Mind your language! Parmi les vignes (Among the vines)

Harvest at Scorpo Vineyard, Merricks, Mornington Peninsula

Vininspo! is all about embracing the connective tissue around wine, the better to wrap your loving arms around all the beauty of this subject.

Language is central to this. "Wine is a travel experience" is one of the key tenets of Vininspo!, encouraging us all to explore it with that same spirit of wonder and respect that we bring to getting to know other people and places.

A lifelong love of language and travel fuels this. I have always enjoyed the thrill of discovering new places or slipping into a familiar, but alternative, world. Language is the key to unlocking the personality, values and customs of other people - what makes them tick, and also how each bit fits into their wider universe.

Mind Your Language is a new Vininspo! series in which we look at words and phrases taken from European languages and universally adopted in the English-speaking wine world.

This gives a guide to pronunciation, precise meaning and application. With a look at the roots of words (etymology), a flirtation with the formation of words (morphology) and a bit of linguistic tongue-in-cheekiness, this also gives a chance to keep expanding our web of understanding as we navigate the incredibly rich global winescape.

Not only that, it will also go some way to increasing comprehension for English speakers discussing wine with people with another mother tongue. This short episode looks at various French terms that arise in and around the vines.

The footage was mostly shot around the harvests of 2022 and 2023 in Victoria, Australia, and features the likes of Yeringberg, Kerri Greens, Quealy, Scorpo and Onannon.