One walks a thin line when trying to pronounce the names of wines correctly. We want to sound like we know what we’re talking about being too pretentious — if you’ve been out with someone who adopts a guttural accent to order Chardonnay, the thought of accurate wine pronunciation might fill you with dread. But it doesn’t have to (and you don’t need to speak with a throat trill, either).Wine Pronunciation 101---------------Many wine names are French, and other Romance languages like Italian and Spanish follow similar pronunciation rules. Unlike English (where words have been adopted from different languages so rules about pronunciation don’t hold true across the board) French has fairly hard and fast rules when it comes to what sounds their words make.In French, a consonant at the end of a word without a vowel after it will usually be silent, but put an e on there and the consonant should be pronounced crisply –– the difference between petit (pronounced almost like petty) and petite (peh-TEET, maybe even peh-TEET-uh if you had a French accent).Try your hand at the pronunciations below so you’re ready for your next wine order — or, to be the one who pipes up with how that “weird German wine” is pronounced at your next dinner party.We’ve avoided the arcane phonetic symbols used in dictionaries, and syllables have been parsed out phonetically — capitalized syllables represent the stressed syllable.We've put together a handy pronunciation guide at, http://www.minnesotauncorked.com/wine-pronunciation/
