Calls to create a white wine emoji: ‘This beverage should be properly illustrated in modern communication’
Kendall-Jackson, a family-owned Sonoma County winery in California, has submitted a proposal for the creation of a white wine emoji to the Unicode Consortium, the non-profit corporation devoted to creating a universal coding standard.
'What's missing isn't the passion, just the symbol'
But why do we need a white wine emoji? Firstly, it’s responding to consumer demand, says Maggie Curry, marketing director at Kendall-Jackson.
“The idea actually started with our Kendall-Jackson fans,” she told BeverageDaily. “For the past several years we have seen many requests through our social media channels asking for the white wine emoji, and we decided to do something about it.”
But it’s also about ensuring the traditional beverage is represented in modern communication tools, and it has submitted its emoji application ‘on behalf of all white wine lovers, fellow wine producers, and viticulturists from around the world’.
“We want to bring the white wine emoji into development on behalf of all white wine lovers and producers around the world,” Curry said.
“This all-important beverage should be properly illustrated in modern communication. What’s missing isn’t the world’s passion for white wine, it’s simply the symbol for white wine.”
There is currently only one emoji available for wine, and this is a red wine glass.
“Currently there is only one representation in Emoji for wine, and it’s a wine glass shaded red,” said Curry. “This does not properly represent the 78% of regular wine drinkers who enjoy white wine. Beer and Champagne each have two emojis, rosé is not yet represented.”
The winery predicts that the usage of a white wine glass emoji would be ‘extremely high’.
As it points out in its application: “According to Google Trends for ‘white wine’, there is a growing interest in all white wine varietals worldwide. Further, “white wine” as a general term used to represent all white varietals, outranks any wine search, including category leaders (e.g., Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Pinot Gris).
“Currently, Instagram allows users to hashtag emojis which enables them to appear in search results. The red ‘wine glass’ emoji has incredibly high usage, second only to beer. These trends infer a white wine glass emoji would yield comparable or higher results, especially considering white wine is consumed at a higher frequency than red wine.”
Creating an emoji: 'The process is quite complex'
Kendall-Jackson has submitted its proposal for a white wine emoji to the Unicode Consortium, and now awaits their decision in the spring. In the meantime it is calling on white wine lovers and wineries to support their campaign with the hashtag #WhiteWineEmoji and ‘wanted’ posters that are available at whitewineemoji.net.
"The process for creating a new emoji is quite complex,” explained Curry.
“The proposal is just the first step. After we submitted our proposal to Unicode, we were informed that it was selected to be forwarded to the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC).
“The UTC will ultimately vote on whether to bring the White Wine Emoji into development.
“Currently the white wine emoji proposal is waiting for a vote sometime in the spring of 2019. If the UTC approves the creation of the White Wine Emoji, they send the update to “vendors” (e.g. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft), who then update their products for users.
“A White Wine Emoji would then be included in every phone and social media platform around the world."
