vins moëlleux ou liquoreux

C

cedeg

Senior Member
France
English-U.S.
Hello and Happy Boxing Day to everyone!

Unfortunately, I'm not on holiday, but working on a translation!
I need a bit of help concerning these two terms in French "moëlleux" and "liquoreux" concerning the sweet white wines of the Bordeaux region.
The original sentense is: "Ici, au total, onze appellations de la région de Bordeaux produisent des vins moelleux ou liquoreux."
I've read through all of the other threads and think that I should leave the French terms in parenthesis, but am not quite sure if I should group them together in the English under sweet white wines or try to distinguish between sweet wines and dessert wines (I don't really like this term, but know that it is widely accepted in the English speaking wine world.) I also think that I should specify that these wines are botritized wines to distinguish them for late-harvest or fortified sweet wines.

So the translation options I have come up with are:

1) "In total, eleven appellations of the Bordeaux region produce "noble rot" sweet (moëlleux) and dessert (liquoreux) white wines."
or
2) "In total, eleven appellations of the Bordeaux region produce "noble rot" sweet white wines (moëlleux and liquoreux)."

Does anyone have a preference or any other suggestions?
 
    • But that is only when it is used as an adjective in wine tasting, etc. This use of moëlleux is a denomination for the type of wine.
    I guess I could just describe it more, giving something like
    "In total, eleven appellations of the Bordeaux region produce sweet white wines, designated as either “moëlleux”, which are only slightly sweet, or “liquoreux”, which are very sweet wines."

    Does anyone have an opinion?
     
    cedeg said:
    But that is only when it is used as an adjective in wine tasting, etc. This use of moëlleux is a denomination for the type of wine.
    I guess I could just describe it more, giving something like
    "In total, eleven appellations of the Bordeaux region produce sweet white wines, designated as either “moëlleux”, which are only slightly sweet, or “liquoreux”, which are very sweet wines."

    Does anyone have an opinion?
    Click to expand...

    That sounds nice to me--you are leaving the unique French terms in, which appeals to wine connoisseurs, while explaining clearly and keeping your sentence from getting too clunky. To me it's better without the brackets.
     
    I've seen "moelleux" as "sweet" but I don't think I've ever seen it in English with an umlaut ("moëlleux")
     
    The Umlauts don't exist in English... and they can't be used with capital letters in French either, like MOELLEUX
     
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