Mastering wine in Asia gets easier
Mastering wine in Asia gets easier
Oct 10, 2011 6
(Yonhap) - With wine consumption falling in Europe, producers are looking toward Asia as the driver of growth for the wine industry and consumers in the region have been receptive. But while there is plenty of enthusiasm for wine in Asia, consumers and sommelier students continue to struggle to understand wine labels, esoteric terminology and a descriptive language bias favoring European cuisine.
"Learning the names of the wines, wineries and people is hard. Most are not even in English but in French or Italian," Kim Woo-jin, a 19-year-old sommelier aspirant, says. He relies on books to build his knowledge of wine, some in English, some in Korean, but transliteration of wine terminology and names also presents its own difficulties. "Korean people pronounce names in a different way," he says.
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