Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Pronunciation of "Pinotage"

I have been saying it wrong for a very long time. I assumed, wrongfully it seems, that the beginning of the word "Pinotage" was pronounced similar to "Pinot" such as in "Pinot Noir" or "Grigio." So, it had come out as "Peeno." It seemed to make sense to me. Yet I now learn that pronunciation is incorrect.

Peter May of The Pinotage Club has set me straight. In a recent post, Pinotage Pronunciation - how do you say Pinotage?, he has stated the correct way to say "Pinotage" and it is not like "Pinot." The "i" is soft so the word begins like "pin" rather than than "peen."

Thanks very much to Peter for this information. It is always a good day when you learn something new!

2 comments:

Robert said...

Hi Richard,

Thanks for pointing this out. I noticed that GV pronounced it "Peen"-o-tage on his show the other day too so we were in good company pronouncing it incorrectly. :)

This reminds me of James Laube's post a while back regarding the correct pronunciation of "Meritage":

http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Blogs/Blog_Detail/0,4211,1525,00.html

The more I learn about wine, the more I realize I only know about 5% of what there is to know!

Cheers!
-Bob

Peter F May said...

GV reviewed Kanonkop Pinotage last year and I emailed him about the correct pronunciation. He replied to thank me but I guess he's forgotten.

He mispronounces quite a lot of wine names so Pinotage is in good company :)