Invisible cities
The limits of our words
Hello! Happy Friday, wherever you are in the world. Last March, we started Drinking Notes as a creative response to our full-time jobs in the wine industry, rooted in our love of music. It was a way to have fun with all the information we were absorbing on a daily basis, to reignite a love of our subject, particularly as Nathaniel was studying for his Diploma – an escapism of sorts.
Fast forward a year, and we have literally escaped, swapping London life for adventures around the world. As we travel from place to place, what we’re drinking will inevitably vary – from wine, spirits and sake through to coffee and tea – and our newsletter will broaden to encompass this. Alongside music, we’ll also dive into art, books and food – among other sources of inspiration.
In short, this is going to become a much more fluid newsletter, tumbling freely between different subjects, but retaining its focus on exploring drinking experiences through a creative and artistic lens. For instance, this week’s newsletter – exploring that old chestnut of wine communication – takes an Italian magical realist novel from 1972 as its point of departure.
There are cities lit with coloured lanterns. Cities whose streets are flanked with bronze gods. Cities that exist in double, extending into the sky, descending into the earth. Some cities are threaded with fine spiderwebs. Others are continuous and can never be left, no matter how far you keep walking. They appear as different places to different people. But all of them – as Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan – might actually be Venice.
I’ve been thinking about Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities since leaving London behind for a period of indefinite travel. Despite the fact that it is set in the 13th century, and was published in 1972, it seems to say something timeless about travel and home, as well as the power and failure of language. At first, the Venetian traveller tells the emperor stories of his cities through a kind of sign language. “Totally ignorant of the Levantine languages, Marco Polo could only express himself through gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and horror, animal barkings, or with objects he took from his knapsacks – ostrich plumes, pea-shooters, quartzes…”
In the absence of a shared language, Kublai Khan is left to interpret these signs for himself, imagining his own versions of the traveller’s cities. In fact, he seems to welcome this space for interpretation – the unsaid. But as Marco Polo gradually masters the language of the Khan, every detail between the two men is made clear, every question answered. Yet their communication becomes less happy than it was before. Despite the utility of words, words come to fail the storyteller, and he finds himself falling back on gestures.
How many times have words failed me? I can’t count the times I said something I didn’t quite mean to say – something that came out flat, that wasn’t meant to be quite like that – in the language I speak fluently. Give me a piece of paper and I will always say it better. Yet in a language that isn’t my own, every little word feels like a triumph. There is a permissibility when you are speaking a new language. You are easily forgiven. There is often kindness, an effort to meet the speaker halfway, and there is honesty in the gestures. Perhaps we are all more legible when we speak with our body language.
As a writer and languages graduate, I love the slow challenge of learning a new language – the feeling of cracking a code. Reaching the point where it clicks and the words just start to flow. But our words so often fail us. Sometimes there are too many ways to say things, when all you really want to say is thank you or this is delicious or I love you or this place reminds me of home (which is all Marco Polo is really trying to say to Kublai Khan anyway). They are all clichés, of course. But perhaps anything really worth saying is a cliché, and the challenge of writing is to present it as a novel thought. A different version of something we already know, that has already been expressed in all the world’s languages before.
This is delicious. How many ways are there to describe a good wine? How many ways can you say it differently, avoid repeating the same tired clichés, when ultimately it just tastes like wine? Do you really need to say it differently at all? Recently, I said goodbye to my writing job at Berry Bros. & Rudd, where I spent 4.5 very interesting years. In that time, I learned so much about ways of writing and speaking about wine, as well as spirits, from some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry. About trusting my tasting sensations, viewing them as a starting point for other kinds of thinking exercises. As I learned more, I was continuously surprised by the fact that, after a certain level, there are not really any right or wrong answers. Like any language, you learn the rules only to realise how many exceptions there are. You pass through the gates of WSET – that great tower, that citadel whose citizens all speak the same language – only to realise it’s surrounded by all sorts of invisible cities. Cities that come alive through words.
Like Marco Polo, there was a point in my journey when I similarly became aware of the failure of words. I remember when a characterful colleague of mine attempted to describe what an almost 60-year-old Port would taste like. His hand moved through the air, as if trying to catch the words he was looking for. “It’s sort of ethereal,” he started, then he shook his head. “No, that’s not really what I mean.” He went on to describe the sensation of things having melted away, using mostly his hands, then failed to find any further words. “You just have to try it,” he concluded. Unlike my esteemed colleague, I do not have easy access to legendary Port vintages, yet still, with that faint glimmer of information (and the language of gesture), I could imagine it. It may not have been the same wine he was describing, but the sensation of it came alive for a moment.
What could a gesture tell us about a wine? A tight fist might signify flavours that are still coiled within themselves. The gentle spread of fingers might show the moment when a wine starts to unfurl. Naturally, we do it all the time when we’re talking – as we fumble for the right words, our tongues tied but our bodies already telling the story. The hunch of shoulders might suggest something brooding – a dark swirl of flavours that need to be unpicked. Fingers pulling a thread through the air might suggest something linear and precise. These are, of course, my own subjective interpretations. The WSET has translated its SAT terms into American Sign Language with Peter Cook, a Deaf storyteller and poet. Dry – a sharp sweep across the chin. Acidity – a tingling around the jaw. Tannin – a rubbing motion across the teeth. Peter tells the WSET, “One does not need to be an expert when communicating with Deaf consumers: there are many ways to convey messages that you already have tools for. You can use non-verbal communication to express your thoughts. Think about facial expressions, eye gaze, body language and gestures!”
It seems we already have a rich capacity for non-verbal language written into our fingertips, our muscles, our bones. None of this is to diminish the power of words, but rather to ask how words might intersect with these senses – taste, smell, muscle memory, visual cues – to paint a richer picture. How these might be used like a cartographer’s tools to draw a map of flavour. Or a map of invisible cities. Suspend your disbelief and you could be anywhere in the world. There’s a path lit with paper lanterns. Lights shimmering on the canals. The moon shining through the mist.
Here is an open palm – a city, a glass of wine. Tell me what you see.
The sign language of wine: a secretive code in the muted and hazy light of an unwinding night.
So glad you're relaxing and enjoying your adventure. Gestures definitely can compensate for words- my favourites are a smile, a hug and a gentle hand on an arm. Keep exploring!