English – The Wine Language

It’s a fact of life: Competition is ever more intense, and a producer gains an advantage if he can use English to communicate and market his wine.

My friends, you can relax. The wine world speaks English now. Even in Europe, more and more producers communicate in English. They might prefer to speak French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, but their English is fluent, and the message gets across.

Once upon a time, to communicate to even a major producer in the Loire, Burgundy or Tuscany, the local language was essential. So what happened? The generation that saw the changeover to modern (i.e. careful and hygienic) winemaking techniques is, increasingly, in charge today. These men and women have often studied abroad, know their way around the world and understand not only wine production, but wine marketing as well.

One of the most famous wine courses in the world is based in Adelaide, Australia. It’s a wine marketing course. It teaches not only wine production and how to run a winery, but also how to sell the wine once it is produced (note that Australians have been phenomenally successful in promoting their wines around the world). It has become the model for other courses—there is one in Toulouse, France, another in Bordeaux. Some of these marketing classes are in English.

As a consequence of courses such as these, one of the important things that the new generation understands is that it no longer works to make fabulous wines and then sit back and wait for the world to come knocking. Producers have to get out, get on a plane, go and relate to their importer, even—shock, horror—talk to consumers. (Seem unfair? That is still a latent attitude you find among a few of the really snobby Bordeaux chateau owners.) To do that, you need English.

It’s not only the producers themselves who speak English. So do their brochures, their Web sites and their back labels. The vast majority of wineries in Europe, and not just the biggest, now have Web sites, just as their wines have back labels: it’s all part of the marketing.

So what does this mean for the wine drinker? It means that wine is more accessible. It’s possible, and easy, to learn more about a wine, and about a winery. It’s possible to talk to a producer, it’s possible to arrange a visit to a European winery and expect to find someone who speaks English there to welcome you.

This is all good. Maybe some of the ancient impenetrable mystique has disappeared as a consequence, but frankly I don’t miss that, and neither will you. The logic, after all, is obvious: If a producer makes wine, he or she needs to sell that wine in a world where competition is ever more intense. And if the producer can sell in English, his world just got so much bigger.

I don’t think the widespread use of English is itself a danger to the individuality of the wines being crafted by Old World winemakers. The fact that the producer of Bodega X in Rioja or Château Y in Bordeaux speaks English doesn’t change the wine. (It may, in fact, be one signal that the producer is making decent, clean wine.) The land, the grapes and the tradition won’t have changed. Admittedly, there was a time when some Old World wines tasted as if they were pretending to be New World in origin. That trend is waning. Increasingly, producers are traveling and studying other regions; the best return to their wineries more determined than ever to keep and develop their own identities. What this slow, steady adoption of English means is that we can find out about their wines more easily.

Is pride of craft giving way to the urgency of sale? Maybe with some brands, but I have not noticed this with wines that have a proper sense of place. It’s important to remember that it’s always been necessary to sell wine.

The use of English is good for European wine in general. It puts it on an equal level with American or Australian wine as far as consumers are concerned. There is no language barrier to interfere with understanding and experiencing the wine fully. This new generation that can talk to us in the language of our currency is keen to explain, and to persuade us to drink European wine.

While growers in the south of France continue to burn wineries, destroy tanks of wine and generally protest the facts of wine life in the 21st century, there are producers in the same villages who can sell their wine because they can market. This is nothing new. They are doing what their cousins in Champagne have been doing successfully for decades. What is new is how marketing has become essential at all price levels and wine regions.

This is a reflection of how wine has changed. It is no longer a purely agricultural product. It now has what the economists call “added value” through its image. And if that image is portrayed in English, then the next step-the sale-is much more likely to happen.

David Hng

New Math Program Designed To Help English Language Learners

SPRINGDALE — An estimated 1,800 secondary students or more, all English language learners, in Rogers and Springdale will get additional help in math because of a new partnership between the two school districts and the Walton Family Foundation.

The Bentonville foundation has given the two school districts $100,000 to purchase new classroom computers for an online curriculum designed to remove the language barrier in mathematics. The new curriculum also shows promise as a tutorial for English-speaking students who are behind in math, school officials said.

The two school districts purchased the software, “Help with English Language Proficiency-Math,” from Digital Directions International, a Colorado-based company.

“Math involves a lot of words,” said Tricia Todd, director of migrant and English language learning programs in the Rogers School District. For example, the word “table” in math has a different meaning than the piece of furniture.

“You don’t talk in mathematics the way you talk in daily life,” she added. She estimates about 600 students in eighth through 12th grades would participate in the program.

Also, Todd noted, Arkansas Benchmark exams in math require problem-solving skills, not just the computation to arrive at an answer.

“Problem-solving means students must be able to read,” Todd said.

The program will be implemented in 14 schools, eight in Springdale and six in Rogers, according to Barbara Freeman, chief operating officer for Digital Directions. The program is aligned to national standards and some state standards in mathematics and was developed with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Freeman said the program has been tested by the University of Colorado in New York, Texas, Colorado, California and Oregon. In the first phase of testing, a group of sixth- and seventh-graders increased their knowledge of math by 70 percent based on the pre- and post-tests that were conducted.

Judy Hobson, director of English language learning programs in the Springdale School District, said the new curriculum will be used as a supplemental tutorial in which students can work independently. She estimates about 1,200 students or more will use the program.

The district hopes to start seeing positive results from students showing an improvement in their math skills by the middle of the next school year, Hobson said. The additional classroom computers purchased by the grant will provide greater classroom access to the program.

“We’re hoping to get kids in the mainstream classroom more quickly,” she noted.

David Hng