Campania’s Wine on the Net

Book excerpt: This book explores the multi-sensorial world of wine-tasting language, with a specific focus on communicative dynamics between winemakers and ordinary consumers in the context of online commerce. Promotional tasting notes of labelled wines from Campania—a Southern Italian region famous worldwide for its unique wine tradition—in their Italian and English version, are analysed to pursue the twofold aim of identifying the most common knowledge domains from which wine professionals draw new words from, and assessing the degree of terminological harmonisation between these descriptions and national/international terminological standards. Translation strategies put into use to promote Italian wines to the wider English-speaking audience are also discussed. The book provides a snapshot of wine language and is addressed to linguists and other academics, as well as members of the wine community and ordinary wine drinkers.