Tips on how to Decode Buzzwords on Your Wine Bottle, Like ‘Terroir-Pushed’ and ‘Sustainable’

Buzzwords like “terroir-driven” and “sustainable” have lengthy been used to seize customers’ consideration, particularly in wine. 

Nevertheless, an absence of concrete definitions surrounding these phrases has led to confusion and misinformation amongst drinkers and producers. We requested 4 business professionals to weigh in on how useful or hurtful wine buzzwords will be and had them break down the meanings behind among the business’s most used (or overused) phrases.

Wine buzzwords: Useful or hurtful?

Brooklyn-based wine journalist Eliza Dumais finds that buzzwords can present a strong entry level to specific aspects of the business, however will solely convey a client thus far. 

“For folk who sincerely undertake an curiosity in wine, buzzwords are like gateway phrases,” she says. “They are often simple, topical entry factors that give strategy to a extra private and nuanced vocabulary.”  

John McCarroll, Brooklyn-based wine salesman and co-founder of the podcast, Disgorgeous, says that buzzwords can typically flatten the context in wine. “They’re very useful for customers who don’t actually need to interact with wine or get into it,” he says. “However for individuals who know what they need, they’re pretty ineffective within the a part of what makes wine enjoyable and attention-grabbing.” 

Sure buzzwords —  like sustainability, terroir, low sulfur, and pure wine — are used extra continuously than others. However reasonably than overuse, the important thing drawback with these phrases is their lack of set definition, in addition to the subjective nature surrounding their meanings. 

Shannon Coursey, government vice chairman of gross sales and advertising and marketing for wine importer Wilson Daniels, makes use of “terroir-driven” as a key instance of a buzzword that may turn into meaningless. Coursey notes that whereas the idea may be very actual, on account of lack of definitive rules across the time period, anybody can name their wines as such, whatever the precise choices made in each the winery and the cellar.  

McCarroll finds the identical points with the time period “sustainable.” 

“Sustainability ought to be crucial side of wine manufacturing at the moment, although as it’s at the moment used, it means lower than nothing,” he says. “[It’s] a obscure dedication to higher agriculture or just a couple of beehives on a property.” 

McCarroll believes that producers who’re critical concerning the surroundings can level usually to extra concrete examples of their dedication to bettering the surroundings. Coursey agrees, nothing that sustainability is more and more changing into an umbrella time period. 

“If it’s one thing a client cares about, they need to dive deeper into what makes a selected wine sustainable,” she says. 

The identical points ring true for phrases like low-sulfur and pure wine. “Low- to no-sulfur winemaking is completely essentially the most attention-grabbing area in winemaking proper now, however it seems like a spectrum,” says McCarroll. 

Jill Mott, wine director at The Carlyle, a Rosewood Resort in New York Metropolis, agrees. “I positively suppose [low sulfur] is essentially the most attention-grabbing place in wine proper now, nevertheless, I’ve felt that manner for 15 years,” she says. Mott expands on the notion of the spectrum of pure and low-sulfur winemaking, stating that sulfur additions — even these on the decrease aspect of issues — can differ.

Mott says that many standard winemakers will use little to no sulfur additions on a cuvée or two in order to leap on the “pure wine” bandwagon, although might doubtlessly be implementing different practices (filtration, for instance) that many pure winemakers wouldn’t deem true to the fashion. 

“When the phrase ‘pure’ is thrown round, it may sound extremely sleazy,” says McCarroll “Lots of people suppose that pure simply means ‘funky’ or ‘bizarre,’ which, for the document, it doesn’t. The time period pure is commonly lumped collectively or used interchangeably with phrases like sustainability or biodynamics, every of that are fully totally different ideas.

Buzzwords are subjective

Attributable to their lack of authorized definition, lots of interpretation comes into play with wine buzzwords.

Melissa Burr, vice chairman of winemaking at Stoller Household Property, says that buzzwords finally maintain weight when a model behind the phrases walks the stroll. 

“I usually do choose my wine to be sustainable, terroir-driven, low-sulfur and pure, however I feel it’s finest to be suspicious of anybody who makes use of these buzzwords as promoting factors with out truly partaking with the seas of complexity surrounding all these phrases,” says Burr. “For instance, for those who’re at a wine retailer full of business schlock and there’s one bottle marked ‘pure,’ it is protected to imagine that doesn’t actually imply something.”

However buzzwords also can draw individuals in and make them interested in how a wine is made. 

“I’d encourage curious customers to dig a bit deeper to get a clearer understanding of what a few of these phrases actually imply, in addition to how they relate to the wine they’re ingesting,” says Coursey.