Sherry Wine-making and Vineyard Terminology in English. A Case Study

Abstract

This paper presents the study of the sherry wine-making terminology (Spain) through a case study: the book Gatherings from Spain, of great impact in the 19th century. Our main purpose is to identify the linguistic mechanisms used to transfer from Spanish into English those elements so closely related to the anthropological traditional wine-making method in the Jerez area. Results show how the characteristics of the initial elements determine the type of mechanism used, depending on whether they refer to general scientific terms or to those related to the cultural customs of different geographic locations. These latter make up a local specific wine terminology, whose vocabulary, in many cases, has been incorporated into the target language.