An Italian wine consortium whose aim is to promote and protect Italian rosé wine, specifically Chiaretto di Bardolino, has launched a campaign to urge social media companies to create a pink wine emoji.
The Consorzio di Tutela Chiaretto e Bardolino champions Chiaretto di Bardolino, a category of dry rosé from Verona’s Lake Garda, and is keen for its producers’ wine to be correctly represented on social media.
At present red wine and white sparkling wines are represented in emoji form across all the major social media platforms, but rosé – and indeed still white wine – misses out.
The Consortium has submitted to Unicode Consortium – the Californian organisation which supervises the rules of computer writing – a request to create a pink wine emoji. This week it has also launched a petition on Charge.org in support of the emoji – you can add your support here.
The proposed new emoji show two glasses of pink wine in the act of toasting, crowned by a small pink heart.
‘If we write about wine to our friends on WhatsApp, on Instagram, on Facebook we can use the image of a glass of red wine, two flutes or a bottle of sparkling wine, but the representation of pink wine is missing,’ argues the Chiaretto Consortium.
‘This goes back to the fact that rosé has been looked down upon for decades. This continues nowadays despite the fact that pink wine is a worldwide trending phenomenon.’
Communicational gap
The Consortium believes it is time to end this ‘communicational gap’ and to allow wine lovers of the world to fully express their love for pink wine. ‘Sharing on social media the pleasure of drinking a glass of pink wine is difficult due to the absence of a rosé wine icon on smartphones and PCs,’ it says. ‘Why not give them a proper representation?’
This isn’t the first time that the wine trade has campaigned for a new emoji. In 2018 Sonoma county Chardonnay producer Kendall-Jackson petitioned Unicode for a white wine emoji but despite a 15-page proposal document and a prolonged campaign they were knocked back.
New York wine auctioneer Charles Antin was not impressed by the emoji snub, reported the New York Post. ‘I’m outraged,’ he said. ‘The lack of a white wine or rosé emoji is our Mueller Report in the wine business. It’s the thing everyone is focused on.’
