葡萄酒行业需要大学生

At this time of year many recent graduates will be wondering what to do with their hard-won degrees. While I cannot point them in the direction of specific vacancies, I can assure them that the world of wine needs many of their skills.

每年都会有大批大学毕业生陷入迷惘：自己费尽千辛万苦学来的知识如何施展？虽然无法为大家指明可以担任什么具体职位，我倒是确信在葡萄酒这片天空下，他们可以尽情发挥才能。

Scientists, you would not believe how many basic questions about wine remain unanswered. Although wine is treasured for its ability to age (better-quality wines are virtually the only consumables that can improve over years or decades) we know remarkably little about what actually happens as wine matures. It would be wonderful to put some graduate minds to work on this in order to work out exactly why some wines age so well and others don’t.

科学家们，你们应该不会相信在葡萄酒领域中还有诸多基础性问题没有得到解答。尽管人们视葡萄酒的陈酿（age）能力为难得的品质（其实只有那些质量更好的葡萄酒才会在经过几年甚至数十年之后品质有所提高），但对于葡萄酒熟化（mature）过程中到底发生了什么却知之甚少。如果有毕业生来对此进行研究，探索出为什么有些酒陈酿得这么好而有些酒却不能，那真是再好不过了。

Another area for research by a combination of geologists and soil scientists is the much-discussed but undetermined relationship between rocks, soils and the grapes and then wines that result from them. Because there seem to be tasteable correlations between certain sorts of wines and the vineyards that produced them, tasters have liberally applied “rocky” terms to wines. Mosel Rieslings, often grown on vineyards littered with shards of slate, are sometimes described as “slaty”. For decades the wines of Pouilly-Fumé have been called “flinty” by English speakers, a reference to the flinty look of the silex soils found in vineyards there.

另一个集合了地质科学和土壤科学领域的研究项目是岩石、土壤和葡萄之间的关系，以及这些因素对葡萄酒的影响，这是一个充满了各种声音的研究领域，答案悬而未决。由于特定类型的葡萄酒和生产这些酒的葡萄园好像总是有着一些可以从口感上感知的关系，品尝者们常在品鉴中写意地使用很“岩石感(rocky)”的词汇。由于葡萄园散落着板岩(slate)的碎片，莫泽尔(Mosel)的雷司令(Riesling)葡萄酒有时候被形容为“板岩般(slaty)”。几十年来，普伊芙美(Pouilly-Fumé)的葡萄酒都被讲英语的人形容做“燧石般(flinty)”，这个词汇来自这个产区硅石(silex)土壤燧石般的外貌。

Similarly, many of the wines grown on the decomposed lava on the slopes of Mount Etna seem to have some discernible warmth and pungency, which it is awfully tempting to label “volcanic”. And in Priorat, Catalonia, there is a flavour common to many of the red wines from vineyards high in the sparkling mix of black slate and quartz known locally as llicorella.

埃特纳山(Mount Etna)也有相似的情况。这里种植葡萄的缓坡含有风化火山岩(lava)，酿造出的葡萄酒让人能感觉到一些热度和辛辣，这种感觉被贴上了一个非常诱人的标签，叫做“火山般(volcanic)”。在加泰罗尼亚(Catalonia)的普里奥拉托(Priorat)产区，有些地势较高的葡萄园含有闪闪发光的黑色板岩和石英岩(quartz)（这种土壤在当地叫做llicorella），来自这里的很多红葡萄酒也都有着一种共同的风味。

We winos were all happily relating rocks and soils to our tasting notes until geologists such as Professor Alex Maltman at Aberystwyth University in Wales pointed out why, scientifically speaking, there could not be a direct relationship between a wine and the geology of a vineyard. Rocks have no flavour and plants have no direct communication with them anyway.

我们这些葡萄酒老饕们曾经都很喜欢把岩石和土壤词汇加入到品鉴记录里，直到威尔士阿伯里斯威斯大学(Aberystwyth University) 的地质学家阿莱克斯•马尔特曼(Alex Maltman)教授从科学的角度阐明了葡萄酒与葡萄园地质之间没有直接关系的原因：岩石并没有风味，而且植物无论如何都不会与它们有直接的交流。

Everyone is agreed that the precise structure of rocks and soil has a huge influence on the all-important availability of water to the vine. But it’s over to the soil scientists to examine exactly how the composition, as opposed to structure, of the soil may influence the taste of a wine. Or not. The most important component of terroir – that is nothing to do with topography, climate or man – may be the particular complex of micro-organisms in the soil and atmosphere.

现在公认的是，岩石和土壤的精确结构对水的可获得性有着非常大的影响，而水的可获得性对于葡萄植株来说是至关重要的。不过现在轮到土壤科学家来研究到底土壤构成（而非土壤结构）会对葡萄酒的口味造成什么样的影响，或者为什么没有影响。风土条件(terroir)的最重要组成部分有可能是那些存在于土壤和空气中，且与地势、气候和人没有任何关系的独特而复杂的微生物种群。

The world of wine awaits more research in this area. Who knows? One day, thanks to our new scientists, we may know enough to use the tasting term “mineral” with some precision.

在这个领域，葡萄酒世界期待着更多研究。谁知道呢？也许有一天，托这些新晋科学家的福，我们有可能有足够的知识而比较精确地在品鉴辞中使用“矿物质(mineral)”这个词汇。

But it’s not just scientists we need. Recent activity in the usually sleepy port wine trade has opened my eyes to the opportunities for historians in the world of wine. For much of the second half of the 20th century wine producers were falling over themselves to demonstrate how modern and technologically proficient they were. But this century has seen a sharp about-turn, with a big return to historic methods (horses in the vineyard, bottling by phases of the moon), and tradition being valued above all else. It is no surprise then that producers have become more interested in the past – their own in particular.

但是我们需要的不仅限于科学家。总是死气沉沉的波特酒(port wine)行业最近的动态让我眼前一亮，看到了历史学家在葡萄酒行业里的曙光。二十世纪后半页的大部分时期中，葡萄酒生产者都在卖力展现自己有多么精于现代化和科技化，但是这个世纪又出现了反转，很多酿酒人重拾了历史上著名的方法（包括在葡萄园中使用马力和参考月相来进行酿造），传统成为了重中之重。可以预料到的是，生产者们已经更关注于过去————尤其是自己独有的过去。

In the past month alone we have seen the launch of two 19th-century ports aged in wood and now available in luxury handcrafted packages from the major port shippers, Symington Family Estates and The Fladgate Partnership. The Symingtons’ Graham Ne Oublie bottling comes from a cask of 1882 tawny bought by the current generation’s great-grandfather to commemorate his arrival in Portugal from a troubled childhood in Scotland. It could hardly have more backstory.

仅在不久前我们就见证了两款十九世纪的橡木桶陈酿波特酒的发布，这两款酒都采用手工制作的奢华包装，目前可以从主要的波特酒商那里买到————辛明顿家族酒业(Symington Family Estates)和费拉加特联合公司(The Fladgate Partnership)。辛明顿的格兰姆祖训(Graham Ne Oublie)是一款来自1882年的茶色波特（tawny port），由现任所有人的曾祖父为了纪念自己在动荡的童年时代从苏格兰来到葡萄牙而购买————这样的背景故事已经足够有吸引力了。

If the Symingtons have been busy writing history, their rivals at The Fladgate Partnership (Taylor, Fonseca and Croft) could be said to have been rewriting history. In the course of some recent research I see that the start date of the Croft port house is no longer the 1678 that features in all previous literature and whose tercentenary celebrations in the Douro I enjoyed when Croft was part of Grand Met (later subsumed into Diageo). According to a recent self-published monograph and the port house’s new logo, Croft now dates from 1588, conveniently making it “the oldest company still active today as a port wine producer”. Clearly there are great opportunities for historical researchers in the wine trade.

如果说辛明顿家族一直忙于撰写历史，那么他们的竞争对手费拉加特联合公司（旗下拥有泰来(Taylor)，芳塞卡(Fonseca)和克罗夫特(Croft)）应该属于一直重写历史的类型。在最近的一些研究中我发现克罗夫特波特酒庄的创立时间可以追溯到1678年，这个时间在之前的所有文献中都是重点提及到的，而且克罗夫特在杜罗产区(the Douro)举办的三百周年纪念活动我也参加过，当时的克罗夫特还是大都会(Grand Metropolitan)的一份子（后来大都会也归于帝亚吉欧(Diageo)）。从最近一份自行出版的专题著作和酒庄的新徽标来看，克罗夫特的历史现在已经可以追溯到1588年了————这样一来，它轻松地成为了“迄今为止仍然非常活跃的最古老的波特酒生产者”。很显然，在葡萄酒行业，历史研究者大有施展拳脚的空间。

But how about all those English graduates? Opportunities here are legion. Most wine nowadays is sold by the written word, whether on a website, as part of a “shelf talker”, in a catalogue or on a back label. Here’s where I’d like to see an invasion of well-educated English graduates.

英文专业的毕业生情况怎样呢？我要说机会也是多如星辰。现在绝大多数葡萄酒的销售都采用书面语，这些书面语或写在网页上和货架插卡上，或写在产品目录上和背标上。这方面我真心希望能够有受过良好教育的英文专业毕业生介入。

I am hugely in favour of back labels. I know some producers think their wines are too smart to need any information other than the bare legal minimum. But consumers nowadays are as thirsty for knowledge as they are for wine. They love being given a bit of background to what they are thinking of buying.

我是背标的忠实拥趸。我知道有些生产商认为自己的产品足够醒目，醒目到除了法律规定的信息外，其他任何信息都不需要体现。但是现在的消费者对于知识的渴求一点也不逊于对葡萄酒本身的渴求，他们很乐意了解一些自己正在考虑掏钱购买的葡萄酒的相关背景。

Supermarkets fall over themselves (under government pressure) to tell us how many units a bottle contains, how long we should keep it and (usually hilariously) what we should eat with it. We therefore have a situation in which the less smart the wine, the more we are told and vice versa. According to the back label, Blossom Hill Moscato will deliver “ripe aromas of freshly crushed grape and tangerine with soft melon and lime fruit and a clean crisp finish” – but about Château Lafite we are told nothing. Bravo to classed-growth claret Domaine de Chevalier, which puts the precise assemblage on back labels. Others who try harder include Torres of Spain and Ridge Vineyards in California, which have long shared every detail of their wines with us. And they are literate to boot. Some graduates clearly work there.

在政府的强迫下，超市卖力地告诉我们每一款葡萄酒含有多少个酒精单位(unit)、能够保存多长时间（当然很多时候这个信息很搞笑）以及应该搭配什么食物。所以我们这些消费者处于这样一个境地：越不醒目的酒越能告诉我们更多信息，反之亦然。比如花山酒庄(Blossom Hill)的麝香(Moscato)用文字给消费者传递的信息是“富有成熟的鲜榨葡萄和橘子味道，蕴含柔软瓜类和酸橙类水果香气，余味纯净脆爽”，但是反观拉菲酒庄(Château Lafite)葡萄酒，什么信息都没有提供。在这里我要为波尔多红葡萄酒(claret)列级庄园(classed-growth)骑士庄(Domaine de Chevalier)喝彩，因为它的背标上有精确的葡萄品种配比。西班牙的桃乐丝(Torres)和加利福尼亚(California)的山脊庄园(Ridge Vineyards)也在非常努力地推进变革，长久以来一直与消费者分享自己所酿葡萄酒的每一个细节。这样一来，精通文字的人员需求量将大增，毫无疑问，一些毕业生可以从事相关的工作。