China and its culinary tradition is key to a whole new language of wine appreciation

THE sign "FMC Vineyard" as you turn off the R44 into Ken Forrester vineyards means different things to different folks. "Fat Man's Corner" was winemaker Martin Meinert's quip at the vertical tasting of the first decade of FMC (Forrester-Meinert Chenin), the wine. After tasting all the way back to 2000, "Full Monty Chenin" would be my take - and much more polite than the "F****** Marvellous Chenin" of UK wine pundit Matthew Jukes - for these wonderfully opulent drops leave little to the imagination. It all hangs out, like the crown jewels in Peter Cattaneo's 1997 comedy classic.

Translation is an overlooked essential in wine appreciation, as discussion of the maiden vintage FMC confirmed. "Tastes like Vouvray" opined glamorous Jeanri-Tine van Zyl from WINE magazine. This would mean nothing to most consumers, but then this was an assembly of anoraks and even if they didn't know what she meant, heads nodded sagely like those velvet puppy dogs popular in Chevy Impala back windscreens.

Winespeak is widespread, as the anti-South African Sauvignon Blanc comments last month in a national newspaper from the importer of top New Zealand offering, Cloudy Bay, confirmed: "I prefer my capsicum in my salad." While this would ring a bell in the land of the long white cloud, Americans would say "bell pepper". "Sweet pepper" would fit the bill in the UK, "red pepper" in SA, "peperone" in Italy, "paprika" in Germany and Hungary, while I'd have settled for "green pepper".

With everyone and their dog trying to flog wine to China, auction house Christie's recently appointed Simon Tam as their man in Hong Kong. His first chore is to give the flick to inappropriate winespeak used to describe those destined for Chinese cellars. As he told Decanter magazine, "many Western descriptors - such as blackberry and blackcurrant, or concepts such as 'forest floor' - are so uncommon in China as to be meaningless."

So "honey and toast" is out, to be replaced by sugar-cane juice; while "jin mao tea, also known as golden hair, a rare tea with scents of undergrowth, mushroom, truffle, wax, honey, vanilla and tobacco notes" is a godsend for chatting about Claret in Chinese. Likewise earthy notes, often a euphemism for slight cork taint, will be replaced by Chinese herbal soup.

But this is no find-and-replace exercise; Tam wants to substitute the atomist philosophy of wine deconstruction with a more synthetic approach. Buddha rather than Derrida. "The idea will not be to highlight individual components, single flavours, in a wine but to take a more holistic approach, to talk about the integration of flavour. We are going to use the whole of the vast Chinese culinary repertoire," he says.

Local brand Two Oceans realises the importance of culturally appropriate tasting notes and is soliciting descriptions for their five wines, starting with Two Oceans Pinot Noir 2010. Send your tasting note to wine@sundaytimes.co.za; a case awaits the best entry received. Each week for five weeks, a different Two Oceans wine will be selected and the best tasting note overall wins R10000. Serious loot in any language.

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