The Haunted Glass

Forget lexicons and flavour wheels - wine writing struggles not because wine is complex, but because it’s uncanny. Mark Fisher, hypnosis, and surrealism help us write (and sell) wine better.

Never let it be said that wine writers don't know how to be funny. At least unintentionally.

On the 25th April, UK wine writer Jamie Goode published a piece on his website titled "Why we should stop writing about writing about wine."

On 2nd May, 7 days later, he published a piece titled "Is writing about wine difficult? A response to an academic linguist who doesn’t care much for wine writers."

There's something Pythonesque about saying you shouldn't write about wine writing, and then a week later write about a writer who writes about wine writers. I can't tell you how much respect I have for Jamie. His books on wine science, faults, closures, his work for the IWC and his long-running blog have all improved our understanding of wine immeasurably. And they’ve helped countless students pass wine exams too. I hope he continues to receive the plaudits he richly deserves. Perhaps now also for giving us a giggle.

However, I have no such reservations about delighting in writing about wine writers. And I am fascinated by the debate that Jamie couldn't resist wading into.

In this case, a debate with Polish linguist Dariusz Galasiński. I know Dariusz. He has spent the last few years studying and interviewing wine writers and communicators and he's starting to publish what he's found. I should declare he and I have spoken and corresponded a great deal¹.

Dariusz recently published an article arguing that wine isn’t actually that hard to write about. It's just hard to write about well. He finds that wine language is often repetitive, formulaic, and needlessly “flowery". You may well agree, and you'd not be alone. His argument is that this is a symptom not of wine’s complexity, but of wine writers' lack of originality. (On which he and I broadly agree, and you may too.) Or, more depressingly, of the genre’s exhaustion. (A point where we differ.)

Jamie's piece, in contrast, defends the difficulty of wine description. He points to the “perilous journey from perception to language.” As well he might. He's written extensively about this and he’s undoubtedly right. He describes the challenge of unpicking the multisensory or "multimodal" way we appreciate wine. And why that makes it so hard to turn what we sense, into words. He makes the point that it's particularly because our lexicon for flavour and smell is impoverished. Although he argues that by “we”, we mean "people in the West". He has a fascinating excursion into work about the Jahai and Maniq people who have more abstract smell terms. And are apparently better tasters and taste-describers because of it.

Now I think they're both a bit right.

And I think they're both missing something. And as good Hegelians we should look for some sort of synthesis.

And I think getting to that sort of synthesis is worth talking and writing about. Jamie argued (a very short while ago) that we shouldn't write about wine writing on the basis that "it’s an interesting and important topic for a very few people." And I suppose that if you limit it to "other wine writers" you'd be right.

But actually, most people who write about wine - and talk about it - aren't wine writers at all. They're sales assistants, shop owners, marketing managers, buyers, buyers assistants, sommeliers, restaurateurs, winemakers, winemaker' friends who help them do their websites, as well as... a few wine writers².

So where do I think the two of them are missing the target here?

I reckon that in his piece Dariusz downplays the ontological strangeness of wine³. At least in the way we experience it. Wine is... strange. And it does strange things to us. As described in The Bacchae 405BC. Through to most editions of a local newspaper like The Craven Herald.

And I don’t just mean it gets us squiffy. Wine - perhaps more than any alcoholic drink - has a power to move people. And that’s… strange. And it seems to be part of the essence of what we find in wine. It’s ontological.