How language of wine is changing as young Chinese drinkers choose bottles without jargon
‘Quince’ is out; ‘pineapple Haribo’ and ‘bat wings’ are in. New wine descriptors reflect young Chinese drinkers’ changing tastes
“Fresh tiles after rain”, “fur on the back of bats’ wings” and “burning incense” are just a few of the terms seasoned wine educator Terry Xu Wei might use to describe a tipple – even glasses poured from his collection of fine and rare wines.
Better known by his alias Xiao Pi, and with close to 300,000 followers on Chinese social media, Xu wears denim shorts, sips from stemless glasses and breaks the fourth wall when talking about wine in videos often embellished with vibrant graphics and colourful effects.
Xu aims to bring the centuries-old drink, still often thought of as belonging only in fine-dining restaurants, to young drinkers.
“Young consumers are savvy [about] scholarly wine materials as they grow up, so when they can finally use their own money, time and energy to learn about or buy a bottle, they don’t want to go about it in the old, boring ways,” he says.
“Terms like ‘gooseberries’ and ‘blackcurrant’ make no sense in China. Young drinkers know what ‘acidity’ and ‘minerality’ mean, but rather than asking consumers to conform to our language, why not speak about wine in ways they can picture vividly and get curious about?” he says.
For decades, the industry used wine descriptors set by the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), a non-profit organisation founded in the United Kingdom in 1969 to offer qualifications and courses for people in the wine trade.
