Andrew Jefford

Language is a problem.’ So said black wine writer Julia Coney during a 54-minute Instagram video post recorded on 3 June, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests which followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. She said, of course, much else: her despair at the lack of diversity in the wine world, and her anger at its patronising attitudes to black workers, was palpable. Wine, ethnically speaking, remains exclusive, not inclusive. A quick glance around the room at the average wine tasting, wine education class and wine auction will show that the audience rarely resembles the wider population. If there is such a thing as ‘the wine conscience’, it probably needs examining.

Language is indeed a part of this problem. I’m not thinking of the tired gender stereotyping in wine analogies which have raised groans for years now, nor of the culturally embedded use of analogies which, haplessly, privileges the sensual experiences of affluent whites in the developed world – though both merit our attention as language-users. I’m not even thinking of the kind of flaunting of educational privilege which the sheer ostentation of wine language implies. I’m thinking of one term alone, deeply significant in the wine world: master.

This issue also flared in June, when the Court of Master Sommeliers declared it no longer requires candidates to use the honorific ‘Master’ when speaking to existing Master Sommeliers in certain settings. Tahiirah Habibi, a black wine professional, had quit her studies with the Court back in 2011 when she was required to address exam invigilators as ‘Master’. It’s not hard to imagine her discomfort: few words resonate quite like this one to those whose forebears were enslaved. Habibi went on in 2017 to found The Hue Society, dedicated to bringing about change in ‘the narrative of Black and Brown wine consumers and brands’.

‘Master’ is derived from the Latin magister, whose own origins in turn lie in the word magis, meaning ‘more’ or ‘great’. It has the fatal flaw of many useful words: ambiguity. Three groups of meanings cluster around it, and it is also problematically engendered. We might, perhaps, defuse the gender issue by referring to men and women alike as ‘masters’ rather than to women as ‘mistresses’ (a gendered noun with its own fatal ambiguities). We can’t, though, escape the problem that in addition to signifying those who teach and those who have great skill, ‘master’ also refers to those who control others. Ambiguities can’t simply be scraped out of words.

I’ve always disliked the term ‘master’ in relation to wine scholarship, and hope that both the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Institute of Masters of Wine will find a way in future to reformulate the prodigious acquisition of skill and knowledge which both imply.

No one, you see, ever ‘masters’ wine. Every taster knows this: even the most skilled are quickly floored in attempting to identify a range of wines about which nothing is known in advance. For all of our talk about terroir, it remains a mystery. We chatter endlessly about varieties, and know next to nothing about rootstocks: the part of the vine that actually makes contact with soil minerals. The chemistry of wine is still rich with surprises – one reason why the world’s finest wines continue to evade duplication. There can be no complete agreement in wine assessment.

‘Mastery’, too, evokes distasteful images. To master is to pin and to pinion, to circumscribe, to set boundaries to, to confine. Only that which escapes is unmastered – but in wine, everything escapes, everything changes, everything surprises. Thirty years of writing about wine have taught me that most certainties in this field will be confounded sooner or later. The challenge is to find a term for those (of every skin hue and every cultural origin) who have studied wine deeply – but make no pretence to omniscience or control.

DAndrew Jefford is a Decanter contributing editor and multiple award-winning author

‘No one ever masters wine – for all our talk of terroir, it remains a mystery’

2015,

Schlossberg,

Scents of crushed limes… but I forgot to look for fruits on the palate, so overwhelming was the oily, stony texture, the salty tang, the width and breadth in the mouth, the overall poise and panache. This was Riesling – secondarily. First and foremost it was a the from the Blanck cousins. Certainly the best bottle drunk in our house over the last month, and (as so often) an Alsace wine whose grandeur makes you wonder why folk fuss so over Burgundy at twice the price.