Wine export english vocabulairy

Hello, I'm looking for some advices please. I will start soon to export wine to different countries - in English. :confused: I need to have better vocabulairy as for bids of tender, customs forms, describing wine at wine salons and some negociation. Does somebody know an english of wine course that I can have - distance lessons, because I travel a lot?
Thanks you! :)
 
Hi Mark - thank you - I think I have one, Capricorne langage...I think it is new, I cannot find reviews. I will wait to know if another person knows this or a different training. Thanks you again!
 
OK, I see! Never heard of this operation - must be quite small, I think.

I would say, though, that you may find a good general English course at least as useful. Knowing the right wine vocabulary is of course only a very small part of communicating about wine :)
 
A course on business English will cover a lot of what you need. There is a lot of language in common whatever you are exporting.

I am less sure about learning to describe wine. You could get a lot of the vocabulary from reading I suppose.
 
Of course you are right. I had a gneral english course some months before, but i couldn't find to tell to on trade clients what is the wine, the aromas, the mouth feel for it to be with different types of food etc. i have the brochure for this one now - we will see. I will break a leg! :D
 
The British Council run courses on Business English for French speakers: Business English | British Council France

I see the British Council also have some vocabulary/grammar apps for phones/i-pads - I've no idea how useful they'd be: Apps for business | British Council France

I'm surprised you have found even one wine-specific course!

There is a very useful book, The Winemaker's Essential Phrasebook, which is like a tourist phrasebook, but is very specific to wine, especially the technical terminology of winemaking: it covers English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. But a quick look at Amazon suggests it's out of print, and second hand copies available through Amazon are expensive. It might be worth it to you, though. It won't teach you how write and speak in English, but it will give you the vocabulary that is otherwise very hard to find in mainstream dictionaries.

Otherwise, with regard to describing what wines are like, I think the best advice would be to keep reading tasting notes here and on the rest of wine-pages, on Jancis Robinson's site etc. Even cellartracker would be useful. You might not find all your wines there, but there'll certainly be similar ones and, you'll be able to see the sort of words and phrases that people are using to describe those wines and compare them to how you'd describe the wines in English.

I wouldn't worry if you use the wrong word sometimes - just look at this discussion here about what "sappy" means in tasting notes, to see that describing wine is entirely subjective, and a word can mean one thing to one person, and something completely different to another!

Good luck!
 
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There is a very useful book, The Winemaker's Essential Phrasebook, which is like a tourist phrasebook, but is very specific to wine, especially the technical terminology of winemaking: it covers English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. But a quick look at Amazon suggests it's out of print, and second hand copies available through Amazon are expensive. It might be worth it to you, though. It won't teach you how write and speak in English, but it will give you the vocabulary that is otherwise very hard to find in mainstream dictionaries.
Actually, it's a really useless book.

It doesn't breakdown to individual words, such as hose, pump and stop. So you would have to look up the phrase "Stop the pump. The hose is leaking". I only exaggerate slightly.
 
I see what you mean, Nayan, and of course I've never needed to use it in anger in a real-life winemaking situation.

But I think it is useful to have the technical terms translated into the technical terms in other languages.

Traditional dictionaries are very poor when it comes to technical vocab/phrases, particularly where a sector/industry appropriates common language and gives it a specific subject-specific meaning.

No, sorry, I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. ;)
 
Something to watch for is "false friends".

I maintain and update a blogpost on Spanish - English false friend errors made by Spanish wineries. Perhaps there is something similar on French - English false friends.

Given the grammatical similarity between Spanish and French my blog post might be useful.

Google for "Mawaxation" and you'll find it.
 
Well! Thank you for all your help, you are kind. I did not yet look at those things you talked about, I was busy - I finished last week the course, wow - 2 months and 3 courses, one generale, one comercial and one for wine service. service is for sommeliers and waiters, i did not need it, but it was interesting....Commercial was good for me. the material is very good - videos, pronounciation for important words and the teacher is working in the wine distribution, he knows what he says. Thank you again I hope you all will have success in your wine business!
 
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