Mutating and Contested Languages of Wine : Heard on the Grapevine

Language is thoroughly bound up with wine in myriad ways, and the drinking of wine is very often accompanied with talk about it. This chapter considers the nature of wine tasting languages; the differences and rivalry between wine talk (of critics and suchlike persons) and wine language (of scientists and their allies in the wine world); how wine language is bound up with the creation of social hierarchies and senses of commonality among wine drinkers; contemporary trends towards hyper-specificity in wine vocabularies; and the changing nature of the argots in and through which wine is sold and labelled. In so doing, the chapter stresses the constantly changing, conflict-laden, and often contradictory and paradoxical nature of talk and language related to wine and wine drinking.Peer reviewe