Why yet another wine blog? R.D Emerson said, "Language is the archive of history". How true this is when we look at wine and the descriptors used to explain its aroma, taste and other characteristics. To a novice the whole winespeak is baffling, puffy, aristocratic, traditional and archaic. Words are necessary to express concepts, abstracts, emotions and everything we hear see and feel. We use nouns and adjectives to describe things and states. We need words to hook these onto.

Where did wine connoisseurs find these wine descriptors or the jagon associated with wine? It is definitely not from China or India! From my viewpoint as a linguistics scholar, the wine language we read about and hear at wine tasting events is predominantly Western-European, traditional, historical and middle to aristocratic vocabulary. Dare I say an element of snobbery.

From a sociolinguistic or sociocultural perspective, the currrent wine jargon is a genre biased towards the Western culture and context and is therefore of little relevance to the Oriental or emerging social contexts.

So why have I started this blog? Firstly, I am an Asian but English educated and can present my "other worldview". Secondly, my credentials in Applied Linguistics and Wine has made me only too aware of the mismatch in wine and culture. As an Oriental, I see the Old World producers trying to rush to Asia to sell their wines. But the wine language they speak is somewhat alien in the Asian context. Try explaining "hints of blackberry" to an Indian as if this fruit grows in his backyard. Duh!

Is it time for a change in winespeak? Is there a need for wine and culture to "blend"?