My first language is Spanish, since I was born in Chile. I didn’t speak a word of English until I was five, when we immigrated to Canada. (*I was silent for most part of that year, adjusting to all the changes in my short life, so let’s say six). I began to learn French in grade four, Italian in grade nine, and Portuguese in university. I didn’t learn Wine until I was 31.
Is wine a language? I’d say so. Having spent most of my life learning languages, to be able to get to the place where you feel comfortable, competent and confident speaking a language takes a long, long time. The learning journey alone can often be intimidating, just like wine.
“Wine is probably one of the most difficult languages – quotation marks – to learn,” says Nika Shevela, founder of Wine Alphabet, a communication and consultancy based in Barcelona, Spain. “There’s so much lingo and so much specific knowledge.”
Talk to a non-wine person about legs or petillant and chances are they’re lost or can only vaguely understand what you’re referring to. Wine terms, such as tannins, can get even more confusing when we quantify and qualify them, for example, medium plus plush tannins. Huh? Then toss in different styles, geographic denominations and lesser known grape varieties and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Nika founded Wine Alphabet with the purpose of “bringing wine lovers into contact with great wine one letter at a time.” Before entering the world of wine, Nika worked as a translator and language teacher. Perhaps it’s this transition from linguistics to wine that has allowed her to approach wine in a down-to-earth way, and as a result reach younger audiences, and international ones too. Perhaps it’s also because she came into wine from another profession that she sees many changes that need to happen to make wine more inclusive, particularly for women, which is why in 2017 Nika set up Wine Witches, an informal women in wine association that meets up in Barcelona. Additionally, she is also a speaker at various women in wine conferences, most recently the Women in Wine Expo held in Georgia this year.
I met Nika last year at her Wine Witches events (both excellent experiences, by the way). She is someone I admire greatly because, like many of my previous interviewees, took that leap of faith into wine and has built an impressive CV as a linguist, a wine educator, events organizer, communicator and content creator.
So, for my very delayed BPDBTIW (Badass People Doing Badass Things in Wine (and Other Beverages), I talked to Nika about her transition into wine, why she founded Wine Witches and what she sees happening in wine communication and social media.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
BB: …first of all, what attracted you to get further into wine as opposed to continuing with just translation of different projects. So, [Familia] Torres approached you. You translated their brochure and there was an interest to go further into wine. What was it that made it attractive to you?
NS: Yes, so first of all, it’s not actually a brochure. It’s a proper magazine.
BB: Sorry, magazine.
NS: That’s editorial content and there’s a lot of storytelling, so it’s a magazine that they publish annually. The reason I’m saying it is to help myself answer your question in the sense that when I did that, I saw how I saw wine. First and foremost for me it was actually about stories, not just stories in a more traditional sense of storytelling and the people behind it – obviously, the Torres magazine itself is about the Torres family. Familia Torres is a lot about people in their stories, but also stories of places.
I saw that there was not just geography, but actually a lot of geopolitics in wine. And that was fascinating to me because in parallel to my translation career, I had been working with a project called United Explanations, and that was a website on international affairs. And basically what it did was a little bit similar to wine. Also, there are many other projects out there trying to demystify a lot of very complex subjects, obviously, around international affairs. I was helping them with translations and I was writing for them a little bit. So I kind of started seeing some of that in wine: how the history of many wine regions can be expressed through wine. I mean, it was unbelievable and by studying things like how phylloxera, for example, was fought all over the world, basically you could also see which countries had more resources to do that, who had a political advantage, etc. That was quite fascinating.
It was really interesting to see how I consume a product in the end, but it is also – I know it’s such a cliche – bottled history, geography and definitely geopolitics and social history as well. So I got really attracted by it in the beginning and I guess the big reason I didn’t continue with translation and interpreting is that again you very often end up doing other things on the side. And I have always been teaching in some capacity. Mostly it was languages, so I’ve been teaching Spanish, English, Russian, all at very different levels. And I love teaching. Then I found this very passionate, this very fascinating world where I could apply all my linguistic skills and I could see that I could also at some point teach.
BB: One of the things that you do is you founded the group Wine Witches. What was the motive behind that?
NS: The more I started making the first steps in wine here, I started working in some wine shops. One of the shops I was working in was focused on Catalan wines. So I joined the Catalan Sommelier Association. What I quickly saw was, as a linguist, the predominant language of communication, of official communication at least, in the wine community in Barcelona was Catalan, which I have done translation and speak Catalan so no problem. But I started thinking about everyone who did not speak Catalan. For example, if they didn’t speak Spanish because they’ve recently moved here, but they work in wine and they want to have access to wine. So that was kind of on one side: how can I help the people in this community, to have information and to meet other members of the community.
But also, of course, being a woman, a very privileged woman – I do always like to stress that I do come from privilege as a white cis woman – but I’m still an immigrant that is perceived sometimes as an immigrant, sometimes as an expat, sometimes as a guiri. So that made me think too.
When I started about seven years ago, six in Barcelona, it seemed extremely male dominated to me. I was coming from translation where there were a lot of women translators and interpreters. So that was a bit of a shock I think. And so that pushed me to create a very grassroots, very kind of safe space, very social space, very informal group that is one which is literally what it means, not the name. The claim says it’s a networking group for women and wine. And that was the reason that the communication was done in English. It was to include not to exclude anyone; to include people who maybe did not have enough command of Spanish and Catalan. And then, of course, anyone who is or self-identifies themselves as Spanish or Catalan but does want to communicate and talk in English would be welcome.
BB: Is it [Wine Witches] promotion? Is it just networking? Is it offering different services – well, not different services, but support on different issues?
NS: So it’s still very much informal. I like to call it collective in a way or an informal association of women and wine who feel like they need that space, a monthly space to come to. And of course it’s a lot about networking, but in a very, very non pushy way. There are no, you know, cards, ice breaking games, things like that. I like it to happen quite naturally. It is a networking space in a sense that I know of some great alliances, professional alliances that have been born there; women naturally meet there and start working together on a project.
Also the feedback I hear is that it’s very much a safe space where we can discuss a lot of issues around representation, shared experiences, what everyone is doing about this or that. But also to talk about not just the wine industry or inclusivity and sensitivity issues, but generally anything that a woman does not feel like they can share in other spaces. Whether it’s talking about maternity or child care, etc. It doesn’t have to be that specific. But basically, I really want it to be a safe space. And so I don’t work with brands. It’s not sponsored by anyone or any entity or anything like that.
BB: What are your pet peeves when it comes to, for example, feeling like a minority in the world of wine? That could either be because of your culture, background or because of your gender or anything like that.
NS: I feel like I’ve kind of made my peace with being perceived as an outsider. What really annoys me is that in the wine industry we still have to talk about issues that in some other areas have been addressed in certain ways and so they have been able to move on to other things.
I guess one of my personal pet peeves is not seeing LGBTQ community generally or not represented at a mainstream level in the wine industry. I never see certain groups of people or certain realities of certain representations happening in the wine world. And I’m realizing that it really, really bothers me. And although I’m definitely part of the problem in a way – communicating in such a certain way, perpetuating certain things – I realize that I really want to rethink my personal and professional values and and get my personal values more aligned with professional values and be more vocal about it. Practice more radical honesty.
BB: One of the services that Wine Alphabet offers is consultancy and communication services, what do you see happening in wine in terms of communication?
NS: Let’s maybe broaden the focus a little bit and maybe look a little bit more globally. When we look at what we call the “New World”, they’re light years ahead in terms of communication in wine. So I’m thinking of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand to a big extent. If we look at those places – of course there are many, many more, but I’m focusing on English-speaking just for the purposes of simplicity, and this is also what I’m looking at more. I feel like there’s definitely a change that has been happening for quite some time. I’ve definitely seen quite a lot of diverse voices, diverse on many, many levels. Especially if you look at the UK, US and Canada, I think it’s getting much more representative of the society itself because at the end of the day, diversity is not, at least for me, not something that needs to happen from some kind institution. It’s not something to do to be on trend. It honestly, genuinely, purely has to represent the society. The wine industry can’t just keep existing in a vacuum. So if I look at a digital panorama globally, I think things are definitely happening. Is it enough? No, it’s never enough. But I think this is the main point. And this is why there are so many wonderful communicators, educators, even influencers, professionals trying to communicate things from a slightly different perspective.
BB: A question then: wine influencers. What is your opinion about wine influencers?
NS: I think a lot of us have had a certain stereotype about what a wine influencer could look like, what their gender is, etc.. But I have a feeling that the very definition has opened up so much. And so someone, I’m going to say Jaime Goode, I think is perceived as a wine influencer on digital platforms, and that maybe a few years ago would be quite surprising, as maybe they wouldn’t necessarily fit into that image.
I feel like a wine influencer right now is a very broad concept. I know many people don’t see it that way, but honestly, I feel like there are so many different roles. I’ve been very lucky to host a couple of them on Instagram during the pandemic. I was also with one, and I could just see very directly how hard work it is. And then I continued following them, and I just saw how hard they work in absolutely everything from wine training to curating the content. And I have a lot of respect for some of them.
So for me it would be hard to just throw them all in the same category. I feel like, as with everything, there are very different levels and I think they’re still necessary. But I do want to say that I feel like in the same way that the definition of wine influencer is shifting and getting broader. I love the fact that also now it’s just not about numbers. And now we can talk about micro-influencers and nano influencers and that brands actually look sometimes for someone who is very niche. Despite the smaller following, they are super specific in what they promote. So I honestly think it’s going well. I know everyone says different things, but my outlook is not as pessimistic. And I definitely think there’s a future on different levels. And I just hope that the category and the definition will keep opening up and getting broader and definitely more diverse as well.
BB: One of the big issues, though, with wine influencers is a lot of particularly young women using their body or using themselves in a much more provocative way, let’s say, to influence and to gain followers. Any thoughts on that?
NS: Yes. On one hand, I certainly think an influencer has a social responsibility. They have to be aware of the social impact that that is going to have. And that should apply to wine. And it doesn’t to the same extent, I think. But on the other hand, as a content creator, for me it’s what I said before, it’s like different levels of influence that are kind of very 90s supermodel styles of influence. It’s going to become less and less relevant anymore. I feel like in the grand scheme of things, with all the amount of content being created, I see less and less of it happening in the future. I know right now it seems impossible because we’re surrounded by it, and what’s worse is that there are lots of institutions that embrace that as well. But I’d like to think that as with everything, quality will prevail.
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You can follow Nika on Instagram @winealphabet or visit the webpage https://winealphabet.com/
Bottled Bliss 