Some Semiotics

Beginning today, Gotham Gastronomy will begin explore some of the deeper issues ingrained in food and dining. The proceeding prose, our initial installment offers a brief overview of some issues associated with wine writing…

Over the past three decades wine has exploded in popularity like a bottle of Krug encountering a saber wielding sommelier. As the wise and powerful Yogurt reminds us, merchandising is always gripping tightly on the coattails of any fad. Along with wine glass marking charms, and sterling silver foil cutters, media has exploited the new market. Be it blogs or the Wine Speculum, tasting notes are no longer the province of small leather bound journals in collectors’ homes; rather, they are the heart of a billion dollar business.
These “reviews” often provide little helpful information for the reader, but a deeper semiotic analysis of said scripts certainly succeeds in offering a complex look into cultures and objectives. The careful reader still may be baffled by a wine that tastes like “a Porsche on the PCH,” but they will begin to recognize some of the psychological underpinnings to the text as well as differences in style and the motives behind such selections. Said concepts are best illustrated by looking at both the British and American wine writing, then seeking out some common themes and possible pertinent explanations.
In English wine writing, certain terminology is recurring. The University of Chicago’s Michael Silverstein examines the writing of Michael Broadbent, and discovers certain linguistic choices which run rampant through the work of Britons. The English borrow heavily in their style from the well established lexicons of gardening and “animal husbandry of prestige bred creatures such as dogs, race horses, etc.” Hence, we read terms like “assertive backbone” as well as personification (maybe “animalization”) via phrases such as “trying hard” or “curious”. The adjectives and phrases used to describe the visual aspects of the vino are often overt comparisons to popular English garden plants. On other occasions, they are borrowed terminology from the field of botany, i.e. straw yellow. (How many modern wine drinkers are truly familiar with the hue of straw?)
The american experiment has yielded an entirely different style better suited to the American Experiment. Robert Parker forever changed the field by popularizing the hundred point system in the early 1980’s. In the States, there is a tendency to question “what’s better?” as opposed to attributing differences to those in taste. The US gave the world Ralph Nader’s Consumer Reports and its straight to the point ratings, and this model was Parker’s inspiration. For, from the Puritanical pulpit on, the national epistemology has been one not disposed towards squandering words which were once considered only God’s domain. Likewise, true to Turner, we are nation of results, and the empirical rating ranks first here; in the American wine review, the focus is on the rating, whereas the numbers are an afterthought abroad.
However, the rise of the point system has not rendered New World writing strictly numeric. Gastronomy is sensual by nature, but American wine writing is downright sexual bordering on graphic, if not crass. Without fail, tasting notes include words such as “probing”, “intrusive”, “penetrating”, “firm”, and “curvy”. (Let’s not forget “seductive”!) The second field invoked is that of the automobile and the language of Road & Driver is virtually ubiquitous in American wine writing. Wines are described as fast, compact, or handling well. The diction is not exclusive to autos, the road itself is represented by references to asphalt, tar, and even the occasional pothole. When any semblance of representation is abandoned, we read of a finish that is akin to downshifting.

To be Continued Tomorrow…