos carlistas con crestas de colores. Te lo vas a creer igual. ‘Deep purple with violet rim, very expressive and fruit-forward on the nose, with kicking tannins and great structure on the palate. I might as well say … that a bunch of vampires from Lepe, of noble family, harvest the grapes only during nights of the mating season of the kestrels while they (the vampires, not the kestrels) play music tapes by Chiquetete. The wine later ferments in tungsten barrels built by glamorous Carlista dwarves with multicoloured mohawks. You’re going to believe it all the same…’21

This type of hyperbolation ad absurdum may be frequent in popular culture, but a little less so in promotional language, giving up all pretension of seriousness in an open bid for humour. It makes sense, though, considering that credibility is not really an issue, since every consumer knows the back label is unquestionably promotional space.

21. Lepe is an Andalusian town and for some reason the origin of all the fool characters in popular jokes. Chiquetete was a flamenco singer of success during the 1980s and 90s in Spain, of cultural resonance incompatible with digital media. Carlista in the absence of more context could mean a myriad things, among them politically old-fashioned and conservative.

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8.4 Summary From the previous discussion, we can draw a series of conclusions that answer the original research questions. The naming strategies for the purpose of market individuation of wines are many, but essentially can be reduced to an almost generational conflict between traditional and transgressive. Whereas wine names have usually resorted to toponyms and other location-related names, nowadays emerging countries and regions are increasingly exploiting metaphorization, with emphasis on personification with a more informal, even playful attitude to make room for other strategies aimed at the younger generations. Metaphorical mappings, especially those related to personification, are frequent among naming strategies that deviate from the conservative tradition. Within those figurative approaches, we find mappings that echo the language of TNs and emphasize the figurative life cycle of wine, its conceptualization as the winemakers’ offspring, or physical and personality traits. This also applies to packaging: bottles and labels are echoing this need to catch consumers’ attention from the shelves, and while excessive originality may compromise the image of fine wines, there are countless mid-range wines fighting that battle today. Most often, this is pure marketing, and seldom are wine-specific or even wine-related general strategies adopted by marketing professionals who need not know anything about wine. In fact, the vast majority of today’s creative packaging decisions do not even try to convey information about the content of the bottle, La Montesa in Image 1 being a rare exception, and the task undertaken by marketing departments seems to consist in convincing consumers to try that first bottle. Therefore, most label-design efforts refrain from descriptive exercises and concentrate on making the item as attractive as they can. This is often merely a matter of displaying gratuitous creativity, sometimes even sheer humor, in order to connect with a younger generation of shoppers.

Chapter 9

Advertising wine



White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak. (James Joyce)

Whereas every wine needs a name and a bottle/label policy, not every wine needs to promote itself by means of adverts in the press. As it is, certain privileged wines enjoy such status that they are sold out even before the grapes are picked. These are usually expensive wines with short productions previously allocated to a list of faithful subscribers. It is safe to say, though, that virtually everyone else needs a little promotion because even some of the very best houses tend to produce second, less unaffordable, wines that can benefit from their association with their top label. By advertising the entire portfolio together, the ‘pull’ effect of the top label makes the affordable little brothers appear more desirable. In this chapter, we discuss the most frequent advertising techniques for wine. In order to do so, we have used 12,700 pages from 96 issues of the major specialized magazines published in 2015 and 2016 in the UK (Decanter), the USA (Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine) and France (Revue du Vin de France). Wine adverts include adverts for a single label or, more often, for the entire portfolio of a winery, and sometimes for wine producing appellations, regions and even countries. They may appear anywhere in magazines: from a boring succession of four or five in the opening pages to isolated small adverts that function as visual relief in pages densely packed with TNs. Likewise, sizes vary dramatically across adverts. In fact, there is quite a difference in what can be done with one fourth of a Decanter page, usually mere reproductions of labels in pages that may feature as many as four, and a full two-page spread in a fairly large magazine such as Wine Spectator. When adverts promote a single wine, the concept of brand is metonymically prominent in a very particular way: with notable exceptions, wine is a vintage-specific concept by nature, but this is rarely the focus of promotion. As it is, there is a conspicuous neglect of this fact, whereby we should understand that one of the major functions of wine advertising is the building of brands that can weather the fears aroused by vintage variation in the eyes of consumers. Conversely, there are also adverts displaying little more than verbal claims to regularity, like those of wineries stating they have produced x wines rated 90+ in the past y years. Regardless of this possibility, in the same magazine issue we often find adverts for

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wines costing from € 10 to € 250, and usually there is no mention of this fact anywhere, as well as wines qualitatively positioned between the mid-80s and all the way to 100 points. In any case, what was said in Chapter 8 of naming and labels holds true for wine adverts too: the fact is that the three senses that matter the most in wine tasting – and, by implication, in wine selling – are still missing. The general question addressed in this chapter, then, is whether adverts have the ability to make up for this lack. And if they do, how they do it. Indeed, simple empirical observation reveals that the immense majority of wine adverts do little more than present bottles and/or labels in artsy ways. However, whereas literal approaches, e.g., the use of wine names or adverts with real referents, present little conflict, when wineries and marketing creatives resort to metaphor the resulting issues offer great interest for our study. Starting from a view of metaphor as “primarily a matter of thought and action and only derivatively a matter of language” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5), the body of work conducted on visual and multimodal metaphor and figurative visual phenomena in general is indeed essential to complement, compare, and contrast the findings obtained from the study of the properly verbal uses of figurative language, which, admittedly, is better consolidated. In this regard, the questions addressed throughout this chapter are as follows. 1. Is metaphor as relevant in advertising as in TNs? Which are the most recurrent source domains in wine advertising? Is personification as pervasive in advertising as in TNs? Which features are exploited? How? What role does metonymy play in wine advertising? 2. Do metaphors in wine adverts fit in the taxonomies addressed in Section 9.2 and proposed by scholars such as Carroll (1996), Forceville (1996, 2006) or Phillips & McQuarrie (2004)? 3. Are figurative wine adverts culturally-specific, i.e., understandable only by the community of wine enthusiasts? Do advertisers overcompensate to avoid this danger or do they rather cultivate this exclusivity? Do they use text to make sure their point is not missed? While there are numerous companies devoting impressive resources to research ways of manipulating consumers, research on advertising and, particularly, the metaphors used to promote goods and services is surprisingly recent (Caballero, 2009, 2014; Carroll, 1996; Cook, 2001; Forceville, 1996, 2007, 2008, 2009; Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009; McQuarrie & Phillips, 2008; Messaris, 1997; Negro, 2015; Pérez Sobrino, 2017; Phillips & McQuarrie, 2004; Scott & Batra, 2003; Teng & Sun, 2002; Velasco-Sacristán & Fuertes-Olivera, 2006a, b). In the case of wine advertisements, however, a first distinction should be made between adverts using literal and figurative strategies.

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9.1

Literal strategies in wine advertising

A surprisingly high number of wine adverts limit themselves to the reproduction of the label or bottle – an odd strategy indeed considering that a closed bottle of an unknown wine reveals very little. While this is done in style, in very flattering light, often backlit if the bottle is transparent and the wine a white or rosé, one would expect a very different use of expensive empty space, such as images of vineyards or winemakers, or people dining, or a brief datasheet. Sometimes there is a number rating (even a TN) by some critic, but in the simplest adverts there is often not even a tagline. These might be characterized as reminders when the wine is a very well-known one, e.g., this is typical of Bordeaux Grand Cru Classé and Champagne, but sometimes this strategy is copied by newcomers who perhaps think they can participate in the glamour and further mystery implied by not needing to tell a story. However, as happens in TNs, wine production is often construed as a narrative that gives advertisers all sorts of events and locations to emphasize, from the vineyard to the table. Regardless of how much space is reserved for a reproduction of the label and/or bottle, the background can always be partly devoted to landscapes and scenes covering any of the different stages of wine production and consumption. We can sort these from origin to destination in chronological order, bearing in mind that all these stages are usually contaminated by a powerful presence of the human element. The little narrative would begin with the source: the vineyard, of course, but also the region and its culture (heritage, ecology, viticulture), to focus later on the process (the winemaking itself, cellars, barrels, technology) and finally end at the consumption stage: lifestyle, gastronomy, atmosphere, etc. The following sections track the route of wine from its origin to its destination. 9.1.1 The origin of wine A premise in wine advertising, as opposed to wine appreciation, seems to be a democracy of terroir: all terroirs are privileged be they twelve feet south of Richebourg or next to a parking lot in Michigan. Wine advertising is seldom vintage-specific, unless ratings, trophies, or TNs for a particular vintage are prominently displayed in the ad. What wine advertising promotes is a concept that generally comprises a physical given (the vineyards), a slightly less stable human team, and a totally unpredictable element: the weather. In regions where vintage variation can seriously affect the qualitative hierarchies, e.g., Bordeaux, track record is a vital claim on which to build a reputation. As nobody can guarantee the quality of the next vintage in any winemaking region of the world, what is advertised is a brand, not a specific

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product. In the process of brand building, wineries highlight those features they think will singularize them in the eyes of consumers. Many wineries are gifted with exploitable features that can range from scenic landmarks (castles, for example) to literary references, but it would be safe to state that at the heart of contemporary wine advertising lie ecological concern and sustainable practice, which means that wineries that can legitimately claim investment in sustainability are much more likely to appeal to modern sensibilities. This concern is real and observable in adverts that privilege elements, which, while anecdotal product-wise, remind readers of the added value of low-impact winemaking. Thus, we find adverts for wineries that use bicycles to travel around the vineyards, keep beehives to encourage natural pollination, reject pesticides and turn to chickens instead in order to keep insects under control, or even resort to falconry to protect their precious grapes from starlings. None of these things can be tasted in a wine, but they decidedly add unquestionable charm to our romantization of winemaking. 9.1.2 The process of making wine It is a wide world of wine out there, and not all of it is as simple as red or white, which means that the promotion of certain wine styles may benefit from a didactic approach. This is especially true of sweet, fortified and sparkling wines, the production of which involves more complexities than the standard winemaking process. For instance, an advert by Masi Amarone shows several images of grapes gradually shrivelling as they dry over 30, 60 and 100 days. This illustrates the process of appassimento, which is crucial for the concentration of the grape juices, and readers are probably grateful for the education. Such adverts are courageous in the sense that all wines in this style are made this way, and therefore the process is not exclusive to this producer, but if you first learned about the style from this advert, perhaps in the future when you think Amarone you will think Masi. Photos of people sell, and the faces of winemakers and, sometimes, also their team are found all over wine adverts. Some winemakers are famous enough that their faces are not just easily recognizable but synonymous with fine wine. In any case, the human factor has enormous appeal, and pictures of full families featuring several generations of winemakers have always helped sell wine. Even though many wineries that are technically family businesses happen to produce several million bottles per year – and the wines are none the better or worse for it – the very notion of family business brings in desirable resonances of artisanal process and, when evocative family scenes are shown in adverts, consumers are invited to believe this will have an automatically positive effect on the resulting wine. In fact, Decanter devoted its August 2016 issue to “Wine in the Family” celebrating the work of many wineries that feature several generations in the business.



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9.1.3 The consumption of wine Whereas images of vineyards and cellars have traditionally proved successful in wine adverts, it has recently become fashionable to invert the focus and insert landscapes that do not represent the origin of the wine but, rather, the travel destinations where people might want to enjoy its consumption, for example legendary restaurants which, in turn, receive a little extra visibility. This has opened the range of possible landscapes enormously, even if they are not wine related. The emphasis is on the notion that wine can be consumed everywhere, and even the most desirable travel experiences can be improved or enhanced by bringing wine along. A rather extreme example of this appeared in the November 30, 2016 issue of the Wine Spectator, where Beaulieu Vineyard advertised its Georges de Latour Private Reserve with an image of a building few people would immediately associate with wine: the White House (but the tagline explained that their wine is served at state dinners). When it comes to wine enjoyment, a deeply rooted stereotype (for good reason) dictates that Mediterraneans know how to party, or rather, they do not even bother to call it party, they call it life. Mediterranean evocation is a great marketing strategy, especially in countries with less privileged climates. The lifestyle connotations revolve around attitudes such as the SLOW movement and dolce far niente: images of large families or groups of friends around a rustic table, long lunches that involuntarily turn into dinners, learning to pronounce siesta and alfresco, the casual role wine plays in the lives of people who, presumably, open bottle after bottle of wine without ceremony and for no reason at all. While solemnly good wines might be best reserved for special occasions, there is still plenty of affordable and good-enough wine that can be consumed spontaneously and casually. Decades ago an international campaign for Cava Freixenet used the slogan “Too much fun to be taken seriously” in that spirit. Slogans emphasize this celebration of joie de vivre and help locate it in the Spanish south, the French Riviera, California, where a new line of affordable wines has been advertised with the tagline “Celebrate the little things (like Tuesdays)” or just about anywhere in Italy: “Celebrate the art of living: Sicilian style.” As an inevitable extension of the typical beautifully and succulently laid table, some wines are advertised with straight references to certain food pairings. A truly bold example would be the simple presentation of a bottle of Terrazas Cabernet next to a massive rare steak that has the Terrazas logo hot-ironed on it, with the charred parts still smoking. Similar examples abound in the white wine association with shellfish, producing a bounty of still-lives with fruits de mer.

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9.2 Metaphorical strategies in wine advertising Wine adverts are and are not like any other adverts. Those using metaphors can be fitted somehow in the existing taxonomies around pictorial metaphor as well as the verbo-pictorial sort of multimodal metaphor. Certain problems exist, though, and they are discussed in Section 4 of this chapter, but metonymic complications should be mentioned up-front, even if just briefly. Wine is rather an anonymous-looking substance, and so very little wine is actually seen in wine adverts: surely many photoshoots would prove impractical if they demanded real splashing and wasting of premier grand cru classé that nobody would recognize as such anyway. Instead, bottles with labels are shown to the point that they become metonymically synonymous with wine as the target, and statistically several hundred times more frequent. This conditions advertising quite seriously in different ways since adverts for appellations cannot show specific labels, and adverts for wineries cannot forego the labels or logos. Whereas Forceville (2013, p. 4) warns that “the emphasis on the abstract a is concrete b has caused a blind spot for manifestations of the concrete a is concrete b variety,” here we find that the target, although very concrete, is almost exclusively represented visually by a metonym, and even when images of wine are explicitly shown they are paradoxically insufficient unless the metonym is present as well. Forceville makes an initial distinction between monomodal and multimodal metaphors. The monomodal are “metaphors whose target and source are exclusively or predominantly rendered in one mode” (Forceville, 2006, p. 383), and the multimodal are “metaphors whose target and source are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes” (2006, p. 384). In static adverts, the distinction between monomodal and multimodal metaphor confronts purely verbal or purely pictorial with verbo-pictorial metaphors. Within the monomodal, we find the following typology from Forceville’s discussion of pictorial metaphors: a. b. c. d.

Target & source non-homospatial, both depicted = simile Target & source non-homospatial, source suggested = contextual metaphor Target & source homospatial + noncompossible = hybrid metaphor Target & source homospatial + compossible = embodied or integrated metaphor

In simile, salient juxtaposition invites understanding of a phenomenon experienced as a unified object in terms of a second unified object belonging to a different category. Both terms are present and distinct (non-homospatial). In contextual metaphor it is the context which invites reading a phenomenon that is experienced as a unified object as being something else. The source is not explicitly depicted but encouraged by the context. Hybrid metaphors involve composing a unified object or gestalt (usually impossible) as consisting of two different parts that are themselves unified objects belonging to different domains. The interpretation invites



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understanding one part in terms of the other. Embodied or integrated metaphors are the rarest of the four. They involve the representation of a phenomenon experienced as a unified object or gestalt, in its entirety, in such a manner that it resembles another (Forceville, 2016). From the point of view of the most recurrent source domains, wine adverts follow more or less the same patterns as metaphors in TNs: wine is conceptualized as a living organism, especially a human being, or a three-dimensional body of more or less specific mappable characteristics (a building, a textile, a jewel, etc.). These strategies are explored in the following sections. 9.2.1 Personification: Depicting wines as human beings As happens in TNs, wine advertising often involves the personification of wines. In marketing we find the exploitation of the following anthropomorphic features: a. b. c. d.

Kinship: a winery’s portfolio is often a family of wines. Gender: some regions have retained gendered conceptualizations of wine. Anatomy: wines have a nose, body, legs, physical beauty. Personality/Psychological traits: wines with common sense, soul, or sophistication.

Because wineries can choose to highlight just one product, but usually advertise an entire range at a time, or even the winery itself, we find the recurrent mapping a winery’s portfolio is a family emphasizing that the wines come from the same parents. Paradigmatic of this strategy is an advert featuring pictures of the four Wagner family members responsible for six different wines with the tagline: “A family of wine. Made by a family.” This occupies an impressive two-page spread in the opening pages of the Wine Spectator, so there is enough space to show the bottles, the winemakers’ faces and their signatures. In a similar fashion, the November 2016 issue of Decanter featured an article called “Little brothers” discussing precisely the quality of the second wines of some great houses. Personification in TNs is increasingly genderless, save for the now less frequent terms masculine and feminine, and some memorable descriptors such as Robert Parker’s notorious “a whore of a wine”, or The Wine Enthusiast’s “a Lolita of a wine”. It is, however, hard to avoid a gender commitment when using images in ads, so we may be faced with gendered personification, which in turn may enable rather different strategies. Some adverts manage to elude this by exploiting personality traits and a tagline where the wine speaks using the first person in the absence of a human, gendered figure, for instance, “Where I am from you can be bold without being loud” used by Paraiso Vineyards. However, interestingly, most others resort to a very explicit source depiction.

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Images of women sell. If the metaphor wine is a human being speaks generically of physiology and psychology, a wine is a woman makes a far more specific set of claims. An advert for the Barbera d’Asti Consortium presents a photo of a woman with a glass of wine next to the inviting words: “My name is Barbera. I come from Asti. And I have a story to tell.” This kind of personification is subtle: wine and woman are only juxtaposed, although she is supposedly drinking the wine, and we know that wines do not speak. It is even elegant, invited rather than forced, as the woman’s name might indeed be Barbera, and the tagline could be intertextually alluding the famous show and subsequent album by Barbra Streisand My Name’s Barbra. The odds are that if you pay for wine magazines you will recognize Barbera as a grape and Barbera d’Asti as an Italian appellation. This is not to say that less subtle anthropomorphization does not abound too. While not always the most intelligent or tasteful strategy, exploitation of certain anatomical features can lead to adverts using wickedly ambiguous language. The following tagline from another Italian wine advert could be spoken either by the brunette leaning against a column or by the bottle of Montepulciano next to her: “Full-bodied ITALIAN with great legs seeks dining companion.” This is a teasing cross-genre self-description structured after personal adverts in newspapers or magazines, suggestive of romantic possibilities: while full-bodied and great legs actually refer to the wine’s features, they seem to apply to a woman born in Italy which, in turn, is merely the source domain for an Italian wine target looking for a dish to match. Those romantic possibilities with a dining companion are equally ambiguous, as the harmonious pairing of wines and dishes is often called match or marriage. Both adverts are instances of multimodal (verbo-pictorial) metaphor, because the juxtaposition of woman and wine, with both terms present, would be insufficient without the exploitation of ambiguous language. Instead of doing nothing and just being women on the page, women can also appear, as in an advert for Clarendelle, performing a difficult ballet jump in front of the maison. The legend here reads “Équilibre, Élégance, Complexité”, and whereas the small reproduction of the bottle is almost entirely outside the frame, the personification is effective, the language is sufficiently ambiguous, and the woman is identified in a caption as the prima ballerina at the National Opera Ballet of Bordeaux. With both terms present and a little familiarity with the target domain, this makes for a solid pictorial simile, but the tagline helps indeed by casting an interesting ambivalence. Instances of personification can also use a male characterization, but the features mapped are, unsurprisingly, of a different sort. Under the tagline “Call me Classic” we find a black and white head-and-shoulders portrait of a young man in profile, a hipster, with de rigueur beard and ethnic tattoos, in a reflective attitude – his hand to his lips, literally. Underneath the slogan, in much smaller print, can be



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read “Strong coffees. Good conversation. Home-baked bread and the wine, Viña Pomal. Call me classic.” Given the unquestionable visual impact, possibly enhanced by the shock that anyone familiar with Viña Pomal’s classic Rioja profile would experience, this young man’s modern profile is picturesque enough to be effective without any text, but as it is, the text itself partly explains that the contrast is more than mere provocation. Since classic Rioja is making a comeback and becoming fashionable again, the role of the text is to list this man’s priorities as more important than the relative frivolities of his looks. While these may or may not be shared or approved of by the traditional consumer of classic Rioja, his principles display rock-solid common sense – or so the ad would have us believe. The extent to which this hipster may be a personification of the wine itself relies decidedly on the phenomenon whereby “beards are back”: classic Rioja is not merely fashionable again; it claims to have undergone a serious renovation, to blend the best of tradition and innovation. Otherwise, under “Call me classic” we would merely have an instance of the metonymy consumer for product. Finally, to further problematize the personification strategy, we would like to offer a tour de force in verbo-pictorial ambiguity displaying a slogan with several possible source domains. A multi-ad campaign for Sterling Vineyards uses the tagline “Always polished, Never dull.” The source domain could easily be the (impossibly) stylish group of people shown in the photograph (sometimes a two-page spread) drinking wine in a typically Californian location, but the terms polished and dull equally seem to exploit the identification wine/silver invited by the winery name, Sterling. Polished would refer to the mouthfeel of the wine, where the tannins would have mellowed over time, as well as to the extra shining quality of silver that has been…well, polished. Dull would mean the opposite of polished in silverware, but not in wine tasting; dullness would be a form of personification borrowed from the edge of knives, the opposite of sharp also when describing human intelligence. In wine, it could refer to several things, from visually cloudy or hazy to lacking interest or expressiveness. In any case, the ad might present a multimodal metaphor (the verbo-pictorial sort) in that the tagline could refer to a wine described in a TN, to the silver implicit in the name of the winery, or even to the very hip group of people. Whether the tagline’s source domain is silver or people is relatively irrelevant and subjective because the wine’s bottle and label are present, and the people with wine glasses dominate the image, so we must infer both mappings are invited. 9.2.2 Wines as three-dimensional artefacts As happens in TNs, some adverts play with the visualization of the verbally cued metaphors wine is a jewel, wine is a textile garment and wine is a building. The first one is a universal marketing strategy, for all products seem to be flattered

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by the comparison with luxury items such as jewels. Thus, “Nos vignerons sont des orfèvres” ‘Our winemakers are goldsmiths’ is proudly claimed by an advert showing sparks behind a bottle of red wine, suggestive of hammering on hot metal. The black background enhances the dramatic effect, but the metaphor is largely verbal, namely if our winemakers are goldsmiths then our wine is a jewel. Whereas the mapping is metonymically similar, the focus is radically different in an advert for Champagne Boizel’s cuvee Joyau de Fance: “La nature en a fait un joyau” ‘Nature has produced a jewel’. Here the emphasis rests on how nature is responsible for the wine-jewel, minimizing the role of man. As a recurrent strategy, many Champagne houses emphasize their association with luxury by surrounding the bottles with jewellery; for instance, a (transparent) bottle of Amour de Deutz is placed among “diamonds” in an advert that wants to suggest an identity between those diamonds and the bubbles in the wine. Strictly speaking, those bubbles should be as fine as possible, but nobody objects because the desired effect is effective: the cut facets make the diamonds sparkle with light, and the association is clear. Another Champagne prestige cuvee, Cristal, a pioneer in transparent bottles, parts with the bottle altogether in an advert where the shape of the bottle is evoked by a loosely arranged series of rings of gold filigree and the label. The weightlessness is visually well achieved, the golden colour is accurate, and the luxury connotations are evident. In similar fashion, an advert for its little brother, Brut Premier, shows the silhouette of the bottle recreated with golden sparks. Endless variations on this motif have been employed by many Champagne producers at some point in their marketing history. The metaphor wine is a textile garment is less frequent, no doubt because it is also more difficult to play visually, and when it occurs, it is usually verbally cued. A classic advert from the 1990s showed a young man impeccably dressed carrying a bottle of Taylor Port and the slogan “A man is known for his Taylors.” A more recent version contrasts two photos of port bottles (Vintage and LBV) describing the exceptionality of vintage port as ‘formal attire’ and the informality of late bottled vintage as “smart casual,” again playing with the tagline “Every gentleman has his Taylor.” While this is a logical exploitation of a winery name, there are instances where the textile mapping is more deliberate, as illustrated by an advert for Barton & Guestier showing a label framed by gold filigree and the legend “Perfect moments are tailor-made.” The gold thread ends in a needle pinned through the label as if the label were sewn to the bottle by hand. This invokes the notion of “handmade specifically to suit one person’s size/needs/tastes”, which is decidedly positive even if perfectly implausible, and also recalls verbal descriptions in TNs that construe wine as a textile garment by, for example, praising a wine for its seamlessness, or hyperbolically describing it as bursting at the seams (usually with fruit).



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Finally, wine is a building is a relatively rare mapping in visual media, especially if we consider its popularity in TNs. What we do find sometimes is bottles next to columns, inviting the evocation of such concepts as structure or balance. In general terms, the anatomical alternative is preferred for these concepts. 9.3

Problematics of wine adverts in the theoretical framework

Metaphors in wine advertisements present an awkward scenario. In those adverts, the wines (via labels, bottles or glasses) are always portrayed visually, so the target is always present. What is shown inside the image may be a metonymy as anonymous as a bunch of grapes, but even then, there will be a logo or, even better, a reproduction of a label imposed outside the frame. Moreover, because a label means text, there is invariably a verbal component and, therefore, even the simplest advert can be described as multimodal in the sense that most adverts in the press usually are made of “text-and-image”. Targets are represented visually and verbally, always, and metonymically in all but the rarest cases. Visual and multimodal metaphors have been discussed already from the point of view of the source domains involved, but let us focus again on how Forceville defines multimodal metaphors as those “whose target and source are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes” (2006, p. 384) where “the usual situation is a visual target that is metaphorically transformed by a verbal, written source” (Forceville, 2008, p. 195). Our task might therefore appear to be reduced to the evaluation of the role of language in the taglines to assess how heavy the verbal cueing may be. For example, some adverts seem to allow verbal metaphor to do all the work. “Pinot is a journey” is the tagline of a MacMurray Estate advertisement and it could have been printed in Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980, 1999) trademark small capitals: it might be fair to say that Pinot Noir is trickier to grow and possibly even to appreciate than other red varieties, and therefore its learning curve is a steeper one. That would give a canonical formulation to the mapping, in which Pinot would indeed be conceptualized as an adventure, and the metaphor would be largely verbal as the accompanying illustration is decidedly insufficient for the purpose of constructing a metaphor: Next to the obligatory bottle there is a compass and a corkscrew, and together with the sofa in the background they might construct a suitable scenario for the perfect armchair traveller ready to embark on this journey, but the photo has at best a supporting role. Whereas “Pinot is a journey” constitutes a case of conceptual monomodal metaphor (the tagline bears all the weight here) barely supported by a picture, the following examples present a number of problems related to the typologies established by previous scholarship on pictorial and multimodal metaphors in adverts.

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We have included instances of all four pictorial types (pictorial simile, contextual, hybrid and a variety of integrated metaphor). All of them are verbally cued in some degree, to the point that multimodal (verbo-pictorial) metaphor could also be claimed. Section 4 is devoted to synaesthesia. 9.3.1 Pictorial simile From a quantitative point of view, pictorial simile is the most popular strategy in wine advertising, which makes sense since the target is always present in wine adverts. Metaphorization is merely invited, and the tagline usually finishes the job, should it be necessary. We call them similes rather than multimodal metaphors because, in most cases, the image alone would suffice; such is the salience of the juxtaposition. In fact, even when the simile is clear enough the text will still make sure to drive the point home. The following two examples are paradigmatic. Stags’ Leap Winery proudly uses the tagline “There may be bigger game in Napa Valley but few as graceful” above a bottle of their Stags’ Leap Cabernet located next to a stag’s antlers. Brand identity wants as much emphasis as it can get: Stags’ Leap Winery is a historic winery featuring a stag leaping in the label, not to be confused with Stag’s Leap Cellars, another famous producer of the Stags Leap District AVA in Napa. The impact of those masculine attributes is mollified by the admission that “there may be bigger game.” The black backdrop and the juxtaposition of both elements suggest a textbook arrangement of the pictorial simile wine is a stag, mapping the power and, especially, gracefulness – not only implicit as a feature of deer, but here verbally cued as well – as the more salient aspects of this specific comparison. One problem we may find while analysing this advert is that the name and the stag already appear in the label, so the bottle and tagline alone might have worked just as effectively, if, naturally, not quite as dramatically. Indeed, Forceville already questioned the existence of a clear-cut division between monomodal and multimodal, and this makes sense especially in advertisements, where publicists cannot afford to be ambiguous and sometimes would rather overstate things: [I]f a target is signaled visually, and a source is signaled visually and verbally, should the metaphor be labeled ‘monomodal’ or ‘multimodal’? The decision is somewhat arbitrary. It seems wise to see the two as extremes on a continuum rather than as two distinct types. A metaphor, then, will be considered to belong to the monomodal (for instance, pictorial) extreme of the continuum if both target and source are cued in one mode, and one mode only (for instance, both visually). It will be classified as typically multimodal if target and source are cued entirely in two different modes (for instance, the target visually and the source verbally). In practice, however, many specimens are somewhere in between these extremes.  (Forceville, 2008, p. 183)



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Image 6.  Stags’ Leap by Stags’ Leap Winery

Even more remarkable is an advert for Layer Cake: under the tagline “Rich is always a good thing©” we find more advice “Never pass up a good layer cake” and below there is naturally a tasty-looking layer cake next to a bottle of the wine with an identical layer cake featured on the label.

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Richness may or may not be that desirable in all wines, but the multilayered quality is graphically exposed here in a seriously creative way. This is the visual equivalent of Parker’s expression “layer upon layer” of decadent aromas such as chocolate and mocha. This multilayeredness is further emphasized in the bottle’s backlabel, which reads as follows: My old grandfather made and enjoyed wine for 80 years. He told me the soils in which the vines lived were a layer cake. He said the wine, if properly made, was like a great layer cake, fruit, mocha, and chocolate, hints of spice and rich, always rich. ‘Never pass up a layer cake’, he would say. I have always loved those words.

The strata of soil are presented in a clever image schema as a layer cake too, and thus the idealized terroir concept is ingeniously expressed in terms that recall the romantic “bottled soil” notion. The resemblance works at many levels, and correspondingly the features mapped are indeed numerous, constituting a metaphor of great resonance (Black, 1979). One might even transfer the image of the soil cut to the stemware, where Syrah/Shiraz-specific bowls are designed taller than most others precisely because of these multilayered aromatics. This is all so very well squared that we seriously doubt the existence of the grandfather in the story. Typologically, though, this is a nightmare because both the bottle and the layer cake are present as distinct entities and, of course, there is an identical layer cake depicted in the label, so the most accurate type would be pictorial simile, and yet to call it simile seems to weaken the identity when “layer cake” is the name of the wine and a layer cake appears in the label in a sort of mise en abyme. Each bottle contains a metaphorical layer cake as well as, by virtue of the label, both the words Layer Cake and the image of one. 9.3.2 Contextual metaphor A different type of difficulty is presented by other adverts, for example two that personify wine as a woman in a vaporous long dress (a) emerging from a bottle or (b) dancing inside a glass. Even if the visual impression of wine comes as much from the volume of the dress as the body of the woman, the connection works, metonymically at least. Building on stereotypes again, one of the two examples found is of a Spanish rosé, using a famous ballet dancer dressed in red, dancing inside a glass and a text cueing gracefulness; the visual effect is that of wine being swirled inside the glass, and very well achieved (see Caballero, 2009, pp. 84–85). The other example is of an Italian red using a black-haired woman, in mildly gothic style, clad in a vaporous black dress with a tight lace bodice. This woman seems to emerge from the neck of the bottle, her dress spreading in all directions and eventually fading to multiple black butterflies. The slogan reads “Gracefulness in its pure state” and the advert



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looks much more original than adequate to the description. It is decidedly striking for its use of black metonymically referred to the contents of the bottle, and modern for its use of that gothic aesthetic. It takes a little digging to learn that the wine’s name, Ninfato, refers to those butterflies, locally known as nymphs of the strawberry tree, fond eaters of ripe grapes. The wine’s personification to fit the schema wine is a woman would be a pictorial metaphor of the contextual type. The bottle provides the context so only one term is present in this situation. In the metonymy-dominated world of wine advertising for once bottle and wine are not one. What is problematic is that a bottle is usually all one needs to show in an advert, and here the bottle acts merely as context. It would make a bad simile because although metonymically it could be said that both terms are depicted, reading the spatial relationship as mere juxtaposition is insufficient. The woman is to be understood as coming out of the bottle. Even more clear is the case of the Spanish rosé above because the woman and her dress are inside a glass, which contextually is far more apt. 9.3.3 Hybrid metaphor A beautiful advert for Piattelli in Argentina shows the image of a vineyard landscape all the way from mountains in the background to a soil cut in the foreground. Soil composition is observable and so are the roots of a vine leading not to a growing vine tree but to a bottle of Piattelli. The inevitable slogan “Our roots run deep in Argentina” adds little to the impact of the image, which is suggestive of the natural, almost transparent winemaking process that manages to transform soil into wine, apparently without human intervention. Playing down the winemaker’s role in order to emphasize terroir is a major strategy these days, and the connotations of such an image are all decidedly positive: “bottled soil” “living wine” etc. The phenomenon is indeed curious as it reverts the process whereby real roots acquired a metaphorical dimension: here the textual roots become very literal visually. A striking resemblance can be found with a French ad in RVF for Chateau Langoa Barton where the bottle seems to emerge from the soil and curly vine tendrils grow from the bottle, as if the bottle itself were a vine tree. One of the tendrils is shaped into a heart, subtly but also echoed by its shadow projected against the background. The legend appropriately reads “Saint-Julien par la terre, Barton par le coeur” (‘St-Julien by the soil, Barton by the heart). Vine and bottle contain the wine, again in “bottled soil” fashion. The bottle is not just a container but a vehicle, a pipeline to channel the wine from the soil. Again, this seems to minimize intervention and emphasize the naturalness of the wine and its connection to terroir. In both cases we would be dealing with pictorial metaphors of the hybrid type according to Forceville, homospatial noncompossibles according to Carroll (1996, p. 213) or fusion structures according to Phillips & McQuarrie (2004, p. 116). The awkward

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aspect here is that verbalizing those metaphors would produce schemas like wine is wine (bottle is vine): an identity between two usual metonyms. In fact, Negro Alousque (2015) has analyzed a similar example as a case of metonymy, not metaphor. However, a dynamic verbalization a la Forceville (a-ing is b-ing) yields a very interesting winemaking is viticulture formulation which, while again dangerously close to metonymy, does express the point of the advert more clearly. 9.3.4 Integrated metaphor? Even more interesting, an advert for Vins d’Alsace uses the proverbial bouquet of flowers with a twist: from among the flowers emerge also two tulip-shaped, recognizably Alsatian wine glasses partly filled with wines next to a text that uses such verbal cues as bouquet d’arômes (‘bouquet of aromas’) and jardin sensoriel (‘sensorial garden’). By making clever use of different metonymies around aromas, and borrowing the by now lexicalized visual schemas stems in flowers as well as wine glasses (also called stemware), and tulips (here the bowls of these glasses), the advert visually claims that Alsace wines are flowers, emerging from the soil as the vines themselves of course do), rising on stems and intensely fragrant. The twist here rests on the fact that the stems are ostensibly long and curved to offer an adequately organic shape that blends in among the flowers. This pushes the metaphor slightly past pictorial simile and close to integrated metaphor, as a three-dimensional product has been made to adopt the shape of something else. Additionally, while the metaphor wines (of alsace) are flowers is clear, it is metonymically enabled in rather a dangerous way, i.e., the target is present but the advert is not for a stemware company, so the reading should not be wine glasses are flowers. This defies classification as an integrated metaphor because the two elements are present but the stems, which are neither source nor target, have been modified to resemble the organic, curved stems of flowers. Perhaps a vase full of these glasses would have executed the metaphor more elegantly, but that would be contextual. A bouquet of these glasses would have been too much to ask. After all, the advertisers do not produce adverts to fit taxonomies. In any case, should the resulting image be less than clear, there is more than enough verbal cueing to make this a verbo-pictorial metaphor. Verbal support is all over the place, further emphasizing the resonance: “Les vins d’Alsace naissent d’une nature harmonieuse pour offrir un bouquet d’aromes vibrants et purs. Ils invitent chacun à cultiver son jardin sensoriel” [‘The wines of Alsace are born from a harmonious nature to offer a bouquet of pure and vibrant aromas. They invite all to cultivate their sensory garden’]. The choice of naissent foregrounds the condition of wines as living organisms, and cultiver also plays with a double meaning related to literal gardening and to careful education of the senses.



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9.4 Synaesthesia Inevitably, the question of what images and text can do for wine adverts in terms of synaesthesia arises. Insistence on Cognitive Metaphor Theory and on formulations of the sort of abstract a is concrete b have complicated research on synaesthesia enormously. Because adverts combine text and image, we tend to regard them as potentially more capable than text alone for the expression of certain difficult notions or experiences, but wine is in theory the opposite of an abstract target: it is mainly experienced via smell, taste and touch, and perceptibility is one of Lakoff & Johnson’s (1999, p. 249) criteria to determine concrete versus abstract phenomena. Wine appreciation is such a comprehensive sensory experience that the mere insinuation that a wine advert is multimodal because a slogan is supported by the image of a label sounds pathetically poor at communicating aromas and textures. Wipe out the metonymies and even the picture of a glass full of wine is but an undelivered promise. This phenomenon is akin to the way some images are conspicuously silent, photos of flying birds foreground arrested motion, still-lives with food are deprived of aromas, etc. There is no simple solution to this, and either the advertisers resort back to language by allowing text to bear the weight of the ad or they put the (usually expensive) space to more creative uses. Caballero (2009, pp. 80, 90) remarked that even purely verbal TNs are multimodal in that they use language to describe sensory impressions and therefore there is a synaesthetic component of sorts inherent to sitting down to write TNs at all. Wine adverts combine text and images, and in some ambitious cases they aspire to evoke sensory impressions that go well beyond the visual. In those cases, the entire apparatus seems to rebel against conventional CMT taxonomies because very often it is not so much a matter of transfers between conceptual domains but between the senses involved. In fact, what many adverts do is synaesthetically transfer, and, therefore, inevitably simplify, conflate and reduce a plethora of sensory impressions to sight alone, sometimes regardless of text. For instance, in an advert for Campo Viejo, a bottle of wine releases an artsy gush of kaleidoscopic colours. This gush represents the wine metonymically via the aromas that emanate from the bottle. What is being emphasized is diversity, be it chromatic or aromatic. Of course, wine has a colour, but “our wine is multi-coloured” would not make a great sales pitch. Whereas aromas are colours could be formulated, a more accurate formulation seems to demand a crossmodal mapping. Aromatic spectrum becomes multi-coloured diversity in a transgressive (downward) transfer sight → smell. The transfer is both evident and brilliant in its simplicity. It is an abnormal transfer in its higher-tolower directionality (Ullman, 1945), but adverts use images and the source sense is an inherent aspect of static advertising. This would qualify as visual synaesthesia as defined by Bolognesi & Strik Lievers (2018): “a type of visual (or verbo-pictorial)

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metaphor, in which source and target domains refer to two different sensory modalities. It typically conveys sensory properties through the graphic representation of objects for which those properties are particularly salient.” Even so, no matter how creative, original or even transgressive, this could also be understood as a visualization of a synaesthesia verbally rendered in TNs, for example one from The Wine Enthusiast: “This is gorgeous. Smooth, rich, ripe and loaded with complex flavors. Black cherry, blackberry, plum, cloves, coffee, spice, chocolate, licorice, anise, menthol and eucalyptus all weave a kaleidoscope of taste for a tantalizing, heady and satisfying wine” (our emphasis). The other major sense involved in wine promotion, mainly through the positive connotations of music, is hearing. An advert for Bouchaine features a classic big band inside a wineglass while it is being filled from a bottle with the tagline “Always classic. Never a flat note.” It may be assessed as instantiating a mapping wine is music and the slogan would provide verbal support but not be indispensable for the mapping to be easily intelligible. While classic can be applied to both music and wine, it actually means nothing save positive criticism as a qualifier; in fact, these days it can be applied to everything: cars, fountain pens, jokes etc. Flat note, on the other hand, may require a little explanation since, as seen in Chapter 6, notes is borrowed from music in winespeak and used as a quantifier, and flatness is an undesirable trait in wine such as a sparkling wine without bubble, a still wine without sufficient acidity. A flat note in music notation stands for one where the natural pitch has been deliberately lowered, but in musical performance the expression refers to one where the correct pitch has not been reached, so we have to assume the ad refers to the second case, and there it would do a great job of describing wine in terms of music (because pitch in music could be the exact equivalent of acidity in wine, and the higher the pitch, the higher acidity, or, to use a touch transfer, the sharper the acidity). As the reader will notice, “identification and interpretation of the metaphors do not take place solely on the basis of the image and text itself, but are also partially dependent on the identity of the communicator and addressee of the advertisement text, as well as the (sub)cultural context in which the advertisement features” (Forceville, 1996, p. 163). This ad would not necessarily contain a multimodal metaphor because the text, though rich, is unnecessary: it could have been a good simile. Had the glass been empty of wine, it would have acted as context, but as it is, both elements are present. Both target and source are represented in the same (visual) mode (and the text has the ability to refer to both), but the problem is that neither wine nor music are predominantly visual experiences. While sight is the sense being used, the wine in the advert would like to appeal to all five senses, and music is all about hearing. Regardless of the conceptual schema wine is music, the discussion we are confronted with is one on visual synaesthesia supported by verbal synaesthesia in the tagline.



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In a similar vein, two adverts for Amarone wines are interestingly centred on the connection between wine and music. The advert for Tommasi uses the tagline “Venetian Symphony” and the advert for Masi “the taste of a maestro” (Image 7), but whereas Tommasi simply arranges the bottles among instruments and music script, Masi produces a visual blend of bottle and violin that is more likely to fit a synesthetic reading.

Image 7.  Masi Amarone by Masi Agricola SPA

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In neither advert are we looking for a mapping of the sort of bottle is violin or bottle is musical instrument – even if we acknowledge that one needs to know how to play a good bottle of wine: when to open it, the right temperature and stemware, etc. in order to produce music and not just noise. The formulation in both cases should be wine is music, the first being a pictorial simile at best, with bottles grouped but not particularly saliently juxtaposed to instruments, and the second a hybrid (bottle-violin). Forceville points out that not all hybrids are metaphorical, and also that pictorial similes do not so much demand as invite metaphor. Yet, he also allows for great flexibility in understanding that mappable features can make great concessions to metonymy when formulating the mappings, and that the structure of said formulas is best tackled with something less rigid and more dynamic (activity-related) than the traditional a is b, such as a-ing is b-ing, so instead of wine is music we might find more meaning in a formulation like drinking wine is listening to music. Since there is metonymy in both examples, bottle for wine, instrument for music, neither is as synesthetically interesting as Bouchaine’s “Always classic. Never a flat note” advert discussed above, where a lead singer and full big band appear inside a glass of wine. The synaesthesia is both visually and verbally conveyed there, in the terms used by Bolognesi & Strik Lievers (2018). Many of the strategies described so far are combined and beautifully illustrated in a fantastic campaign for Wines from Spain released in the U.S. “Understanding Wines from Spain: Four grapes to Know” introduces American consumers to four Spanish varieties (no brands) by comparing them to grapes already loved by Americans. The advert imitates a comic book page with nine vignettes (two for every variety and a conclusion promising more) following a typical “If you like A you’ll love B” structure for every grape. For example, panel number one opens with an octopus enjoying two glasses of wine and the legend “If you like subtle unoaked Pinot Grigio…” then we move on to frame number two, where a close-up of the octopus face lovingly admires a glass of Albariño: “…you’ll love Albariño for its floral aromatics and delicate texture.” The drawings that introduce the Spanish varieties come with a verbal description and a pictorial attempt at illustrating it, and so Albariño’s “floral aromatics” translate as flowers growing from the wine glass, but its “delicate texture,” far more difficult to represent graphically, is missing. Conversely, in a bold visual synaesthesia, Verdejo’s “luxurious mouthfeel” appears graphically as a fur boa around the wineglass, but its “tangy tropical flavors” are merely sunglasses. Garnacha’s “meaty flavors of strawberry jam and white pepper” are invoked visually through depictions of chorizo, strawberry preserve and a peppermill. Because Garnacha is a red variety, the glass wears a moustache; because it is a perfumed and lightly coloured wine, the moustache is smallish (especially compared to the one in the forthcoming Tempranillo glass). Finally, it is Tempranillo, Spain’s signature

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variety, that takes the starring role, compared not to one but three other varieties: “It combines Malbec’s fruity charm, with the earthy complexity of Pinot Noir, and ages as gracefully as Cabernet.” Some claim. This is represented as a bunch of berries in Carmen Miranda hat fashion for the anthropomorphized glass, while the earthy complexity comes from the glass smoking a pipe, and the graceful ageing is suggested by a fairly large moustache. The fact that the glass is reading “Don QX” against a blue sky with windmills in the background makes it all the more Spanish for international buyers (?). Additionally, the four varieties are introduced by four different animals, which are in turn good food matches for the wines (octopus for Albariño, chicken for Verdejo, lamb for Garnacha and a bull for Tempranillo). The final image promises “dozens more grapes to explore.” This advert seems to have it all: the wine is metonymically anthropomorphized via the glass, which has eyes and lips and sometimes a moustache to signal gender and age. The glass can also wear clothes to synaesthetically convey the “luxurious mouthfeel” or smoke a pipe to produce complex aromas other than fruit. In the second frame of every couple (the one devoted to the Spanish variety), the eyes of the wine glass mirror those of the animal to reflect little pink hearts of fondness that are missing from the foreign varieties. Finally, Spanishness is metonymically conveyed through stereotyped bulls, who wear a red handkerchief around the neck like the runners in Sanfermines, windmills and even a copy of Don Quixote for the wineglass to read. At a more abstract level, the four grapes are also characterized in terms of colour: Albariño is green in the octopus but also in the glass and in the frame of the vignettes, while Verdejo, whose name may come in Spanish from the same root as verde ‘green’ but is less green indeed than Albariño, is yellow in the glass, in the frames and in the chicken character. The lamb is a white one (no pink lambs out there) but the frame and the wine are the colour of Garnacha, a lighter red than for Tempranillo. Tempranillo’s frame colour matches again that of the wine and the bull. 9.5

Summary

Whereas one might expect expensive promotional space in magazines to be matched by very creative efforts on the part of wineries and advertisers, we have found wine adverts to be particularly conservative, especially those for wines that do not desperately need to carve a market niche for themselves. A large number of wine adverts concentrates exclusively on the reproduction of bottles and labels in flattering lighting conditions, mainly against unobtrusive backdrops, foregrounding photographic technique and treating the bottle as an objet d’art or a fashion model,

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but not saliently enough to support a metaphorical formulation. A full portfolio of three to five bottles in bowling-pin arrangement (with the house’s top cuvee presiding) is by now a cliché. When they do abandon this simplicity, a similarly large number of adverts features a bottle/label of respectable size against a background where scenes from the life cycle of wine occur, either at a more obvious basic level of vineyards, cellars and dinner tables, or emphasizing a more oblique cultural approach involving heritage, tradition, ecology, etc. As a general trait of most adverts, the association with luxury is highly sought after: because this is a field where price and value can often disagree, sometimes dramatically, even the more affordable wines might pursue the connotations of glamour and exclusivity. Other pervasive sales arguments emphasize non-interventionist winemaking, traditional methods combined with state-of-the-art technology, versatility at the table, and that most elusive notion, the t-word: terroir. Metonymy is present everywhere, and most metaphors are metonymically enabled. This is an inescapable feature of wine adverts. The need to identify the anonymous-looking substance demands resorting to labels that univocally direct consumers towards a specific brand. The most frequent metonymies are the rather generic container (barrels, bottles, glasses) for content, company logo for product, source (location) for product and raw materials (vines, grapes) for product. The reproduction of labels/bottles inside (or imposed outside) the frame makes the target domain always present, which conditions the advertising strategies. This makes generic adverts for regions or appellations rank high among the most interesting ones because they cannot (indeed, should not) rely on the impact of a recognizable label. Excellent, intriguing, informative campaigns of this kind abound. These campaigns are the natural home of the brand-anonymous metonymies grapes for wine and stones for soil (see Image 8 for a superb example). Metaphorical adverts can be found, although they are relatively rare and form a very small part of our corpus of 3,000 adverts (~1,100 unique adverts). Even the more creative images are heavily dependent on winespeak as used in TNs. They largely illustrate verbal expressions, descriptors, etc. in different degrees of originality (see Caballero, 2009, p. 90). The metaphors seem to follow the mappings found in TNs though not necessarily in identical frequency rates. wine is a living organism and personification are the most common ones. Unsurprisingly, types of pictorial metaphors where both elements are present (similes) and especially multimodal metaphors (often via the attribution of speech) are the most frequent personification techniques. While advertisers are sometimes brave enough to produce very interesting culturally specific metaphors, they rarely allow these to be wasted, and so they support the images with heavy use of textual aids in the form of fairly explicit taglines. This reinforces the notion of advertisers as conservative in this field.



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Image 8.  Advertisement for the AOC Saint-Estèphe (Bordeaux)

Regarding sensory discourse and cross-sensory mappings, quite a few things can be achieved visually or through the felicitous combination of words and images. smell and taste often require photos of substances such as fruits and flowers, just like TNs list products and substances to name aromas. touch is even more rarely considered, and when it is, it demands the visual invocation of materials and fabrics in the same fashion as smell and taste. Synaesthesia has a difficult time relying exclusively on sight as a source sense as this can only imply downward mappings, and it is constantly aided by metonymy. Particularly noteworthy is the relative abundance of references to music.

Chapter 10

Documenting wine in film



Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine. (Joan Collins)

Wine documentaries used to be the audio-visual equivalent of coffee table books: they were entertaining, lavishly illustrated, themed around a region or style, never so profound as to become intimidating, loosely organized around a narrative excuse, and often capitalizing on the presence of some local celebrity who acts as cicerone. However, the relatively recent boom in wine’s popularity all over the world has also led to changes in the genre, which is not just informative-promotional but has grown more ambitious. For instance, a number of cross-genre efforts have introduced great diversity in the field in the past decade, with often-welcome contamination from such unlikely genres as the thriller (for instance, the documentary Sour Grapes) or the reality show (Somm). This chapter addresses the representation of wine in three traditional informative-promotional documentaries, and explores whether this representation varies substantially from other genres such as TNs or magazine adverts. We explore similarities and differences between the discourse of TNs and the written script of these documentaries, and pay special attention to the possibilities of the audio-visual medium. A central point is the role of metaphorical and metonymic language in a medium where compression is not as great a concern as in TNs. They may be expensive productions, but the participants are granted ample time and audio-visual capacity to say what they need to say. The chapter is structured as follows: after a brief introduction to the documentaries, Section 10.2 covers some of the strategies followed to singularize each region in the world of winemaking. In Section 10.3, we explore the metaphors drawn from the textual scripts of the documentaries and discuss their originality and creativity compared to the metaphors found in TNs. Finally, Section 10.4 analyzes examples of other types of metaphor, both monomodal (visual and musical, with a subsection devoted to soundtracks) and multimodal metaphor.

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10.1 Wine documentaries The three wine documentaries illustrate the archetypal informative-promotional feature, and pivot on the regions of Burgundy, Champagne and Jerez/Sherry. They offer sufficient diversity to be representative of wine styles and cultures while addressing the expectations of the widest possible audience. A Year in Burgundy and A Year in Champagne belong to the celebrated David Kennard/Martine Saunier “A Year in” trilogy whereas Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado ‘Sherry and the Mystery of Palo Cortado’ represents a radically different approach that demands appreciation in its own terms. We deliberately avoided the full Kennard trilogy so as not to restrict ourselves to a single house style, and were fortunate enough to be able to replace the third item in the trilogy (A Year in Porto) with the other natural choice for fortified wine: Sherry. The promotional potential of these documentaries is unquestionable. To share knowledge about Burgundy, Champagne and Jerez is to make these regions even more potentially appealing for an audience. This is not only a matter of technical knowledge about the specific products and producers featured here. Visual information alone does wonders for the desirability of these regions and any of their wines. This promotional aspect ranks documentaries close to publicity and, therefore, enables us to use Pragmatics to address a serious difficulty related to the identification and interpretation of metaphors (Forceville, 2016): if we can assume that one of the goals of such films is the presentation of positive features of the wines featured in them, it will be easier to identify and interpret metaphors. At first sight, the documentary genre is rather conservative, sometimes even disappointing in terms of visual and multimodal creativity given how much it can say or show from within the comforts of safety. The textual script is endowed with great responsibility (the A Year in productions even have a narrator) and sometimes the films only present great accompanying visual footage of the speakers, the landscapes and the cellar processes being described. Like static-image adverts promoting specific brands or producers (see Chapter 8), they show landscapes, famous and not so famous winemakers, vineyards, grapes, cellars, barrels, restaurants, dishes, bottles and, of course, quite a bit of wine. The “A Year in” concept is a natural structuring device for several reasons. In the first place, it structures the narrative thread in a way that is both solid and recognizable enough to make audiences comfortable. Secondly, it is beautifully apt for describing the viticultural cycle from its start in spring and, by so doing, it helps emphasize vineyard labours over cellar work, echoing the notion that it is the quality of the grape used that ultimately makes the wine. However, the format also brings its own ball and chain since, for all the hopes and fears shared over spring, summer and harvest time, the most it can show is a sampling of the musts as they go



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into fermenting vats. There may be possible ways of working around this limitation, but they would demand a much more ambitious and financially impractical project covering several years or perhaps a follow-up feature some years later. Naturally, maturing and mature vintages are tasted over the course of these documentaries, from barrel as well as from dusty bottles. Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado is built around a completely different concept. The documentary starts with what Hitchcock called the MacGuffin, and soon develops into a kaleidoscopic approach to the complexities of the many different Sherry styles that coexist with Palo Cortado to the extent that, at times, one even forgets about the film’s title plot, if only briefly. The “mystery” is concerned with whether this style can be deliberately produced or it must “occur” by chance (as used to be the case decades ago). Today there is much more control over the winemaking process, and Palo Cortado can be successfully produced but many traditionalists still claim it simply “happens.” 10.2 Singularizing strategies in wine documentaries The documentaries here discussed make claims for the uniqueness of the three regions whose wines they explore. All three claim a tradition of winemaking that goes back hundreds of years, but while Champagne – as we know it today – relies on a relatively recent technology, Burgundy has produced wine for the past 2,000 years, and the earliest evidence of local winemaking in Jerez is 3,000 years old. Of course, time and tradition are honoured repeatedly in the films, but that is not at all exclusive to these regions and, at the end of the day, it is the wines that matter, and these must be promoted by means of much more specific claims. These claims, discussed in turns in this section, include intrinsic value, i.e., the existence of privileged plots of land, the grapes grown in them and the yeasts that make them exceptional. The claims also provide added value, which includes all sorts of desirable lifestyle associations, and often the exclusivity of high prices. 10.2.1  The intrinsic value of wine One of the most convincing singularizing arguments for wine is terroir. Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado presents a defence of grape and soil that constitutes a twofold novelty over the old-school Sherry discourse in its radically new vindication of the Albariza white chalky soils and, especially, of the Palomino grape, praised here as “la uva es la reina” ‘the grape is queen’ (00:03:40). This would have been unthinkable only fifteen years ago, as popular wisdom has long denigrated Palomino as a neutral vehicle for the character imparted later in the cellar. The

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spiritual identity between Champagne and Jerez may not be immediately evident to the watcher of the two films, but suffice it to say that the foundations for both regions are chalky soils and the transformations operated by yeasts during a secondary winemaking stage. To that, one must add the rather unfair mislabelling of both of them as aperitifs when they are in fact excellent food wines as well. The dramatic difference between them is that while in Champagne the grape varieties involved are treasured, Palomino in Jerez has been maligned and mistreated to almost unrecognizable extremes, not merely described as neutral but indeed made neutral through absurdly high yields, etc. Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado fixes this by reminding its audience that “wine is made with grapes”, thus granting the variety all the respect it deserves. This, as Jesús Barquín emphatically underlines in the film, is a lesson that ought to be too obvious to deserve mention, but sadly is necessary (01:00:00). Unsurprisingly, in Burgundy we find an almost irrational terroir cult: how a grape variety (two in this case: Chardonnay and Pinot Noir) performs in a given soil and weather seems to obsess Burgundy. When the introduction to the documentary focuses on $ 1,000 wines and the narrator asks “But what makes a bottle so much more special than another?” (00:01:55), we are invited to regard the entire documentary as a justification for Burgundy prices.22 Singularity and scarcity seem to justify the prices of wines when we are offered shots of tiny walled vineyards and manicured vines of ridiculously low production. One such vineyard is described as “smaller than many people’s backyards. What goes on here is more like gardening than agriculture” (00:10:10). We learn it is only three years old, will only produce 300 bottles now, and will go into full production after another seven years. Seen that way, it makes sense to regard winemaking as an expensive activity. Later on, we see how legendary Lalou Bize-Leroy treats every individual bunch, even grape, with utmost loving care. At Maison Leroy, she claims, harvested grapes are not merely thrown into a bucket, but placed in little baskets like those for raspberries (01:05:00). She describes her philosophy as a non-interventionist approach that confers winemaking agency to yeasts and underplays her own role: De-stemming damages the grapes. You must avoid disturbing the yeast in the skins. Each vine has its own yeast. Yeast gives a wine its identity because it is part of the grape. […] It’s yeast that’s the winemaker, not us. It’s yeast that breaks down the grapes and changes sugar into alcohol. The alcohol kills off the yeast but it’s the yeast that gave birth to the wine. (01:15:32)

22. On a 2017 list published by WineSearcher.com, 37 of the world’s 50 most expensive wines were Burgundies, including 11 of the top 13. Such rankings are only indicative, but they surely confirm the legendary status of certain producers and crus.



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Yeasts are of course a crucial element in winemaking in their role as sugar breakers, but in our choice of documentaries they take on a central role in other respects too: indigenous yeasts provide Burgundy wines with a personality of their own, not only different from, say, Oregon Pinots, but also within each tiny Burgundian appellation and Cru. In Champagne, yeasts also provoke an additional fermentation in bottle, producing much-desired bubbles while yeast autolysis imparts characteristic aromas. Finally, in Jerez the effect is also a triple one: yeasts produce alcoholic fermentation, multiply to develop the so-called veil of flor that shields the wine surface from contact with oxygen, and even feed on the wine’s nutrients, consuming not only oxygen inside the butt but also acids, glycerin, and alcohol. In that sense, it becomes hard to argue with Madame Leroy: wine is all about yeast, or almost. At the same time, to grant that stellar role to microscopic fungi may be a successful promotional strategy only at the top end of the market, where knowledgeable aficionados are already comfortable with that discourse. For the large majority of consumers, the successful narrative seems to be more about soil, weather, tradition, culture, as we can see in the next section. 10.2.2  Adding value to wine Documentaries would do little for the promotion of the regions they feature if they did not transcend the mere praise for their wines to go into broader descriptions of local lifestyle. In that sense, all three emphasize the charming, quaint, slower rhythms of the winemakers’ lives. In fact, another way in which time is prominently featured in these documentaries is in the spirit of patience inevitably required not only for the growing of vines or the maturing of wines, but also for the correct appreciation of the latter. On its promotional poster, Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado used the phrase 3000 años sin prisa (‘3,000 years taking it slow’), a tagline that summarizes an entire philosophy which is further exemplified when Manuel Domecq describes the five-course meals matched to five different wines of his youth. He refers to the discipline of wine appreciation in terms that suggest immense respect for the product of such hard labour and patience, and claims that there is no sense in rushing a wine that has spent decades in the making (00:12:10): “Tenías tiempo para vivir. El vino necesita tiempo, y el vino necesita horario, y el vino necesita orden” (‘One had time to live then. Wine needs time, wine needs a schedule, and wine needs order’). The three films also offer images of large and small groups of people tasting, toasting and drinking in all sorts of circumstances: sampling from barrels in underground cellars, celebrating the end of harvest still in the vineyards, in restaurants and private homes, and perhaps most often around dinner tables. Family gatherings

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are popular in the “A Year in” series, and they range from the intimate Burgundy lunch of the Moreys to the flamboyant birthday celebrations of Xavier Gonet. As for wine as an alcoholic beverage, drinking is not even discussed in Burgundy whereas in Champagne it is mentioned all over: for the Bordelaise Julie Médeville there is a magic about Champagne (the region) and champagne (the drink) that makes drinking it at 7 am aboard a hot-air balloon “the natural thing to do” (00:03:17). Even the balloon “driver” seems to get a glass. In fact, throughout the entire documentary, opening champagne bottles to celebrate Wednesdays or sunshine looks like a perfectly spontaneous and desirable thing. As it is, one could argue that so much stress on this festive aspect diminishes the image of Champagne in the eyes of serious champagne lovers. Burgundy builds its discourse of exceptionality around its diversity of privileged terroir. Jerez relies heavily on the transforming power of flor and the solera system. Champagne has fantastic terroir, varietal adaptation and a fascinating production method, but the documentary features the word magic as many as six times, buttressed by others like seduction (four times), erotic, romance, aphrodisiac to build a very strategic promotional context, and one that, if we may add, comes across as slightly superficial. Champagne is the marketing miracle all wines would like to be; the mere thought of it spells c-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-i-o-n like no other. The mystique of champagne is a phenomenon that deserves some attention. At 7 a.m. aboard a hot-air balloon, most people might object to drinking red wine, yet champagne does not even seem to be wine, even though its alcoholic content can be very similar. The festive, cheerful, even reckless associations of the beverage are beautifully rooted in our collective unconscious, and under the flag of self-indulgence, anything seems possible in the presence of champagne (Guy, 1999). This was achieved by means of (very clever) sustained promotional efforts through the entire twentieth century. In Champagne, we also see how the family children are initiated rather early as they are shown drinking little sips of champagne. The message seems to be that champagne is not alcohol at all. In Jerez, conversely, there is a brief discussion around one cellar worker’s statement that the wine industry encouraged drinking on the part of employees, followed by a detailed account of the job routine. Apparently, it was the common practice of workers in the vineyard and the cellar to drink “about a bottle a day” of fino – a practice not only tolerated by the wineries but indeed encouraged through free wine (an expense acknowledged under the term gasto) and as many as six “drinking recesses” in the day, not counting lunch (00:25:00). What this does for the image of Spain is not for us to discuss here. A key element in adding value to the wines is making spectators aware of the difficulties involved in successful winemaking in these regions. Weather suspense is best seen in the Burgundy and Champagne films, where the northerly locations present all sorts of difficulties for a balanced ripening of the grapes as well



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as countless dangers in the form of spring frosts, hail, draught, rot and harvest rains. Much further south in Jerez, conversely and perhaps unsurprisingly, there is virtually no mention of weather-induced anxieties other than the need for old vines capable of weathering summer draughts. What Jerez will offer is aged wines, and the difficulties there are different. Different weather anxieties are also justified by the very different production systems in the three regions. Whereas Burgundy releases exclusively vintage wine, Champagne producers can fall back on three different vintages for their blended cuvees, and Sherry crops are largely absorbed into the solera system that minimizes the effects of vintage variation.23 In Burgundy, a disastrous harvest can compromise the financial viability of a producer; in the case of Sherry, the impact of a poor harvest is far less catastrophic because the blends are bottled containing wines from many different vintages. It makes sense, therefore, that the weather stakes should be much higher for Burgundy producers, and the dramatic shots of cloudy skies much more recurrent in the films covering the northern French appellations. The three regions enjoy very different reputations. All sorts of considerations concerning prestige, exclusivity and marketing make sense in this context. In Burgundy the discourse of terroir exceptionalism and meteorological vulnerability is balanced by what the general public already knows before sitting to watch the documentary: affordable Burgundy may not be in albino elephant territory yet, but it is decidedly under threat of extinction. While some Burgundy breaks yearly records for high prices at release, often in the thousands of dollars, many decent fino sherries can be bought for around €6, and only the very best 6–12-year-old examples fetch retail prices between €10–30, which can hardly buy a bottle of gas station champagne. Champagne producers in turn have managed to position themselves so masterfully in the market that the entry ticket for a good non-vintage, blended champagne bottle is around €25–30. This is thoroughly discussed in Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado, and there is a consensus among the participants over the need to improve the image of Sherry. Indeed, their role model is often Champagne: another yeast narrative for a wine grown on chalky soils and consumed as an aperitif that has successfully carved for itself a very enviable market niche. Sherry experts seem to advocate a mystical narrative for the market, emphasizing how “people want a simple story of a miracle land” (00:52:45) that would help “spread the gospel of Sherry” (01:09:12). “Miracle” and “gospel” are certainly funny terms to use in the context of a documentary that seems so intent on reclaiming terroir. They demand 23. The solera system is a dynamic fractional blending regime involving many different vintages whereby the volume bottled each time is replaced by a similar addition of young wine. It can be as complex as the number of different scales (criaderas) or intermediate stages undergone by the wine. There is such a thing as vintage Sherry, but it is far less common.

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the balance that we found missing in A Year in Champagne: a serious treatment of Sherry for aficionados and specialists, but a simple marketable narrative with sufficient mystique for the grand public. 10.3 The form and function of figurative language in documentaries What the three documentaries have in common is a very simple conceptual framework. The three are built around the notion of time in its widest possible sense, which encompasses the seasons and the actual viticultural cycle, wine’s own metaphorical life cycle, and the centuries of winemaking tradition and culture in those regions. Inevitably, documentaries make use of figurative schemas in different modalities: verbal, visual, sonic, etc. Unsurprisingly, the most recurrent is the verbal modality, which reaches the audience via narrators (as in A Year in), footage from interviews, brief speeches, and lively discussions in the form of informal round tables. The most recurring schema is again personification, where we must highlight the importance of the conceptualization of wine as the child of the winemaker, which is central to most wine discussions in all three documentaries. Personification is further emphasized by secondary schemas such as the idea that wines express themselves, for example through range and intensity of aromas, and finally, though restricted to Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado, gendered personification, which is really integral to the distinction between (masculine) fino and (feminine) manzanilla. Other schemas that turn out of special relevance in these documentaries include wine as ingredient in recipe, largely because we witness the blending stages of the winemaking process, and several miscellaneous ones collected in sections 10.3.3 to 10.3.5. The verbally instantiated metaphors are not different from those appearing in TNs, but they are developed and extended in impressive ways. Like them, they are also largely metonymically enabled. For instance, “A Year in” is a great metonymy. As no two vintages are identical, our experience of those regions will inevitably be partial, yet we are encouraged to make it an intense one, empathize with the growers and share the suspense over the weather and the quality of the resulting grapes. This metonymic part-for-whole premise is explicitly introduced in the first documentary in the series, A Year in Burgundy, which ends the narrator’s introduction with a figurative invitation to “Travel with us and with Martine Saunier to spend a year in Burgundy” (00:02:26) and closes the entire documentary with “… that will be another year in Burgundy” (01:26:44). Evidently, we do not leave our armchairs at all, we only peep into the lives and adventures of a handful of families and we do not spend a single minute beyond the duration of the film, but insofar as we are invited to share a summary of the 2011 vintage in cleverly



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selected locations around Burgundy, the experience is as vivid as one can hope for in the absence of real wine. 10.3.1  Personification Personification is a basic schema in wine language, as already seen in TNs and promotional efforts. Unsurprisingly, it is also central in these documentaries. Because time is such a central motif in these features, a second level of sophistication is achieved by projecting the time notion onto the systematic personification that characterizes wine language. The resulting narrative is often a Bildungsroman where wine follows the steps of the winemaker developing from childhood to maturity. The Bildungsroman schema is a powerful one in these three documentaries: wine is a human child, given birth to and raised by the winemaker, and it must undergo a process of education. This is developed as the combination of time and personification, which constitutes an upbringing process. Personification can be found everywhere from the vineyard to the glass, as shown in the next sections. In a fine metonymic twist, the vines themselves are personified – something rarely found in TNs, for example. The language of vineyard management is in general very physiologically-driven, but in Burgundy and Champagne the personification of the vines is enabled by the notion of education: “a vine has to suffer to make good grapes” (Burgundy 00:37:40), vines are “like humans running a marathon: those who do not train do not make it”24 (Champagne 01:01:30), and in Burgundy some chardonnay vines at 74 years old are eventually referred to as “grand old ladies” by Martine Saunier (Burgundy 00:14:05). 10.3.1.1  Wine as child of winemaker This mapping is first hinted at as enabled by the metonymy wine as part of the winemaker: “When we present a wine, we’re presenting a part of ourselves. Our wine reflects our personality and everything we know. It shows you how we want to present ourselves. Part of us is in the wine” (Xavier Gonet 00:55:20). In Jerez, José García Cabo says he is proud of his work like one is proud of a child (00:27:50), and in Champagne, the children of the Gonet-Médeville family help with the harvest, run among the vines and eat grapes as their father’s voice is heard speaking in the following terms: “Winemakers think of their wines a bit like their children. They give birth to them, they watch them grow and flourish, they raise them and, like children, they shape and discipline them…all the way through to maturity” (00:54:45). The children continue to play in the vineyards to non-diegetic waltz 24. This training is not the also metaphorical but different training of vines.

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music. Sometimes the role of the winemaker is presented as more modest but equally related to the birth of a new living creature: “Our job is to be a midwife at the birth of the wine” (Burgundy 00:29:11). Back in Jerez, Antonio Flores and Eduardo Ojeda engage in conversation about how to explain the effects of the solera system, in the following terms: “Your mother gives you life … but you have evolved as a man, educated, perfected yourself. Well, that is our system of criaderas y soleras” (00:59:35).25 In fact this Bildungsroman is taken to extremes when legendary capataz (the winery cellarmaster) Rafael García, now retired, complains he has heard the word “rebel” applied to Palo Cortado. It was probably a romantic compliment suggesting it is an obstinate style that somewhat defies the initial impressions of the winemaker, but a person his age reads the term “rebel” with some baggage: ¿El Palo Cortado un vino rebelde? Es un disparate, ¿no? Un Palo Cortado es un vino con años que está reposado, armónico, que no es agresivo. Todo es aceptable, a la boca, a la nariz. Es una delicia, un placer. Decir que ese vino es rebelde… (00:38:35) ‘Palo Cortado a rebel wine? That sure is nonsense, right? A Palo Cortado is a wine of some age, balanced, harmonious, not aggressive. Everything is pleasant about it, to the nose, to the palate. It’s a joy to drink, a pleasure. To call it rebel…’

García is also the source for this little speech that shows how deeply personification schemas are planted in the imagination of the Jerezanos, and why. The lives of wines and winemakers have developed in parallel: Había tanto vino en Jerez porque no se vendía. El vino mermaba y se concentraba año tras año, década tras década. Y eso lo he vivido yo. Vinos que han envejecido conmigo. Recuerdo su niñez; fueron vinos muy buenos, vinos muy criados. Y después los he visto cuarenta y tantos, cincuenta años después: son una joya de vinos. (01:21:45) ‘There was so much wine in Jerez because it wasn’t getting sold. Wines suffered evaporation loss and concentrated progressively, year after year, decade after decade. I have lived through that. Those wines aged with me. I remember their childhood; they were very good, thoroughly bred. And I have seen them forty, fifty years later: they are real gems.’

A somewhat disturbing aspect of the interwoven life courses of wine and winemaker implies accepting that some wines will only be ready for consumption by the time the winemaker is already retired or even dead, and also that, just as we 25. The word solera originates in the literal fact that those butts are located at floor (‘suelo’) level. Criadera, on the other hand, means ‘nursery,’ a clear metaphorical reference to the upbringing of the wine.



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inherit the privilege of old vintages and soleras from our ancestors, we are also supposed to bequeath some of our own to future generations. The legacy component is usually conceptualized as a positive one, but there is a difference between the early or late-opening optimum drinking window of a red wine and the minimum required age of certain types of Sherry. In Burgundy and Champagne by “ready for consumption” we mean relatively close to peak. In Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado, Joaquín Rivero, in his seventies, reflects on the 30-year-long span for VORS [‘Vinum Optimum Rare Signatum’ also ‘Very Rare Old Sherry’] certification of wines and admits that at some point in his life he started considering that new vintages would only be released as VORS well after his death (01:23:55). He would die shortly afterwards. 10.3.1.2  Expressiveness In a series of long-established metonymies, the wine, via the grape, is a vehicle for the expression of a number of variables: region, variety, soil, vintage, even winemaker. The role of the winemaker may well be in turn that of an interpreter, amplifier, enabler, artist, etc. The wine (or some of its components) is personified in different ways, including one in which it expresses itself by means, for example, of the range and intensity of its aromas. In these documentaries we find a little of each. In A Year in Burgundy, the ability to maximize authenticity, whatever that is, through non-interventionist, respectful winemaking is very highly prized, as in the case of Lalou Bize-Leroy (“It’s yeast that’s the winemaker, not us” 01:16:18), or Perrot-Minot (“We shouldn’t get in the way of the wine” 00:28:58). While a similar approach is practiced in many regions, both Sherry and Champagne rely heavily on blended wines, which means that after the initial “respect” phase the wine is not yet finished and a good deal of chalkwork (tasting and assessing each barrel and deciding which wines go into which blends in which proportion, and marking the barrels with chalk) is still necessary. In Champagne, Jean-Pierre Mareigner is described by the narrator as “master-sorcerer” in that mood (01:13:08). In Jerez, the primary task of the cellarmaster is to identify and classify the best young wines for the different Sherry styles. It sounds hard because it is hard, but after a lifetime doing it they have developed a keen sense of hearing (00:22:42): “Eso el mismo vino te lo dice. Tú nada más tienes que escuchar al vino. El vino te está diciendo lo que quiere ser” (‘The wine tells you. All you have to do is listen to the wine. It’s telling you what it wants to be’). 10.3.1.3  Gender Gendered personification may sound a little dated these days, but it is almost surprising that it is not found in the Burgundy or Champagne documentaries, as the discussion often involves northerly Pinot Noir and there are many differences

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among Burgundy crus and champagne styles that would invite such masculine vs feminine schemas. We do find it – recurrently – in Jerez, where the distinction between fino and manzanilla has traditionally been articulated around gender.26 It is best illustrated by oenologist Eduardo Ojeda as he offers a group of people several glasses of manzanilla during a visit to the cellars of La Guita. There he comments – rather apologetically, as if aware of the potentially problematic connotations of his statement – that finos are masculine and manzanillas are feminine. He literally opens with “Lo voy a decir en confianza” (‘I’m going to say this in confidence’), smugly, as if he could ignore the presence of the camera team (00:29:15): “No creo que sea sexista. Macharnudo es un señor, pero esto es una dama: tonos florales, cítricos … [mientras que el fino tiene] anisados, especiados. Aquí floralidad, sutileza” (‘I don’t think it’s sexist. Macharnudo [strictly the name of a vineyard but metonymically a fino here] is a gentleman, but this is a lady: flowery, citrusy … [whereas further inland in Jerez finos show] aniseed, spice. Here we have flowers, subtlety’). Because Ojeda is not just a genius in the cellar but also at promotion, we must infer most visitors find the analogy genuinely useful, regardless of how sensitive the issue might be. Not much later, in nearby Taberna der Guerrita, in Sanlúcar, a local grower declares manzanilla a young Miss again (00:36: 12): “Para mí la señorita del vino es ésta: la manzanilla,” (‘To me this is the debutante of wine: manzanilla’), to which Ojeda – referring to his glass of much older oxidative Sherry – replies “Y yo estoy bebiendo la señora” (‘And I’m drinking the lady’). This is how deeply rooted the gender schema is. 10.3.2  Ingredient for a recipe In a sense, most wines are blends to some degree. Behind the mechanics of blending lie a keen nose and palate to decide how much of what goes where, but more than anything else this is a task that mimics cooking and in fact uses the cooking schema repeatedly, combining metaphor and metonymy: wine is food, wine as ingredient for wine. At a very elementary level, in Burgundy, Perrot-Minot declares that “Wine is like cooking: the grapes are just ingredients, wine making is the cuisine” (00:28:25). Wine is food, it is made with grapes. Winemaking is crushing and mixing and therefore it resembles cooking. It makes good sense, but our discussion needs to go a little beyond that. The metonymy must be explained first, as most wines in the market are to some degree the result of blending wines 26. Production methods for fino and manzanilla are essentially identical, but manzanilla can only be aged in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a town by the sea, which through temperature, wind and humidity determines a series of differences from fino, which is aged further inland in different warmer and drier conditions.



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from different lots, parcels, varieties (especially when vinified separately and then assembled in different proportions), and sometimes even vintages. In that sense, much winemaking is the result of “cooking” in the presence of the vintage variable. In Bordeaux, for example, producers do not stick to a rigid “recipe” that reflects vineyard composition of, say, 54% Cabernet and 46% Merlot every year regardless of the vintage conditions. According to which varieties are harvested in better shape the composition of their wines will reflect this vintage variable. Blending different vintages is one clever way of guaranteeing consistency from one year to the next. Multivintage blended wines minimize vintage variation in cold regions like Champagne and are the basis of the Sherry solera system. In these documentaries, we have a very serious representation of the different models concerning blends of varieties and vintages. Whereas Burgundy is relatively simple to describe in varietal terms (Chardonnay for whites, Pinot Noir for reds) and virtually impossible to comprehend in terms of its endless different terroirs, Champagne’s complexities are largely neglected in favour of the idea of blends/ brands. Ultimate quality is somewhat understated in the documentary’s coverage of Champagne, which prioritizes the festive consumption of nonvintage bottles over the seriousness and potential greatness of other Champagne styles.27 In Jerez the styles under discussion use virtually only one grape, Palomino, but the diversity of styles may be overwhelming for the newcomer. The coverage of different Sherry types is fairly comprehensive: even though the title seems to promise emphasis on Palo Cortado, eventually it cannot be understood alone. It is defined as a category somehow in between Amontillado and Oloroso, which in turn need to be introduced to the audience, and thus complex explanations of biological vs oxidative aging are produced. These are didactic and even amusing, especially when César Saldaña summarizes this diversity with “It’s a mess. I mean, it’s great. The fundamental treasure of Sherry is its diversity. That’s what makes it fascinating, but it’s also a marketing nightmare: What are you selling? A pale, dry, excellent aperitif, or a dark, unctuous, sweetish wine? Well, Sherry is all that” (00:10:40). The cooking of Sherry is a truly complex art. A good capataz ought to be able to tell first of all which butts have enough finesse to deserve becoming fino, in which case they are fortified to 15% and go through biological ageing, and which should be fortified to 18% and undergo oxidative ageing to become oloroso. Then the complex process of ageing involves endless further decisions about each individual 600-litre butt as ingredient for a final blend. These abilities are particularly necessary for determining when a

27. Such terms as Grand/Premier Cru are heard only once and in passing. Not once do they mention Blanc de Blancs/Blanc de Noirs in the entire film. Compare with magic (6 times), seduction (4 times), aphrodisiac, erotic.

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wine is evolving in a direction different from that which had been assigned to it, for example, a Palo Cortado, which is essentially an oloroso of great finesse. In Champagne, the origin of blended wines is attributed to England’s Edward VII, who demanded regularity and wanted to find the same wine every time he opened a bottle of champagne. Blending varieties, parcels, lots, and vintages to satisfy the taste of the different markets offered a challenge, but one that, once mastered, provided the champagne houses with enormous power. Each different house style (or recipe) could be relied upon for consistency year after year and therefore develop legions of faithful followers. In fact, the British market influenced both Sherry and Champagne by demanding sweeter sherries and drier champagnes. Thankfully, dry Sherry styles were retained for other markets. 10.3.3  Assorted wine metaphors The personalities interviewed in the films are often conscious of their use of metaphor. This is clearly seen in some of the extended personifications described above (the wines/children of the Gonet-Médevilles, for example). At other times the use of metaphors referred to a wine’s description (sensory impressions during a tasting stage) pushes the taster to degrees of expressiveness that fall neatly within figurative cliché. Such is the case of descriptions of Palo Cortado, including expressions such as “feeling on top of a thoroughbred” (01:11:55) or “riding a rollercoaster” (01:12:00). More interesting is the happy hyperbole Eau de Palo Cortado, verbalized by one of the so-called “Sherry Women” (a team of female Sherry-lovers). Developing the old notion of vinos de pañuelo (‘handkerchief wines’ i.e., extremely concentrated wines that were used to aromatize a pocket handkerchief), Eau de Palo Cortado promotes one aspect of wine (its aroma) metonymically. One of these ladies also mimics the gesture of applying a few drops behind her ears (00:08:40), which is univocally construing wine is perfume, but of course Eau de Palo Cortado already verbalizes it. 10.3.4  Other verbal metaphors Other metaphors, not used to refer to wine, are voiced throughout the films, especially in Burgundy, by the narrator himself. Descriptions of landscapes (“A sea of vines”) and of human groups (“armies of temporary workers”) fiddle with creativity and are perfectly harmless, if mildly pretentious. The mappings are conventional and somewhat fragile in that the salient characteristics being mapped are very restricted. They are also monomodal for lack of sufficient visual support: “A sea of vines” coincides with images of a vast, uniform, green landscape devoid of other



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features of the sea such as motion; “armies of temporary workers” describes merely large human groups by no means dressed similarly, let alone fighting another group. The visuals accompanying these words would never suffice to trigger sea or army by themselves, and indeed do little to illustrate them. More light-heartedly, when they go down to Madame Leroy’s cellars, they “enter Aladdin’s cave” which is not oriental or full of stolen goods; it does, of course, contain a treasure. Slightly more problematic is the simile “like soldiers in a parade” to refer to endless rows of vines in Champagne, all pruned and trimmed in exactly the same way. This personification of the vines claims motion, but whereas pruned vines may all look the same, they are by definition rigid and rooted to the ground, making parade most unlikely. This is a case of the verbal and the visuals clashing rather gratuitously. 10.3.5  Other language resources Hyperbole is a resource also present in documentaries. For instance, Sherry is all about time and, therefore, Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado deals with the notion of time in similar (but not necessarily identical) ways to the other films. However, while the viticultural cycle and the wine is a living creature patterns are represented in the film, the emphasis on personification here is more complex and more deeply rooted in the conceptualization of wine. This makes sense because new vintage wines come and go, but a solera is usually there before the winemaker and it ages with him or her, remains when the winemaker retires, and is passed on to a new winemaker like some sort of heirloom. Simply put, regardless of the (carbon-dated) average age of the wines inside, a solera can easily be over a century old. A fino like Tío Pepe, from a solera dating back to 1844, was named after a family member while he was young. In the documentary, the current oenologist, Antonio Flores, now in his sixties, tells the story of how he was born in his parents’ bedroom right above the solera (00:46:29): it turns out the cellar masters and foremen usually were offered housing in the – massive – cellar compounds, and his parents lived right above this fino solera. As a result, he claims, what runs in his veins “is not blood but Tío Pepe.” To be literally born above a solera and become its manager decades later must make for a very special relationship with the wine, indeed. Because he tells this anecdote as often as he can, we can also construe it as a marketing device. While a tío pepe is blood or wine is blood metaphor seems clearly encouraged here, we do not feel the need for it in the sense that the expression is merely cueing the intimate relationship he has with Tío Pepe, and in no other aspect does it resemble blood (it is not even red wine). It is mere hyperbole, as if Willy Wonka said chocolate runs through his veins.

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10.4 Monomodal and multimodal metaphors in documentaries As already hinted at in the introduction to this chapter, the documentaries are little short of disappointingly conservative when it comes to the medium’s possibilities for metaphor other than verbal. The exceptions, however, are rich and remarkable enough to compensate for their scarcity, but before delving any further in them a brief review of the theoretical framework is in order. In Chapter 8 we saw Forceville’s initial distinction between monomodal and multimodal metaphors. Monomodal are “metaphors whose target and source are exclusively or predominantly rendered in one mode” (Forceville, 2006, p. 383) and multimodal are “metaphors whose target and source are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes” (Forceville, 2006, p. 384). In documentaries, as with film, there is naturally a rich diversity of modes involved, and so Forceville distinguishes (1) visuals, (2) spoken language, (3) written language, (4) sound, (5) music, (6) gestures, (7) touch, (8) smell, (9) olfaction (Forceville, 2006, p. 20), where the last three are largely anecdotal. Monomodal metaphors of the six first types are technically possible in film, if not equally frequent. Multimodal metaphors can be combinations (for the rendering of target and source) of any two of the former modes, at least in principle. Within the monomodal, we find the following typology from Forceville’s discussion of pictorial metaphors: simile, contextual metaphor, hybrid metaphor, and embodied or integrated metaphor (see Section 9.2 for a more detailed description of these types). In addition to these, in film there is “at least one other way of visually cueing a metaphor, namely by creating similarity between two ‘things’ via the way it depicts them: for instance by using, for these two things, the same unusual camera movement, the same salient colour (filter), the same marked angle, the same editing pattern, etc.” Forceville (2016, p. 20), however, warns that “similarity can be cued for many other reasons than for the creation of a metaphor”. An interesting difference between static adverts and documentaries is that the motion picture can show vineyard and cellar processes while they are explained by some voiceover, but it can also show wine itself instead of some metonym. This is important because wines’ colours can be beautifully displayed on the screen and wine finally does not have to be imprisoned in some bottle – which was one of the concerns with the visual representation of wine in static adverts (see Chapter 9). We see more must than wine, of course, and more Sherry than Burgundy, because thanks to its resistance to oxidation, Sherry can endure much more vigorous and frequent transfers from one container to another. In the next few subsections we analyse different instances of monomodal (not verbal) and multimodal metaphors.



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10.4.1  Monomodal metaphors in documentaries A Year in Champagne opens with Martine Saunier joining Xavier Gonet and Julie Médeville aboard a hot-air balloon to celebrate Gonet’s 40th birthday. The idea of drinking tiny bubbles as they float hanging from a big bubble is playful and almost inevitable, but without explicit verbal mention. The drinking of champagne deserves all the attention but, in the end, one cannot avoid visualizing a large bubble containing, or carrying, smaller bubbles. The fact that this is not exploited verbally is somewhat baffling. Formalized as balloon is champagne bubble, this would be a monomodal (visual) metaphor at best, and not a very necessary or useful one (Forceville, 2006, p. 383). A visual pun would be more plausible, at least at first sight. Following Forceville (2016, p. 20), we realize the metaphor is merely invited: If a metaphor in film involves visuals – as it often, but not necessarily does – the underlying metaphorical a is b has to be construed to an even larger degree than in the case of its linguistic manifestations. The reason for this construal (a process that analysts are supposed to perform consciously, but that film lovers presumably do subconsciously, if at all) is that there is no shorthand visual equivalent for the copula “is.”

However, before concluding that here “there is no need to construe a metaphor, as the presence of both phenomena is realistically motivated” (Forceville, 2016, p. 27) we must first consider that “there is at least one contextually pertinent mapping from source to target” (Forceville, 2016, p. 28). The identity between both objects expressed with a static a is b formula and using the balloon as target added very little to the message of magic and hedonism of the verbal narrative. A reformulation such as drinking champagne is riding a balloon (feeling elevated, transported, lifted up in the air, light, and dizzy, as if by magic) indeed contributes a pertinent mapping here. A minor problem is that even if both terms are present we must rely on a sequence of images rather than a single one for a visual simile (no single frame could include discernible bubbles and balloon simultaneously), or claim that once the entire balloon has been shown the basket alone can act as context. The very first images of the film correspond to balloon inflation, and it is up in the air even before the title super appears. During these preparations and the entire trip, we hear the first three and a half minutes of The Blue Danube (only the first of several waltzes used in the film). The music acts in support of the mapping of gracefulness, lightness, and dizziness. Even if waltzes sound more Austrian than French, the festive connotations are very vivid. Moreover, The Blue Danube is arguably the world’s most famous individual representative of the genre, and a staple at a yearly cliché that equally seems to demand champagne (the New Year’s Concert, itself a metonym for Christmas celebrations). Additionally, primary figurative patterns of

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elevation (physical as well as spiritual) like up is good/happy is up (balloon), and high is good/happy is up (alcoholic intake) combine to show the tone-setting mood for the film. Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado opens with the image of an ancient map of the region, then there is a moment when the popular backlit shot through a fino butt with glass ends is taken with such camera motion as to suggest a sunrise over the surface of an orange-tinted sea (Image 9 shows a production still of this moment). The butt is only partially filled, and a light source shining from across the wine magically becomes the sun. A sunrise is a beautifully apt metaphor to mark the beginning of anything, even more so of a film that revolves around winemaking in the Spanish South. It is probably even a visual evocation of Galileo’s metonymically enabled “Wine is sunlight held together by water.” The surface of the wine stands for the sea and the semi-circular light behind the butt, seen through the glass, is the sun.

Image 9.  Production still from Jerez y el Misterio del Palo Cortado © LopezLi Films

The identity is metonymically enabled in several ways, the most evident of which is the fact that the metaphor light source is sun is more likely to convince if presented as the metonymy light source for sun. More crucially, the mappings invited are better formulated to understand that Sherry contains the sun as well as the sea (it is only possible thanks to sunlight, flor can only thrive at certain warm temperatures and humidity levels, fino’s saline aromas are those of the nearby sea which also cools down summer temperatures and refreshes the vines). This sunrise is heavily motion-dependent: in the absence of motion, the surface of the wine would not be the sea any more than any other liquid, and the semicircle of light would simply be the other end of a partly filled butt. The sunrise motion has its perfect counterpart at the end of the film, when (much less conspicuously) one of



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the very last scenes is an equivalent “sunset” in identical terms, with the opposite motion to close the film. Through Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado, we find a number of sequences where the camera travels the deserted streets of Jerez, sometimes deliberately covering the real distance between two different bodegas. These sequences are very useful for their depiction of what the actual town of Jerez looks like, and they are deftly accompanied by music. Immediately before his anecdote of being born above the Tío Pepe solera, Antonio Flores explains that cellar managers were offered housing inside the bodega compounds, which were, in his own words, “little cities within a city” (00:46:29). As he speaks, a shorter sequence along the streets inside the González-Byass compound is offered with music. The camera travels these streets in exactly the same fashion as it did before with public streets, in a neat mise-enabyme arrangement (Image 10). The only visual giveaway are the fire extinguishers that would make no sense in the streets of Jerez. Regardless of the verbalization, this nesting of a city inside another (the camera only emphasizes what already exists) could be metonymically read in terms of part for whole: “A bodega compound is a city,” or “Jerez is a city made of little cities” but it ultimately invites reading in terms of what a city is: the bodega is not merely a workplace. Life inside the compound is real life; it does not begin with check-in and end at checkout. People are born and live there, and probably die too.

Image 10.  Calle Ciegos, Jerez

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10.4.2  Multimodal metaphors in documentaries Multimodal metaphors can also be found, or at least construed, in these documentaries. In A Year in Burgundy, Thibault Morey plays classical music in the cellars while he explains: “It does me good, and I think it does the wine good too. Wine is alive. From the moment you pick the grapes till the moment you drink it, it’s alive. Music calms it as it matures” (00:80:17). In fact, A Year in Burgundy is filled with intimate melancholy moments, softly lit indoor shots while rain pours outside, and the original soundtrack music is very adequately made up of Satie’s Gnossiennes and Chopin’s Nocturnes, as well as a few piano pieces composed by winemaker Thibault Morey himself. It could not spell “France” more vividly, and no wine (French or otherwise) would object to this selection being played in its cellar. The insertion of these Gnossiennes in the viticultural narrative is particularly clever. In Burgundy, after a warm spring and a premature budding, the vines are now at risk for lack of water, and with irrigation forbidden by the appellation (so the roots have to dig deeper for water and thus collect minerals from several strata of soil along the way), there is real concern among the growers. “And then, just in time, the rain came” – says the narrator’s voice, followed by rolling thunder and soft playing of Satie’s Gnossienne number one (00:23:21). As the first raindrops land gently on vine leaves and form little puddles, Satie’s delicate piano notes seem to mimic the sound and the apparently random rhythms of falling raindrops beautifully. Diegetic raindrops and non-diegetic piano notes are heard simultaneously to invite the connection, and when the ground level shots of wet leaves and a wet snail give way briefly to Thibault’s hands playing the piano, the music continues (diegetically now) though the rain is not heard indoors. The fusion of piano and raindrops is recovered for more outdoor shots as the narrator’s voice explains that irrigation is forbidden, etc. A multimodal (music-sonic) metaphor could be construed here in several ways, mapping the idea of rain as a desirable sound: in this very specific draught scenario, the sound of rain is music to winemakers’ ears. The fact that the rain is also shown does not alter this schema. A much bolder proposal would have been to show the raindrops and use only non-diegetic music, removing the sound of the rain altogether, but that would have compromised the identification of the metaphor. The rain and piano tracks are heard simultaneously, superimposed. In the end what unifies them is how they relate to the same images, namely the sound of rain is to visual rain as piano notes are to visual rain. In Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado there is an interview with a cooper as well as vintage footage of cooperage works (00:31:00). Then, the camera offers a modern-day sequence where an old butt is restored at the cooper’s shop. It is a music clip where the hammering of the cooper is eventually silenced and replaced by non-diegetic percussion and synthesizer music (vaguely flamenco-like percussion),



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with sporadic blending of this music with diegetic noises (rhythmic sweeping and shaving the staves, a radial arm saw), climaxing with the pushing of a stopper into the freshly repaired butt. The final slamming sound marks the end of the job. The director turns noise into music. Non-diegetic percussion largely timed to coincide with the hammering of the cooper is salient enough for us to claim this as one of Whittock’s (1990, p. 50) “marked metaphors” that can be construed here as cooper is (flamenco) artist or cask maintenance is work of art. The cooper is rendered visually and the music does not belong in the scene. By way of contrast, the cooper at Maison Bollinger in A Year in Champagne wears safety earplugs and makes quite a bit of very diegetic noise (00:10:29). 10.4.3  Montage: Structure as metaphor The A Year in documentaries deliver the chronological narratives they are expected to, planting a reasonable amount of suspense around meteorology and concentrating on a healthy blend of fact and anecdote (and abundant aerial shots). Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado, however, progresses more erratically without much regard for the suspense promised by the title. This non-linear, kaleidoscopic montage, using vintage footage as quotation, returning periodically to the bodega table for more discussion among the participants, interviewing more people on the side, moving from cellar to vineyard to restaurant and back as often as the director sees fit, may actually present a logic of its own, if only a twisted one. Coherent with this vision is the fact that the documentary has no narrator, no authorial voice, no unifying thread of such weight. Instead, a polyphonic approach is adopted where the group of friends sitting around a table at the heart of Bodegas Tradición is engaged in a spontaneous-looking session of wine drinking, chatting, and reminiscing – even if, of course, there is a more or less visible Q&A dynamics to it. The choral approach is all the more adequate as they represent a veritable who’s who of the wine trade in Spain including Sherry oenologists, cellar masters, sommeliers, journalists, historians, merchants, etc. Their exchanges are lively and colourful; they often interrupt one another in a recognizably Spanish way, and sometimes even finish each other’s sentences. The discussion is in many respects more dynamic-chaotic than the more formal interventions of Saunier’s producers, with its pros and cons. The logic of chaos is not at all inadequate for a feature that is after all concerned with a region (for it is the entire region it is dealing with, certainly not just Palo Cortado) and the vertical integration of wine production and consumption in its everyday life. History, viticulture, art, winemaking, literature, wine drinking, family, gastronomy, leisure, heritage: the mess (mess was, after all, César Saldaña’s

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impulsive first choice to describe the diversity of Sherry styles, and a very accurate term it is indeed) defies any linear approach; there are endless ramifications to bear in mind, innumerable “footnotes” and asides. Therefore, we should be able to speak unapologetically of Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado as precisely that: Jerez the wine, of course, but also the town, the region (el Marco de Jerez, the Sherry triangle), explored with the excuse of solving a mystery that in turn demands unravelling the many different styles of Sherry. In that sense, this is anything but “A Year in Jerez.” 10.5 Summary The representation of wine that emerges from these documentaries is largely characterized by the promotional aspect of these features: wine comes across as an integral cultural element in these societies, essential to the local history, economy, gastronomy, etc. It is slightly mystified in Burgundy due to its higher prices, but in Champagne and Jerez it is drunk with self-indulgence, even dangerously so. The A Year in productions aptly organize the narratives around the viticultural cycle and manage an excellent job of presenting the seasons as they relate to the process of grape ripening and wine production, introducing several overlapping literal and figurative life cycles: the vines, the wines, the winemakers. The notions of time and personification are effectively combined into a figurative Bildungsroman where wine is understood in terms of the winemaker’s offspring: raised, educated, and eventually a creature all its own that bears its parents’ name with pride. This is even clearer in the case of Sherry, where the system of criaderas y soleras invokes from its very name (criadera, ‘nursery’) the notion of childrearing. As a cultural trait, it is in Jerez we find gendered personification as integral to the conceptualization of wine (as also seen in Chapter 8 when discussing wine names). Jerez y El Misterio del Palo Cortado is a singular documentary in that its very structure does not seem to be at the service of the audience but rather to honour the complexity of the subject, which is indeed unmanageable. Palo Cortado as a sherry style is not defined by its production but by its organoleptic characteristics, as a wine halfway between amontillado and oloroso, or better an oloroso of exceptional finesse. As such, it becomes the most elusive representative of the traditional wines of Andalusia and a splendid excuse to discuss the lot. In all three, the audio-visual capacities of the medium are put to good use in the sense of having the images accompany the narrative when it comes to illustrating locations, people, events, and especially processes. Metaphorical creativity beyond the verbal is however restricted to very specific uses of visuals and sound, which are disappointingly few but fortunately very rich. Monomodal mappings frequently



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resort to camera motion, and multimodal mappings involve music and sound as well as images. In that sense there are some very creative cinematic passages where metaphors can be construed. In the end, there is a beautiful chaos concerning figurative agency in winemaking. Because wine is discussed at all different stages from the vineyard to the dinner table, the focus is placed on different aspects and the resulting statements might seem to clash. The sum of all different statements conferring agency and responsibility for winemaking would prove somewhat confusing and impossible to harmonize: “winemakers are artists” (Burgundy 00:00:45), “winemaker is a parent,” “winemaker is a midwife at the birth of the wine,” “yeast makes the wine,” “August makes the wine” (Champagne 00:51:17). Evidently, the combination of metonymy (August temperatures help complete the ripening process of the grapes) and metaphor (wine is work of art, wine is child of winemaker) is required to understand these statements.

Chapter 11

Final remarks



Wine Snob. Isn’t that a redundancy, like saying wet rain or nuisance telemarketer? Well, yes – there’s no getting around it. Central to the very premise of wine appreciation is the notion that it requires an advanced skill set; that, in order to most fully understand and enjoy the experience of sniffing and sipping fermented grape juice, one must have a cache of special knowledge to which mere ordinary people do not have access. (David Kamp & David Lynch, The Wine Snob’s Dictionary)

In this book we explore what aspects of wine are usually discussed by the various people involved – ranging from wine lovers to wine producers and sellers – and the strategies they use to do so. We situate our discussion in some of the genres that deal with those issues, such as analytical schemas, tasting notes, wine adverts and documentaries. Our starting point is that rather than being invariant, language use varies in accordance with the communicative contexts in which it takes place. These contexts include the people writing about or talking about wine, their communicative needs and goals, the topic being discussed, and the medium used. For this reason, our use of whole texts and the notion of genre are crucial. Using genre as the main backdrop, we describe how people manage to convey what they want to convey about wine, which involves paying attention to the strategies used to communicate the sensory experiences afforded by wine and, most interestingly, how those strategies are adapted to the characteristics of the genres where they appear. In order to do so, we combine a bottom-up approach informed by cognitive linguistics with top-down procedures of discourse and genre analysis on the assumption that this combination may yield richer views of the shared cultural and cognitive schemas of the communities and practices that make up the discourses of winespeak. In this regard, the book attempts to make a contribution to linguistics in general and cognitive linguistics in particular, to terminology studies, discourse and genre analysis, and language for specific purposes. We start by describing, analysing and explaining the language used to make sense of the sensory perceptions that the wines may evoke, the forms of expression and the meanings they give rise to. First, we offer a detailed analysis of naming strategies, some of the technical terms used to describe the elements present in wine in analytical schemas and terminological tools, and the language used to quantify

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and/or evaluate the presence of those elements in the wine under assessment. We then take a closer look at the TN, its parts and the descriptions of the sensory perceptions evoked by the wine. All this takes its point of departure in the practice of wine tasting, in which wine critics take part and where they try to transform sensory experiences into text. Their descriptions of the tasting of the wine mirror the journey of the wine from the glass through the nose and the mouth and finally into the gullet. The task of the critics is then to transform the sensations of the wine into conceptual representations through language in such a way that the sensations evoked in the preceding tasting session become understandable for the reader and, ideally, arouse the readers’ sensorium and give rise to an aesthetic response. The success of the wine critic hinges on this ability to communicate their experiences. In particular, we explore the TNs with particular focus on the different types of descriptors used to portray sensory perceptions of vision, smell, taste and touch through language, in English and Spanish. A sematic framework is offered for the description and explanation of sensory meanings in relation to the lexical resources available in the two languages. We account for the use of both property descriptors, such as dry and sweet, and object descriptors such as leather, citrus and honey. Particular attention is paid to the observation of cross-sensory use of the numerous adjectival descriptors such as deep, soft, big, bright, light, thick, thin, solid, strong, shallow, sweet, smooth, round, tight, sharp, dense, warm, weak, dark, broad, bright, fat and hard in constructions such as white aromas and soft smell. We argue that the ontological crossings of sensory modalities may best be considered symptoms of synesthesia in the wine-tasting practice. In contrast to the standard view of the meanings of words for sensory perceptions, our contention is that it is not the case that, for instance, soft in “soft smell” evokes a notion of touch in the first place; rather, the different sensory experiences are more likely to be strongly interrelated in cognition. Our account of the TN genre also includes descriptions of the type of figurative language used in the notes. We chart the most pervasive portrayals of wines as living organisms (from their physiological dimension to their personality traits) and the co-existence of this metaphor with views of wines as diverse three-dimensional artefacts (from buildings or textiles to small crafted objects) and as entities that move as, for instance, in descriptions of smells and flavours of different wine components as elements that swim, jump or dance in the taster’s nose and mouth. We also devote a chapter to the grading of different aspects of the wine, among which presence quantity, range or persistence are particularly critical – and conspicuous. Interestingly, these notions are rarely assessed in numerical terms, but make use of cross-modal and figurative language, as in descriptions of aromas and flavours that illuminate, resonate or linger in the mouth. Descriptions like this point to the subjective, heterogeneous and complex



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quality of perception and, most interestingly, to people’s ecological use of language when communicating their perceptual experiences. After our extensive discussion of the strategies used in TNs, i.e. the genre that lies at the core of wine communication, we widen the scope and move to exploring the role of wine critics in reinforcing the status of this genre, which necessarily goes through building their own credibility and authority within the wine community. In order to do so, we focus on Robert Parker, one of the most paradigmatic critics nowadays both in the TN genre as well as beyond this genre into wine production, marketing and selling. We demonstrate, in the form of a schema, how the critic constructs credibility through complex persuasive rhetorical techniques where he skillfully elaborates the sensory and social evidence and the portrayal of time to support his assessments.. Taken together, the rhetorical techniques are characterized by a high degree of epistemic control of wine experience wine knowledge. We may even venture to say that the TNs gives an impression that what is communicated is the ultimate truth about the wines. This is then followed by a series of three chapters addressing the different promotional genres, which start, inevitably, with the individuation of a specific wine in a saturated market. In order to make one wine seem special, its naming and packaging need to receive careful attention. We give special consideration to the multimodal possibilities afforded by wine labels, but here, as in the chapter devoted to advertisements, the use of images, whether exploiting literal-informative or figurative-suggestive strategies also falls short of a systematic, unambiguous capacity to express sensory experience to a large audience. Adding images to the descriptions does not make up for the senses that matter most in wine tasting, and in fact, many ads limit themselves to echo wine language verbally (through slogans) and/or visually (through visual translations of winespeak). Finally, documentaries do achieve a more comprehensive and multidimensional representation of wines, which is understandable given their greater scope and ambition, by making use of all the multimodal possibilities within their reach, but which again necessarily exclude touch, taste and smell. 11.1 Afterword: De gustibus non est disputandum Of what, then? Other than wine itself, there is in fact nothing that provides more pleasure to a wine lover than a good rolling up of sleeves trying to prove a point that is ultimately a matter of taste. The aphorism sounds very sensible in its warning that no final agreement is likely, or even desirable on such subjective matters. Yet would it not be naïve to pretend that simply because a discussion is not likely to lead

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to a consensus it is simply not worth undertaking? One can derive much pleasure from such discussions, provided that conversion of the other speaker is not a goal. Talking about such subjective matters is likely to end in a stalemate situation in which the speaker who gets tired the soonest (usually when the bottle is finished) will inevitably press the De gustibus button to end the discussion. But it would be absurd to expect that disagreement over matters of taste ought to be resolved in one sitting and using logic or reasoning. A person’s wine preferences change over time; some of us do not like Chardonnay, and maybe a well-guided influence will make itself felt over the course of years and empty bottles. Otherwise, to impose one’s superior taste upon another individual is not a reasonable expectation. What we should not dispute is objective facts, and a two-hour conversation questioning gravity can be avoided by simply dropping a pencil, but whether or not a certain vintage is superior to another is the kind of excuse wine lovers needs to pull out a corkscrew and clear their throats. In any case, that disputatio, so much preferable to “I like what I like”, requires a common language, and the mere notion of such language requires in turn more than just a wee bit of work. Winespeak in TNs certainly shows flaws that understandably intimidate the novice and present obstacles to effective communication beyond a certain degree. While careful attention and systematic exposure will eventually give anyone a decent grasp of winespeak, we are right in finding it frustrating that this should be an intuitive process at best. The figurative aspect of winespeak can be successfully taught and as seen in previous chapters it lends itself to some degree of systematization. Wine appreciation may ultimately be a private, subjective experience, but few people engage in it without meaning to share it at a social level. Winespeak may be limited, imprecise, built on the terminologization of a general-purpose lexicon unspecific to wine, and largely resting on figurative language, but it is also reasonably effective and decidedly intriguing in verbal creativity, and that makes it a very interesting field for linguistic inquiry. Before closing a book on Representing Wine, we would like to present a less formal series of reflections on wine communication as approached here by the authors of these pages. We need to deal first with subjectivity and emotion as real players in the game of TN writing, then with how fine wine is conceptualized by many as a luxury product that requires intimidating amounts of knowledge to be enjoyed properly, and finally with the rhetoric of wine-related accessories that in their haste to present themselves as essential for wine appreciation contribute to the image of wine as an exclusive product that is simply not for everybody. Our emphasis on the TN as genre par excellence in wine communication places the chapters on the language of TNs in fine wine territory, that is, restricts winespeak to the language of critics and lovers who regularly consume wines of certain quality and price ranges. It would be silly of us to pretend that below those levels there is



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not a very large market of less consistently good wines, “decent” efforts whose main sales pitch is their modest pricing. Those wines rarely appear in mainstream wine guides mainly because they are unremarkable but also because they are addressed to consumers for whom the mere purchase of such guides or subscriptions might ruin the uncomplicated joy of buying and drinking wine. That is the scenario addressed in Chapter 8 on the naming, bottling and labelling of wines for commercial promotion: how to singularize a wine to seduce a consumer from the shelves. It is assumed that millions of consumers are unaware of (or simply cannot be bothered with) experts’ opinions, and they make choices based on experience with some producers, regions, varietals, etc. They also tend to move within a relatively tight price range with occasional splurges. Brand, bottle and label design are important for those, and attracting their purchases deserves careful attention and major publicity investments. This book has largely gravitated around several notions: the acceptance of wine tasting as an eminently subjective and private experience, the admission of expressive difficulties and the study of creative workarounds. Much surrounds the idea of subjectivity that is still largely unexplored, though. Before personal tastes even appear, one must first deal with a dangerously high number of variables beginning not with the differences among tasters but with bottle variation (including first and foremost the potential presence of TCA contamination28 and bottle evolution within as little as one or two years due to transport and conservation), serving temperature, environmental odours (venue and other participants), aeration time, stemware shape and cleanliness, etc. Only then can one even begin to factor in other taster-related variables such as personal sensitivity thresholds, degree of exposure to universal parameters, personal background, experience, affinities, and education, etc. This diversity of variables is best observed in the case of organized online tastings of the same wine (simultaneous tastings online from the tasters’ homes including countries thousands of miles apart where a wine must have travelled through each different country’s import system), but even in the case of two people sitting at the same table discussing the exact same bottle of wine there have been eye-opening cases of stemware hygiene (soapy residue, cupboard or cardboard aromas) where the tasters thought one another complete ignorants until they swapped glasses. The ultimate degree of subjectivity, though, is usually the pairing of food and wine, a can of worms we would not even touch in this book. That is really “whatever works (for you)” territory.

28. TCA stands for 2,4,6 Trichloroanisole, commonly known as cork taint, a typical flaw that is unrelated to the quality of the wine itself. To add insult to injury, thresholds of TCA detection among tasters vary considerably, and this provokes frequent discussions.

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Another key issue in this book has been the definition of wine tasting as a holistic experience that needs to be artificially divided in phases and types of sensory input so that different stimuli deserve separate evaluation. At the same time, we must insist on the notion that objective wine description and lists of aromas contribute very little to the quest of the reader who is after useful information. A taster is not a lab and his readers are not looking for a lab, either. By now it should have been sufficiently emphasized that emotion communicates more than a list of aromas or a set of objectively measured parameters, even emotion unrelated to the intrinsic organoleptic experience. This is true to the point that wine is often more than the contents of the bottle. A certain appellation, producer, variety or – especially – vintage year can trigger emotions in consumers that go beyond the mere enjoyment of the wine. Celebrating with champagne, remembering that honeymoon in Napa, nostalgia for Riesling in a German expatriate, opening that bottle of wine from one’s birth year, all are common occurrences that unquestionably complicate wine enjoyment. Critics are expected to evaluate professionally (and this usually means publicly admitting preferences rather than not having any), while wine lovers need not apologize for their biases by definition: they drink for pleasure and they usually know where to look for it. Seasoned consumers recognize and celebrate emotion in the critics’ writing because they are very aware of emotion in their experience of wine drinking, and all types of emotion are legitimate, even when they may come from mystification of certain aspects not intrinsic to the wine itself: we still remember the reaction of American enthusiasts who loved a 1730 Solera Sherry and thought they were drinking wine from before their country existed. When informed that the wine was not from the 1730 vintage, but from a solera started in 1730, they were bitterly disappointed. They had been tasting history more than wine, and while they agreed that the wine itself was very good the emotional component that had dominated the experience was now somewhat ruined. As part of the many subjective complications surrounding wine appreciation, stemware is a key variable. There are numerous tests certifying the influence of stemware shape and size on the tasting experience. The rhetoric of glass manufacturers sometimes invites another leap of faith in the already mystified world of wine appreciation. Riedel stemware advertisements are by now a classic example of promotional rhetoric in this field: To fully appreciate the personality of different grape varieties and the subtle character of wines, it is essential to have an appropriately fine tuned glass shape. The shape is responsible for the flow of the wine and consequently where it touches the various taste zones of the tongue. The initial point of contact depends on the shape and volume of the glass, the diameter of the rim, and its finish (whether it is cut and polished or rolled edge) as well as the thickness of the crystal. As you put your wine glass to your lips, your taste buds are on alert. Once the tongue is in contact with

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the wine three messages are transmitted at the same time: temperature, texture and taste. Wine is composed of different elements: fruit, acidity, mineral components, tannin and alcohol. The combination between the sense of smell and taste leads into the wonderful world of flavour. It is the glass shape which is responsible for balance and harmony of flavours. RIEDEL was first to discover the concept: “The content commands the shape!”29

A brief discussion of this prose reveals a number of issues that have been considered already in different parts of the book, as well as some new ones. Compliant with the personification process inherent to wine discussion, here grape varieties have personality and wines have character. While we decidedly agree with the main points here, a key term to understand the above is fully, as in fully appreciate. This is emphasized later by subtle. Differences between extremes of good and bad stemware can indeed have impressive impact on the appreciation of a given wine, but many good glasses are versatile enough to satisfy any but the most demanding and discerning noses and palates. Dedicated handblown, sculpture-like glasses for different wine origins, types and varietals make sense mainly for the best examples of each, and especially for seasoned tasters with deep pockets who can regularly enjoy them. The second paragraph overwhelms the reader and prospective buyer with a wealth of information, making deft use of sensory language: your taste buds are on alert, three messages are transmitted at the same time. It takes a committed wine lover to want to put oneself through all that. These are not messages aimed at the casual drinker of whichever wine is available on “Buy three bottles for the price of two” supermarket offers. If we buy this logic and push it to the extreme, if the glass determines the experience to such extent, we must conclude that there is no such thing as wine (an objective organoleptic profile, except maybe in the mind of each winemaker). Factor in the mutability of the wine inside the bottle (constantly, if more or less slowly changing), and the result is that all bottled wine is what popular culture would call Schrödinger’s wine: a given wine does not exist per se until it is sampled at some point in its life from some glass at some temperature etc., and these will determine the wine’s performance. We will concede that a good wine from a good glass may outperform a great wine from a bad glass. But what then is a good glass or even a good wine? How then can we know which glass is better, or even which wine is better? In theory at least, those stemware collections (Riedel, Zalto, Orrefors, etc) have been designed with the help of experts. These experts have comprehensive knowledge of the wines under discussion and therefore can contribute their experience concerning aromatic profile, intensity range, etc. We, on our part, have found that nothing showcases better the virtues of our favourite manzanilla like a Riedel Vinum Syrah glass costing twice to three times as much. 29. Riedel website: https://riedelusa.net/riedel/wine-tastings

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A sign of the times these days is how people seem to have become tired of slavishly following experts. If this is true of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, it is no less so when it comes to a field of sensory enjoyment that is not altogether dissimilar from fine dining.30 In the 21st century “everyone” knows it is silly to pay over $ 300 for a meal one may not enjoy and possibly not even “understand”. Similarly, with wine, it is easy to feel disappointed by a costly 100-pointer that may impose its own demands on top of its price tag: it may need 15 years of cellaring and then adequate aeration to deserve that rating, it will probably demand proper stemware and more than slight acquaintance with the grape, region, and history of the terroir in order to be fairly appreciated, and especially it will likely disappoint in comparison with the four to twenty bottles of very good wine one could have bought with that money. From a purely hedonistic point of view, the price to pleasure ratio from 94 to 100 points is a textbook example of diminishing returns. Experts are eschewed by many as ivory tower tasters who rarely enjoy the very good because they are exposed so often to the very best. Capitalizing on this prejudice, recently, the company VIVINO31 has deliberately singled itself out as a champion of everyday consumers and used the slogan “Let 24 Million people help you pick your next bottle of wine”. The rationale is simple and similar to other products and services that are rated through the collaborative effort of a critical mass of customers. Outside of “normal people” the argument is simply flawed in the assumption that wine can be treated like any commodity: VIVINO literally preaches freedom from experts to suggest that instead we rely on Larry from the Laundromat down the road, and that is only liberating for those who would prefer leaving the job of choosing to somebody like themselves, rather than to a dedicated professional. No disrespect intended: Larry is great at laundry things. We would never approach Robert Parker with laundry questions. That is what experts are for. The “tyranny” of experts is a necessary evil at worst but there is no need to exaggerate: not even the most dedicated wine lover can afford to lead the life of a fulltime professional critic, be present at all trade tastings, keep up with all the travelling and reading necessary, etc. We are almost happy to leave that to professionals: serious en primeur tasting (sampling hundreds of wines before they are released, often well before they are remotely pleasant to the palate) can be rather strenuous and is often anything but fun.

30. The comparison is made all the more accurate by the recent purchase of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate by the Guide Michelin. 31. VIVINO is a wine app making use of a database that relies on an online community. It was described in Forbes as “the wine app for ‘normal people’”. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/08/13/vivino-wine-app/2/#6a9944554490



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The best way to benefit from the availability of dedicated wine critics and writers is explained by Jamie Goode: “A rating cannot be a global, universal score that is a property of that wine. If you do decide to follow a critic, you need to choose one whose own narrative of wine is largely overlapping with yours; you need to adjust for differences and calibrate yourself to the critic” (2016, p. 130). There is good reason for this intimate one on one relationship, and it proposes embracing subjectivity instead of resisting it. For a long time, expert panels (sometimes of as many as five tasters) were encouraged as a less quirky alternative to individual critics. In the end, it was discovered, very good wines of wide appeal – crowd-pleasers – systematically obtained higher ratings than wines of distinct personality, and the latter were penalised because at least one taster would always find them objectionable in one way or another. The compromise reached by such magazines as, for example, World of Fine Wine, retains the best of both worlds: it publishes tastings by three experts where the wines receive a number rating on a 20-point scale, but they also make a point of stating the three individual ratings and the three different TNs. This puts all the information in the hands of the reader. In this book we have made some use of non-canonical (informal, desacralizing, user-friendly, tongue-in-cheek) handbooks that promised wine knowledge workarounds by denouncing how winespeak as practiced by a snooty elite is empty and useless, and the authors of those books claimed for themselves alternatives or explanations or magic wands. The following list contains titles of wine books published in English: The Wine Bible, The Wine Compendium, The Wine Encyclopaedia, Wine Decoded, The Secret of Wine, The Wine Syllabus, The Wine Guide, The Wine Savant, Wine Hack, Wine Hacks, Wine Secrets, Secrets of the Sommeliers, Secrets of the Wine Whisperer, The Wine Guru, How to Drink like a Billionaire, Oldman’s Guide to Outsmarting Wine: 108 Ingenious Shortcuts to Navigate the World of Wine with Confidence and Style, The Wine Dictionary, and of course Wine For Dummies, etc. As construed by all these titles, there can be no denying that wine is knowledge, but of a cryptic sort. Wine comes across as a mystery that needs unravelling, a charade, a riddle. Even Jancis Robinson is responsible for a volume named 24h Wine Expert. This secrecy and urgency clash rather dramatically with our notion of wine: bookshops are packed with shortcuts to wine knowledge when the ride is such a pleasantly unique one. Why the hurry to get there? In this book we have sometimes focused on non-canonical wine texts to the point a reader might object we were being unfair to the many good wine writers out there. The reason for it was precisely in the list of books above and what it says about the role of wine in the world; it still intimidates too many people, the language of wine still sounds like a marker of class and snobbery, the image of wine still needs to become more welcoming than off-putting. Because wine both fascinates and repels, people seem to want to like it but are not willing to go through what they perceive as the necessary

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humiliating initiation rituals. This creates a market for such consumer champions as the authors of The Wine Snob’s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Oenological Knowledge or even The French Wine Lover’s Bible: Never Let a Wine Snob Make You Feel Small. In these titles we can perceive how the “empathic” commercial strategies used in the for Dummies collection crystallize in the adoption of downright defensive attitudes against what is perceived as aggression. Either by defending the reader from snobbery or by promising insider tricks so readers can fake their way into what they imagine the exclusive circles of wine cognoscenti, the titles of these books speak of a very undesirable state of affairs between wine and potential consumers. Once read, these volumes are pretty harmless, and even witty at times, but the person who browses bookshop shelves and finds all these titles could reasonably leave with the idea that wine knowledge needs to be hacked, that the road to wine enjoyment is tough and tortuous, that shortcuts are effective and desirable, and that serious wine handbooks (there are many and they bear far less dramatic titles) do nothing really for a beginner. Opposed to this philosophy of little effort and fast results that somehow conceptualizes wine tasting as undesirable “work” and thus goes against the hedonism inherent in wine culture, the following is Robert Parker’s dedication opening the 7th edition of Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide (2008): To all those passionate men and women who understand the land, respect their craft, and admire the intricacies of nature, and all those artisans who coax from their soils the purest and most noble expression of agriculture – an unmanipulated, natural, honest, and expressive beverage that transcends time and place yet never fails to tantalize us, fire our passions, and profoundly touch our lives – we salute and honor you.

Here the focus is clearly moving from the producers to wine itself and then to our reaction upon enjoying it, and his evident gratitude reveals a profoundly different approach to wine tasting. And that is from a man who has been criticized for reducing wine enjoyment to number ratings. At worst, it sounds a little intoxicated, but overall it provides a definition of (good) wine that has nothing to do with hurrying the learning process in order to “get there” in time to impress the impressionable. This is all about being elevated and spiritually touched instead. This emotional dimension is generalised among all serious wine writers out there, and significantly absent from the titles of the books above (probably not so much from the books themselves). Of course, the emotional is an extra leap of faith in an already dangerously subjective territory, but on the topic of wine, we stand with Jamie Goode on the importance of inspired narratives by passionate winemakers and communicators: “People don’t listen to facts. Facts don’t change minds – stories and emotions do” (2016b). If we grant wine its due unquestionable social dimension,



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we end up in discourse that falls little short of mystical. Gisela Kreglinger, author of The Spirituality of Wine, recently tweeted “To me the clinking of wine glasses is the sound of togetherness. It’s the sound of forging alliances against the hidden terror of loneliness” (@GKreglinger Jul 26, 2017).

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Index (e)motion  220, 227 A a is b  178, 199 absence  7, 17, 21, 70, 102, 104, 116, 157, 191, 200 abstract a is concrete b 164, 175 acidity  4–5, 15, 25, 38–40, 42, 46, 58–60, 66, 70, 72, 81, 84, 87–89, 93–94, 100–101, 103, 106–108, 110, 117, 120–122, 124, 213 advertisement  xi, 19, 21, 26, 176, 181, 209, 212 advertising  8, 27, 48, 111, 143–145, 149, 180, 219–221, 224, 226, 228 advertising rhetoric  221, 224 aesthetics  xi, 154, 222 agency  78, 186, 205, 221, 228 a-ing is b-ing  178 alcohol  15, 38–39, 42, 70, 73, 84, 88, 90, 100–101, 107, 110, 117, 122, 124, 153, 186–188, 213 anatomy  25, 81–82, 85 anthropological 223 anthropomorphic 165 anthropomorphization 151 B boundedness  16, 225 brain  11–12, 31, 219, 222–227 brain regions  219, 222 brands  40, 145–146, 178, 180, 184, 195, 211, 221, 229 building  18, 21, 26, 87–88, 209, 220 C ception 227 cognitive  xi, 2–4, 10–13, 16–17, 71, 94, 97, 207, 219–229

cognitive linguistics  3, 10, 17, 94, 207, 219, 221–223, 225–226, 228 coherence 223 commercial  15, 26, 143, 153–154, 211, 216, 227 commercials  19, 80, 220–221 communication  xi, 2, 10, 16, 42, 64, 72–73, 106, 123, 209– 210, 219, 224, 227–228 community  7–8, 18–19, 31, 41, 49, 72, 79, 123–124, 209, 214 conceptual spaces  222, 225 concrete  3, 13–16, 34, 52, 57, 62–63, 68–69, 97, 223 configuration  17, 38, 61, 68, 70, 75 conscious  153, 196, 221 consciousness  221, 226, 228 constitution  12–15, 51–52, 54, 65 construal  13–14, 16–17, 52, 62, 68–71, 75, 95–97, 199, 221, 225 construction  16, 71, 88, 123, 225–226 consumer  15, 101, 143, 150, 157, 211, 216, 226 consumption  7, 14–15, 18, 43, 46, 52, 54, 124–125, 192–193, 195, 203 context  xi–xii, 2, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 15, 18, 25, 27, 50, 54, 57, 63, 65, 69, 73, 79, 85, 89, 95, 111, 121, 144, 148–149, 157, 176, 188–189, 199, 207, 219, 224, 229 contextual metaphor  198 contrast  15–17, 35, 38, 63, 68–69, 77–78, 86, 91, 103, 111, 144, 150, 203, 208 corpus-based 227 credibility  123–124, 157, 209, 222

critical discourse analysis  228 cross-modal  2, 60, 66, 69–70, 106, 114–115, 122, 143, 208, 221, 227 culture  1, 7, 157, 187, 190, 213, 216, 219, 222–224, 227 D degree  22, 44, 48, 59, 63, 66, 69, 76, 99–100, 102–103, 108, 114, 147, 180, 194, 196, 199, 209–211, 225 deixis 219 description  xi, 5–9, 16, 21, 30–31, 33–34, 41–42, 44, 46–47, 58–59, 65, 70, 72–73, 78, 81, 83, 95–96, 98–100, 115, 118, 120–123, 142, 178, 196, 198, 208, 212, 220, 229 descriptor  5, 12–13, 29–30, 33, 35–38, 51–52, 58–66, 68–70, 72–73, 83, 85, 87, 102, 149, 180, 208 design  6, 22, 75, 87, 153, 156, 158, 211, 222, 225, 228 dimensions  5–7, 38, 40, 42, 59–63, 74, 83, 100, 104, 113, 115–116, 122, 225 discourse analysis  xi, 225, 228 discriminate  9–10, 33, 220 domain  6, 8–9, 14–17, 25, 38, 42, 52, 54, 60–64, 66–69, 73–74, 79, 81, 96–98, 105, 108, 122, 144, 147–148, 180, 219, 225 E embodied metaphor  222 embodied mind  223, 228 embodied soul  220 embodiment  10, 222, 226 emotion  12, 37, 42, 63, 210, 212, 216, 221, 226

232 Representing wine

epistemic  209, 219–220, 222 epistemic control  209, 222 evaluation  40, 42–44, 88, 99– 100, 116, 119, 122, 157, 212, 220 evidence  42, 69, 102, 104, 124–125, 185, 209, 219, 223 evidentiality  220, 222 F feminine  82–83, 85, 149, 151, 190, 194 fictive motion  94, 224, 227 figurative language  2, 190, 208, 210, 220, 225 G gender  21, 82, 147, 149, 179, 193–194, 228 genre  xi–xii, 2–4, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 18–21, 23, 26–27, 29–30, 33, 35, 40–44, 49–50, 60, 79, 81, 89, 91, 94, 97, 104, 120, 123, 144, 147, 183–184, 199, 207–210, 219–220, 222–223, 225–228 grading  17, 99, 208 grounded cognition  219 grouping 228 gustatory  37–38, 40, 62, 114, 120, 125, 219 H hearing  4, 9, 12–13, 25, 67, 97, 99, 105, 111, 113–114, 122, 152, 176, 193 homospatial  164, 173 human sentience  220, 227 hybrid metaphor  198 hyperbole 196–197 I idiom 222 image schemas  226 imagery  5, 104–105, 108, 220, 226 image  16, 65, 89, 110, 145, 151–154, 156, 158, 177, 179–181, 184, 187–189, 196, 199–202, 204–205, 209–210, 215, 219– 220, 223–224, 226 imagination  149, 151, 192, 220, 227

individuation  26, 143, 158, 209 industry  35, 47, 143, 154, 188, 221–223 integrated metaphor  198 intensity  6, 38–39, 46, 58–59, 77, 89, 92–93, 96, 99–101, 103, 107–108, 112–115, 117–119, 122, 190, 193, 213 intersensoriality 223 K kinship  6, 85 L label  xi, 21, 26, 56, 111, 144–145, 147–154, 156–158, 179–180, 209, 211, 225 language  xi–xii, 1–14, 16–18, 20–21, 23–24, 29–35, 41–42, 49, 51–52, 54, 58, 62–64, 66–67, 69–74, 81, 83, 85, 88–89, 91–94, 97, 99, 101–106, 108–118, 121–122, 148–149, 157–158, 183, 190–191, 197–198, 207–210, 213, 215, 219–229 length  27, 38–39, 46, 59, 103, 114–115, 119, 144 lexical  xi, 3, 8, 11–13, 16, 33, 70, 91, 116, 208, 225, 227 lexical semantics  225 lexicon  210, 216, 224, 228 linguistic  xi, 3, 10, 13, 17, 22, 71, 199, 210, 220, 224–225 LOC  13, 16–17, 62 M manner-of-motion  97, 220 mapping  16, 67–68, 71, 107, 145, 158, 178, 180–181, 191, 196, 199–200, 202, 204–205, 226 marketing  1, 26, 80, 143–145, 153, 156–158, 188–189, 195, 197, 209, 219, 222, 226 masculine  82, 85, 149–151, 190, 194 maturity  14–15, 44, 60, 79, 83–84, 124, 147, 191 meaning  xi, 2, 8–11, 13–18, 32–34, 37, 51–52, 54, 58–64, 66–72, 75, 79, 96, 104, 178, 207–208, 210, 222, 224–226

media  20, 24, 26, 48–49, 89, 102, 109, 157, 221–222 memory  29, 31, 59, 63, 105, 219, 221, 228–229 metaphor  1–2, 6–7, 11, 25, 29, 67–68, 71–84, 87–90, 95–98, 107, 112, 143–147, 153–154, 176, 178, 180, 183–184, 190, 194, 196–200, 202–203, 205, 208, 219–223, 225–229 metaphorical mapping  67, 71, 158, 226 metonymy  2, 7, 25, 31, 54, 57, 62, 70–71, 96–97, 143–145, 156, 178, 180–181, 190–191, 194, 200, 205, 219, 224–226, 228 mixed imagery  226 mixing metaphor  222, 226 modality  9–10, 15, 46, 59–60, 64, 66, 96, 103, 108, 190, 219–220, 223–224 model  15, 34–35, 40, 53, 146, 179, 189, 195 modification  59, 119, 225 monomodal  183, 196, 198–199, 204 motion  13, 81, 91–97, 100, 106, 112, 114–116, 118–122, 197–198, 200–201, 205, 220, 223–224, 227 mouth  6, 12, 30–32, 40, 44–45, 47–48, 57, 59, 62, 66–67, 73, 84, 90–94, 97–98, 104, 115, 117, 119–121, 151, 208, 220–221 multimodal metaphor  176, 180, 183, 198, 202, 220–222, 226 multisense 106 N noncompossible  164, 173 non-verbal 221 nose  5–6, 31, 35, 38–39, 43–47, 57–58, 60, 63, 67, 81, 88–89, 91–93, 96–98, 101, 110, 112, 118, 120–121, 157, 192, 194, 208, 220, 224, 226 note  xi, 1, 5–8, 10–12, 18–19, 21, 24–25, 35, 40–41, 43–44, 46–49, 57–58, 68, 81, 91–93, 101–102, 105, 107, 110, 112, 116–117, 122, 156, 178, 202, 207–208, 221, 223, 225

Index 233

O object  14–16, 29, 34–38, 58–63, 65–66, 68–70, 87, 99, 122, 145–146, 156, 188, 199, 202, 208, 215, 224, 229 odor  31, 221, 224–226, 228–229 offspring  6, 76, 78, 143, 147– 148, 158, 204 olfaction  12, 63, 198, 226 olfactory  12, 31, 33, 36–38, 62, 64, 114, 120, 125, 220, 222–224, 228 online discussion forum  47–48, 221 onomastics  145, 221, 229 ontologies  13, 16, 225 oxymoron 228 P packaging  8, 21, 26, 143–144, 147, 150–151, 158, 209 perception  xi, 11–13, 16, 30–31, 33–34, 38, 51, 64, 66–67, 69, 74, 98, 103, 113, 122, 125, 207– 209, 220–221, 223, 226–228 perceptual  10–11, 29, 32, 38, 125, 142, 209, 219–220, 224, 229 persistence  6, 92, 99–101, 113–115, 118–119, 122, 208 personification  85–86, 144, 146–147, 149, 153, 158, 180, 190–193, 197, 204, 213, 227 persuasiveness 222 pictorial metaphor  180, 198, 221 pragmatics  xi, 3, 184, 220, 222–223, 225, 227–228 preference  57, 67–68, 123, 210, 212 presence  7, 24–25, 27, 73, 81, 99–105, 108, 110, 112–113, 115–117, 121–122, 153, 183, 188, 194–195, 199, 208, 211, 220 principle  46, 67–68, 198, 222 process  2, 7, 16–17, 23, 25–26, 29, 31–32, 55, 71, 73–76, 78, 81, 83, 91, 94, 96–97, 99, 121, 143, 148–149, 156, 185, 190–191, 195, 199, 204–205, 210, 213, 216 product  1, 6–7, 14, 30, 33, 52–54, 71, 73–74, 78, 80–81,

99, 143–144, 146, 148, 150, 180–181, 184, 187, 210, 214 promotion  xi, 7, 26, 28, 143, 157, 187, 194, 211, 220 properties  32, 35–38, 40, 42, 51–52, 58–62, 69–70, 72–73, 81–82, 85, 88, 94–98, 119, 143, 224 Q quantity  7, 99–104, 108, 110, 116, 122, 208 R range  xi, 5, 7, 17–18, 28, 55, 59, 80, 99–100, 102, 104, 108, 111–112, 116–117, 122, 145, 147, 153–154, 158, 188, 190, 193, 208, 211, 213, 219 recommendation  15–16, 43–44, 54, 124, 225 recontextualization 2–3 reference  11, 14, 16, 20, 37, 40, 53, 70, 88, 115, 149, 181, 192, 219 representation  xi–xii, 15, 34–35, 37, 62, 69, 124, 151, 154, 183, 195, 198, 204, 208–209, 219, 222, 225 review  xi, 1, 15, 21–24, 30, 40–41, 43, 47–48, 52, 59, 70, 111, 123–125, 145, 198, 219–220, 223, 226–229 rhetoric  210, 212, 219, 221–222, 224, 226 role of metaphor  220 S salient  7, 14–15, 21, 62, 70, 72, 74, 79, 82, 91, 95–97, 101, 104, 115, 118, 196, 198, 203 scale  16–17, 35, 38, 40–41, 59, 61–62, 69, 189, 215 schema  xi, 8, 29–30, 34–35, 40, 43, 58, 62, 79, 86, 89, 96, 103, 145, 148–149, 176, 190–192, 194, 202, 207, 209, 222–223, 226–227 semantics  xi–xii, 3, 67, 96, 222, 225, 227, 229 sense boundaries  221

sense transfer  228 senses  3, 9, 12–14, 32, 34–35, 51, 63–64, 67–69, 96–99, 114, 144, 176, 209, 220–225, 227 sensory  xi–xii, 1–4, 7–13, 15–16, 18, 29–35, 38, 44, 46, 51, 57–58, 60, 62–70, 80, 91–92, 94, 96–98, 103, 105–106, 115, 118, 123, 181, 196, 207–209, 212–214, 219–220, 225–229 sensory perceptions  xi, 12–13, 16, 30, 34, 38, 64, 66–67, 69, 207–208, 220, 226 sensual  7, 66, 86, 110, 222 sensuous  10, 13, 30, 223, 225, 227 simile  176, 178, 197–199, 228 smell  4, 6–7, 9, 11–17, 30–35, 37–38, 42, 44, 47, 51, 59–70, 94, 96–98, 106, 116, 145, 181, 198, 208–209, 213, 220, 226, 228 somatosensory 223 source of knowledge  132, 137, 141 space  14, 17, 34, 46, 69, 73, 124–125, 157, 179, 220, 227 spatial  16, 62, 81, 109, 114–115, 122, 219 speech  16–17, 180, 192, 220 standardized 225 stimuli  10, 29, 33–34, 64, 212, 220 subjective  4, 9, 30, 63, 72, 99–100, 142, 208–212, 216 subjectivity  111, 210–211, 215, 222 symbol  219, 225–226, 228 synaesthesia  12, 64–65, 67, 96, 143, 176, 178, 181, 221, 223, 226–228 synaesthetic metaphor  97, 219, 221 syncretism  12–13, 64, 70 T target  68, 71, 89, 97, 147, 176, 180, 198–199, 227 taste  1, 4, 9, 11–16, 18, 20, 24, 29–32, 34–36, 38, 42, 44, 48, 57, 59–64, 66–68, 70, 72,

234 Representing wine

77, 93–94, 96–99, 101, 107, 116, 145, 150, 156, 177, 181, 196, 208–210, 212–213, 220, 222–224, 226–228 tasting  xi, 1, 5–8, 10–12, 14–15, 18–21, 23–26, 29–33, 35, 39–43, 45, 47–49, 51, 57–58, 63–65, 70, 73, 77, 83, 87, 89, 91–94, 96, 99, 115, 118–121, 123–125, 142, 144, 156, 187, 193, 196, 207–209, 211–212, 214, 216, 222–223, 225 tasting note  xi, 5, 7–8, 10–11, 18–19, 21, 25, 35, 40–41, 43, 47–49, 156, 207, 223 taxonomies 145 temporality 222–223 terminology  xi, 3, 40, 45, 207, 220, 225, 227–228 textual analysis  64, 221 texture  11, 14–15, 30–31, 42–43, 59, 62, 64, 66, 81, 87, 89–90, 92–94, 119, 144, 178, 213

TN  14, 19–20, 23, 26, 41–44, 46, 48–50, 54, 60, 79, 96, 101, 104, 112–113, 123, 144, 208–210 touch  4, 9, 11–14, 16, 30, 34–35, 38, 40, 42, 45, 47, 59–62, 64, 67–68, 88, 97, 99, 102, 105, 107, 110, 113, 120, 122, 145, 181, 198, 208–209, 211, 216 transfer of meaning  71, 224 translating  34, 96, 220 typography 153 typological 228 V variation  116, 189, 195, 211, 219–220 verb  11, 32, 38, 64, 73, 81, 90–97, 104, 115–116, 119–120, 220, 226, 228 vision  9, 12–14, 16, 30, 32, 35, 38, 42, 53, 60–62, 64, 67–70, 96–97, 203, 208, 226, 229 viticulture  15, 203, 225

W waltz 191 wheel  29, 35–36, 38, 42, 58, 62, 222 wine expert  1, 18, 215, 221 wine industry  35, 154, 188, 221–222 wine review  xi, 1, 22, 41, 47, 124–125, 223, 226–227 wine taster  30–31, 99, 223 winery  6, 20, 43–44, 48, 52–53, 56, 80, 100, 146, 148–149, 151, 153–154, 156–157, 171, 192 winespeak  xii, 1–5, 10, 42, 47, 49, 51, 71–74, 97, 145, 147, 154, 180, 207, 209–210, 215, 220, 225, 227 WSET  30, 35, 38–39, 58, 62 Wine and Spirit Education Trust 29, 35, 38–39, 58 Z zone activation  63, 70

Wine culture is a complex phenomenon of increasing importance in modern society, and it combines the joys of wine appreciation with the frustrations of trying to verbally communicate sensory impressions. While wine appreciation is traditionally characterized as joyously convivial in its social dimension, sensory impressions remain eminently private. This contrast explains why the language used to represent wine, or winespeak, is the object of increasing crossdisciplinary interest. This book analyzes the many different forms / many of the different forms of representing wine in present-day society, with a special emphasis on winespeak, starting from the premise that such study demands a genre approach to the many different communities involved in the wine world: producers/ critics/ merchants/ consumers. By combining the methodologies of Cognitive Linguistics and discourse analysis, the authors analyze extensive real-life corpora of wine reviews and multimodal artifacts (labels, advertisements, documentaries) to reflect on the many inherent difficulties but also to highlight the rich and creative figurative strategies employed to compensate for the absence of a proper wine jargon of a more unambiguous nature.

isbn 978 90 272 0445 5

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY