“A Monster in a Beautiful Frock”: Textile Metaphors in the Description and Evaluation of Wine Rosario Caballero Rodríguez1 and Ernesto Suárez Toste1 1Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha Abstract Metaphors in wine discourse fill gaps that cannot be reached by any other means. In spite of all the possibilities covered by chemical analysis, figurative language is essential in wine jargon if we must describe the range of sensorial (visual, olfactory, and tactile) impressions a wine can give us. Here we analyse a corpus of over 3,500 tasting notes and focus on the way textile metaphors are used to describe a red wine’s mouthfeel — the perception of its structure/texture in the palate. Because the tasting note is a consumers’ tool, we also focus on the evaluative implications of specific realisations.
According to scientists and wine professionals, wines may well be analysed in highly technical terms, i.e., by alluding to their percentage of alcohol, their pH, tannins etc. (see Clarke and Bakker 2004). Such analysis would, nevertheless, be exclusively intelligible to a few experts concerned with the most scientific aspects of winemaking (e.g., chemists, oenologists, and a restricted number of critics with a technical background), but would be difficult for the growing number of people participating in the various discourses articulated around the topic of wine (e.g., participants in formal and informal wine tasting gatherings, wine merchants, consumers, journalists, advertisers, etc). Rather, wines and, particularly, the visual, olfactory and gustative experiences afforded by them (i.e., the three canonical phases in wine tasting) are usually described by means of such everyday, well-known words as body, backbone, healthy, mute, silky, sickly, well-knit, robust, senile or masculine, all of which are commonly used in many other contexts. In other words, in order to describe the
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organoleptic experience of wine, wine experts and aficionados inevitably turn to metaphor. Indeed, metaphor is ubiquitous in wine discourse (Bruce, 2000; Amoraritei, 2002; Gluck, 2003). A case in point is the large amount of lexis ‘borrowed’ from the human domain in order to discuss wine. Thus, we find that the different stages in the development of a wine are recurrently referred to by means of terms like baby, young, well-aged, venerable or dead. So much so that the drinking of a wine in a premature stage of development is often condemned as ‘infanticide’. Likewise, the combination — as perceived in the mouth — of alcohol, acids and tannin in a wine is commonly labelled as its body, and the tannins (or acids in certain cases) supporting it as its backbone or spine. Finally, given this anthropomorphic view of wine’s structure, it is far from surprising to find different wine components referred to as its nose, palate, legs (sometimes also named tears), or robes, whereas a wine’s personality is often evaluated by means of adjectives prototypically used in the qualification of human beings (e.g., brooding, friendly, sexy, voluptuous). Nevertheless, although wine discourse cannot do without metaphor, its highly figurative nature has sometimes been seen — even if in an understated manner — as a negative rather than a positive characteristic, that is, as some kind of ‘juggling’ with words (Peynaud, 1987) or as some sort of ‘camouflage’ more typical of lampoon than of technical, serious discourse (Gluck, 2003). On the other hand, other scholars also pointing to the figurative quality of wine assessment have explained people’s understanding of the figurative language used as the result of the connotative power of words and their relationships with other words in the lexicon. Thus, in Lehrer’s (1992) own terms
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Especially interesting are the descriptors that are taken over from very different semantic domains, such as words that describe personality and character: aggressive, charming, diffident, honest, feminine, masculine. How can these descriptions be meaningful? In order to understand how a wine can taste feminine or aggressive, we rely on intralinguistic associations. Since feminine is semantically related to words like sweet, perfumed, light, and delicate, which can be related to the smell, taste, and “feel” of wines in the mouth, we can understand how a wine might be described as feminine. (Lehrer, 1992: 13)
This paper explores the metaphorical language used by wine experts to describe the mouthfeel of a wine or its palate, that is, the third stage in the stepwise process of wine tasting. Due to length constraints, we will exclusively focus on the textile metaphors used to describe and evaluate the texture of red wines in the mouth and, as a result, their structure. The topic is approached from the vantage point of cognitive linguistics, concretely the theory of metaphor developed after Lakoff and Johnson’s influential book Metaphors We Live by (1980), and extensively developed thereafter. In accordance with this theoretical framework, metaphor is not seen as a linguistic ornament (or ‘juggling’ with words) but, rather, as an essential heuristic tool that fulfils our cognitive and communicative needs. Metaphor is, therefore, regarded as a cognitive process or mapping by which we understand and talk about a given domain of experience (the target in the metaphor) using the entities, properties and relations pertaining to a different domain of experience (the source). In the case of wine discourse, metaphor not only reveals the way wine specialists conceptualise the subject at issue, but also helps them ‘translate’ the complex sensorial experience of tasting wine into something more graspable or intelligible — and, accordingly, susceptible to being transmitted and learnt. Finally, the understanding of the figurative language realising the metaphors underlying the conceptualisation of wine is not regarded as relying solely on the intralinguistic associations of the terms used in verbal description but, rather, as 3
resting upon the understanding of those experiential domains involved in the metaphors as well as the way in which they interact and converge in the conceptualisation and description of the wine topic. This paper presents the preliminary results of a research project pivoting on the discourse of wine and funded by the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. The purpose of the project is to explore the metaphors used in evaluative texts aimed at the promotion of wine for a general audience. In order to do so, we are building a corpus consisting of • 12,000 wine reviews (tasting notes) retrieved from six well-known magazines and websites, and divided evenly between red and white wines (i.e., Wine Spectator, The Wine News, Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, and Wine Anorak) • wine adverts published in both specialised and non-specialised magazines Both the reviews and adverts are being chosen at random, although we are particularly concerned with having wines from various wine-producing regions represented in the corpus. The corpus analysed for the present paper comprises 3,521 tasting notes of red wines which amount to 177,775 words. In this regard, it must be noted that the small number of words in the corpus is the result of the particular characteristics of the genre under study, which concerns very short texts ranging from to 20 words to 100 words depending on the type of publication. Corpus data confirms the pervasive presence of figurative language in the description and assessment of wine. Three particularly conspicuous metaphorical schemas in the description of the texture of wines in specialised magazines draw upon the domains of anatomy, architecture and textiles and their typical lexis, as illustrated in the following example:
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(1) Here the purity of sweet Bing cherry fruit is buttressed with clear mineral notes, and wrapped in very pleasing, caramel and cocoa barrel flavors. It shows a tart, tangy spine that keeps it balanced and extends the fruit flavors well into the long, crisp finish. (Wine Enthusiast 12/15/2004)
In this passage we find the olfactory experience of a Pinot Noir described in architectural terms (e.g., buttressed), aromas that are then wrapped in several flavours portrayed as if they were some sort of clothing. The wine at issue is finally evaluated as balanced (i.e., in architectural, even anatomical terms) thanks to its spine. As pointed out earlier, despite the variety of metaphors in tasting notes the present paper only focuses on textile metaphors. These are verbally realised in nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs which yield a complex picture of wine as a piece of cloth, of some of its elements as pieces of cloth themselves, and, in certain cases, a personified view of wine, i.e., as an entity susceptible to wearing various types of clothing. This human view of wine is an implication of the portrayal of some of its components as diverse pieces of clothing or garments. The textile metaphors found in the corpus may be formalised as follows: Metaphorical mapping
Linguistic realisation
WINE IS A PIECE OF CLOTH
[wine] wraps and unwraps [wine has] a fabric, weft [wine has elements] woven into its fabric [wine] bursts at the seams [wine] folds and unfolds [wine is] velvety, silky, satiny, [like] cashmere, seamless, a tapestry, open-knit, wellknit, tightly-knit, well meshed, tightly wound, pillowy, woven together, tightly wound, interwoven
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COMPONENTS OF A WINE ARE PIECES OF CLOTH
[usually, tannins] are silky, velvety, satiny, pillowy [wine components are] cloak, glove, frock, mantle [wine components & flavours] envelop, wrap, enrobe, dress up, couch, intertwined, woven together, tightly wound, interwoven [wine] wear A WINE IS A PERSON
[wine components & flavours] enrobe, dress up [wine components are] cloak, glove, frock, mantle [wine] wears
In this chart we can follow the logic that leads from WINE IS A PIECE OF CLOTH to the personification A WINE IS A PERSON via THE COMPONENTS OF A WINE ARE PIECES OF CLOTH. Let us explain the process: a wine has its components ‘woven’ into its ‘fabric’, and when these are caressing to the touch and ‘seamlessly’ integrated the mouthfeel of the wine is so too. This is illustrated in the following notes: (2) The wine is fabulously concentrated, with that seamless characteristic found in the greatest wines, […] acid, alcohol, and tannin, are interwoven into a majestic, multidimensional, compelling wine of extraordinary richness, length, and aromatic splendor. (Wine Advocate 142) (3) This Spanish red is velvety smooth on the palate, but the lush texture cloaks a firm, tannic structure, and sets off the ripe flavors of plums, chocolate and coffee, beautifully integrated. (Wine Spectator 4/30/1998)
The naming of evocative materials (silk, velvet, satin, or cashmere) is but a mere resource in wine assessment. The important thing is that these realisations presume the
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identity WINE = TEXTILE. This is evident in statements like “Blackberry jam and pepper were well integrated into the fabric of this wine,” or “A hint of sweet oak ties the fabric of this wine together.” On the other hand, if those elements are themselves PIECES OF CLOTH (i.e.,
they can share the texture of noble materials, cloak one another, be knitted together, etc) what they do to the wine is ‘dress’ it. Tannic structure, acidity, and alcohol are, then, ‘garments’ worn by the wine. It is within this mental framework that a wine may be described as follows: (4) A monster in a beautiful frock. The strawberry aromas jump out of the glass, with hints of roses and tar. Full-bodied, with loads of velvety tannins and a long, long dried cherry finish. (Wine Spectator 9/15/2000) (5) Intricate and dry, this single-vineyard beauty feels easy and silky, but there’s an iron fist in that velvet glove. (Wine Enthusiast 4/1/2004)
The wines described in these two tasting notes offer the best of both worlds: they are full-bodied (an anatomical metaphor instantiated by fist and monster) and at the same time velvety in the mouth, because such ‘corpulence’ comes easily inside a graceful package (a velvet glove, a beautiful frock). Against common wisdom, silky and velvety are not at odds with each other here. In fact the expression iron fist in a velvet glove is a particularly felicitous expression in wine jargon, first used by the famous winemaker André Tchelistcheff and nowadays popularised to refer to these rare coincidences of power and grace, where power is not synonymous with aggressiveness or grace with feebleness. Therefore, if wine is a person dressed in tannin, alcohol, and acid, it should not be surprising to find cases of personalisation like “An extraordinary wine, and not just because it wears its 16.4% alcohol so well…” (meaning, naturally, that the other components are also proportionately high and therefore the wine appears balanced).
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Evaluative aspects represent a difficult but crucial issue here. As a rule of thumb there is no better compliment to a wine than balanced: as long as all the elements are present in adequate proportion the wine is successfully structured. But a wine needs to be interesting and attractive as well as solid. The list of noble fabrics mentioned has decidedly positive connotations. But there are problems derived from the condition of WINE AS A LIVING CREATURE (another basic metaphor pervading wine discourse). Seamless integration, for example, is not a permanent quality of any wine. It is a privileged state that may or may not appear at all in a given wine, and if it does appear it may last only so long. Body is something extremely subjective; let us just state that in the current (and changing) climate the market tends to prefer aboveaverage structure. Therefore, the opposition masculine/feminine is merely descriptive, not value-charged, and incidentally — whatever Lehrer (1992) may say — not based on intralinguistic associations. This explains how monster can be a positive descriptor in some cases, if adequately qualified. Returning to the analysis of the specific realisations listed in the chart above, there are many that will result far from obvious to the layman. Open-knit is usually employed with the meaning expressive (a wine that offers little resistance to scrutiny, displaying a wide and pleasant aromatic range at the moment of tasting). But although it may be classified as positive, its apparent opposite, tightly knit or tightly wound, has no negative connotations unless that quality ends up becoming an obstacle to enjoyment. Thus, a wine that is still tightly-knit after x years (x being too many for what is reasonable for that type of wine) may be defined as closed or unyielding because it is exhausting our patience — as illustrated in a statement like “There is unquestionably great potential woven into the fabric of this wine but it is going to demand more patience.” 8
There are also problems of evaluative consistency given the diversity of tasters and critics. For example, the elaboration of a textile metaphor may lead from the use of the expression interwoven to the definition of a wine as a tapestry. We are not completely sure that when this reviewer wrote “A beautiful tapestry of a wine, with plush cherry flavors woven against a waft of smoky tobacco flavours and weft of deep minerals” s/he was conscious of the superlative implications of such compliment in this context. This paper discusses but a few of the metaphorical terms used in tasting notes, namely those drawing upon the domain of textiles. This figurative language is not only at the service of description (by naming the various components in a wine or describing the resulting product), but also a powerful evaluative device in a genre characterised by a mixture of description and evaluation. However, the results presented here are a tiny part of the diverse metaphors present in wine discourse, so more work is still required to provide a complete picture of how metaphor helps conceptualise and verbalise the experience of tasting wine. References Amoraritei, L. 2002. “La métaphore en Oenologie.” Metaphorik.de 3. 1–12. 15 September 2005. Bruce, N. J. 2000. “Classification and Hierarchy in the Discourse of Wine: Emile Peynaud’s The Taste of Wine.” English for Special Purposes Journal 23: 26. 149–164. Clarke, R. J. and J. Bakker. 2004. Wine Flavour Chemistry. Oxford: Blackwell. Gluck, M. 2003. “Wine Language. Useful Idiom of Idiot-speak?” New Media Language. J. Aitchison and D. M. Lewis. Eds. 107–115. London: Routledge. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago (Ill.) and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lehrer, A. 1992. “Wine Vocabulary and Wine Description.” Verbatim: The Language Quarterly 18: 3. 13–15. Peynaud, E. 1987. The Taste of Wine. Translated by Michael Schuster. London: Macdonald Orbis.
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