Rubbia al Colle
I'm often amazed at how poor the English translations provided by wineries can be. This is understandable if it is a small winery run by one or two people but completely crazy when it is a big fancy winery where money appears to be not a concern.
My favourite mis-translation is 'defecate' when they really meant let the juice settle following pressing. This rather bizarre error appears to come from a mis-translation of 'decantation' and it is one that I have come across more than once.
Of course it is easy to poke fun at mistakes but ridicule undermines a company's image and makes them look unprofessional. It is a completely false economy not to pay for a good translation.
On Saturday afternoon the FIJEV group visted Rubbia al Colle, which is one of the four wine states that makes up the Archipelago Muratori.
The explanatory sheets handed out for the tasting come from their website. I was very taken by the notion of sane and, presumably, insane vines and assume that any insane would benefit from a careful cure. To be fair cure may just be a typo that hasn't been picked up. Overall the English on the site is quite clunky and doesn't seem to have been done by a native English speaker.
Money spent on mongrammed corporate logos but presumably not on translation
'Their presence is essential for the sanity of the vines and for the production of grapes that are the purest possibile expression of the land. Such careful cure of the quality of the grapes allows yeasts and lactic bacteria to be controlled without the use of chemical products in complete respect of the wine's naturalness.'
My thanks to Justin Roberts for this site for duff translations from Spanish to English.
