Revamping traditional wine language is hardly a new idea, says Alice Achayo, but the concept has taken on new urgency.
“There’s a well-documented economic crisis in the wine industry,” she told me, “driven in part by younger consumers drinking less—or simply drinking differently. It’s forcing us to rethink how we engage, how we adapt, and how we make wine relevant again. This isn’t just a youth problem—it’s an industry problem. We need to reconnect wine to its roots—to the people who grow the grapes and who make the wine. That’s something I learned in Italy: when you center the hands and hearts behind the bottle, you remind people that wine is alive, and that it still has something to say.”
As in most wine regions outside of Europe, the language of wine is imported. Many of the traditional descriptors used in educational programs and tasting notes—violets, gooseberry, cassis—are rooted in Eurocentric experience. For much of the world, these words are unfamiliar. A Eurocentric vocabulary doesn’t just narrow imagination—it limits participation. And it’s not good business. Why disregard vast demographics of potential wine drinkers, especially as traditional oenophiles begin to age out?
Reimagining wine language, Achayo stresses, isn’t about replacing words—it’s about expanding them. “The goal isn’t to erase what’s come before,” she said. “It’s to add to it—to make space for new ways of tasting, describing, and understanding.” For her, wine should be a two-way conversation, not a lecture. “The experience should flow both directions—producers, educators, and consumers learning from one another.”
By encouraging more inclusive, culturally resonant terminology, we allow people from all backgrounds to connect with wine through their own associations and sensory memories. After all, this is what wine is meant to do: we sit at a table, we uncork a bottle, we share stories, and we create new ones. Wine brings people together.
That belief sits at the heart of Alice Achayo’s work.
An Outsider’s Perspective
I first met Alice in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where a chance conversation about expanding wine’s lexicon led her to tell me about her work as the founder of The Wine Linguist. That brief encounter led to the opportunity to sit down with her a month later for an interview.
Born in South Sudan, raised in Uganda, and now based in the United States, Achayo’s relationship to agriculture runs generations deep. “I entered wine from an outsider’s perspective,” she said. “And that’s where I’ve stayed, in a way—reminding people that wine is first an agricultural product, not a prestige symbol.”
In 2009, she pursued a dual major in Eco-Gastronomy at the University of New Hampshire, which led her to a semester of study at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, Italy—the birthplace of the Slow Food movement. There, she learned that food—and by extension, wine—wasn’t about performance. It was about people. “In Italy, wine wasn’t an abstraction,” she recalled. “It was lived and brought people together.” People spoke about producers the way they spoke about neighbors. It wasn’t about correctness—it was about connection.”
During our conversation, Alice reflected on how this journey deepened her understanding that food and wine are intertwined stories of place and culture. The wine world often says, “what grows together, goes together,” but she asks, what about cuisines from regions where wine grapes aren’t prevalent? Many of these culinary traditions lie outside Europe, and Alice’s work invites guests to explore and savor wines that illuminate and elevate their distinctive flavors.
That idea became her compass: to expand the language of wine and make it accessible through the lens of global gastronomy. “I want people to know that when they drink wine, they don’t have to give up their food,” she said. “They can enjoy it with the flavors they grew up with—their own cuisines, their own memories.”
Reclaiming the Vocabulary — and Inviting Everyone to the Table
Achayo believes there is no wrong way to describe wine. For her, every word someone uses is an entry point to understanding, not a mistake to be corrected. That belief lies at the core of The Wine Linguist, where she creates wine and dinner experiences that center the stories behind featured cuisines and their paired wines.
Through these dinners, she helps guests explore how to highlight the flavors of global cuisines through thoughtful pairings—whether it’s finding a bright, mineral-driven white to accompany Shiro Wat, an Ethiopian dish, or a supple Pinot Noir that complements an adobo. In every instance, the goal is the same: to make wine feel relevant, familiar, and joyful.
By showcasing global cuisines alongside thoughtful wine pairings, Achayo hopes to give her guests confidence—to see their foods, flavors, and traditions represented in the wine world. It’s also a way to teach global food lovers what wines complement different cuisines, expanding their palates while honoring their heritage.
Her workshops also invite both professionals and casual drinkers to reimagine how they talk about wine—not to abandon education. Teaching people to talk about wine differently, Achayo says, is also teaching them to listen differently. “When I first entered the industry, I was told my tasting notes were wrong,” she recalls. “That moment became my manifesto: you can’t be wrong in how you talk about wine.”
Her company’s philosophy encourages curiosity, and it guides every interaction. “We should always remain students,” she says. Her tastings are not about dictating a right answer but about helping people pay attention—to the sensory memories a wine evokes, the textures they enjoy, and the moments a sip brings to mind.
Achayo still believes deeply in wine education. She teaches people how to expand their palates intentionally—to notice what they like and why. Structure—tannins, acidity, alcohol, body—still matters, but she argues that even structure deserves a more varied language. “Why,” she asks, “should we typically describe body as skim to whole milk?” Maybe it’s better understood as coconut water, almond milk, or broth—different textures, different worlds.
The Language of Belonging
Her goal isn’t to strip away the traditional lexicon but to make it elastic—to make room for new voices and new references. Through her work with wineries, restaurants, and educators, Achayo helps the industry cultivate inclusive, sensory vocabularies that resonate globally—because the way we describe wine should reflect the diversity of the people drinking it.
“Instead of blaming younger consumers for not drinking wine,” she says, “we should ask ourselves—why does it feel uninviting? What are we doing to make it more joyful, more connected to their lives?”
Her approach reminds the industry that cultural literacy is just as important as viticultural literacy. Understanding who your drinkers are—what they eat, what they value, how they describe pleasure—is the new terroir.
For Achayo, the future of wine is participation, not prescription—to teach people to explore rather than conform. That’s the paradox she’s working to undo: an industry built on heritage learning to listen. Because the truest language of wine, as she reminds us, isn’t spoken.
It’s shared—and it belongs to everyone.