Something that really annoys me is the misplacement of apostrophes. You’ve all seen the corner store with the “breakfast roll’s, sweet’s, drink’s, newspaper’s” sign. Without sounding like a total spanner I’ve been redesigning some winelists recently, and I’ve got to say the standard of English on a lot of them is atrocious, making me feel a lot more comfortable with said “sweet’s” .
Example: “A classic blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre gives this full-bodied rich red with ripe cassis flavoured fruits, well structured and a long smooth finish.” It doesn’t make any sense. It smacks of a lazy sales rep who couldn’t care less and has no interest in providing a clearly designed, well written wine list that anyone bar he/she can decipher. A winelist should hope to provide you with (1) the name of the wine, (2) the price, and (3) a brief but well formulated tasting note that’ll give you a rough idea of what you’re going to order. Just writing “Gavi – €23.99″ is the equivalent of just writing “petrol – €17,999″ on a car listing.
Aside from containing a sentence that is readable, it would also help if it told you something about the wine: “The Merlot grape is widely planted in northern Italy. Soft, attractive fruit and good balance.” Who cares how much Merlot is planted in northern Italy? You’re just out for the night and having a quick bite to eat. It just looks like padding because whoever has sold that wine to this restaurant doesn’t even know what the wine tastes like, and can’t tell you anything more about the fruit than it’s attractive. Well, I’ve yet to come across a fruit that wasn’t attractively flavoured, so at least I know now that it’s going to taste like one of them.
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