People take their emojis very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that emojis have basically become their own language. I mean, friends and family are able to have entire conversations using nothing but emojis. But it’s not always smooth sailing. Remember the great bagel emoji controversy? In 2018, an iOS update that included a plain, cream cheese-less bagel received a lot of negative feedback from Apple users. Complaints caused Apple to re-evaluate the design and bring back the bagel emoji looking more full, doughy, and most importantly, slathered with cream cheese. But the transformation of this sad food emoji wasn’t the only major change over the years — we’ve also been seeing emojis diversify with a range of skin and hair colors, and different family combinations.
That being said, while our roster of emojis has expanded with every update, there’s one emoji that people are still fighting for: white wine.
There’s a handful of alcoholic beverage emojis, from champagne to beer. And it’s not like wine was left out — there’s a red wine emoji, but that simply wasn’t enough.
The current wine glass emoji does not specify the type of wine. Vendors have shown a preference for red 🍷 https://t.co/ZEnLGMtEhF pic.twitter.com/LEeoQ7Xcu5
— Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) April 20, 2017
In 2018, white wine lovers banded together to campaign for the new emoji. Leading the pack was California-based winery Kendall-Jackson.
In an effort to give the people what they asked for, the winery drafted up a 15-page petition and sent it to Unicode (the masterminds behind our beloved emojis).
In the petition, Kendall-Jackson provided charts and visuals about white wine, including how it believed Chardonnay was the most popular varietal in the world, Food & Wine reported.
The winery mentioned how white wine was the center of one of pop star Lady Gaga’s songs, “Grigio Girls.”
Kendall-Jackson even launched a website completely dedicated to the campaign for the new emoji.
According to the website, “What’s missing isn’t the world’s passion for white wine. It’s simply the world’s symbol for white wine.”
But that was last year, and we still don’t have a white wine emoji.
The winery has now taken matters into its own hands and has scheduled a meeting with Unicode this summer, from July 23rd to the 26th, at Microsoft in the Seattle area.
Even though the campaign has created quite the buzz on social media, the fight for the new emoji has been far from easy, Kendall-Jackson’s director of marketing, Maggie Curry, told Food & Wine.
“Part of the emoji submission process usually involves roughly a year wait once you submit your proposal and make revisions,” Curry said.
After the proposal is submitted, those who want the new emoji are to attend a quarterly meeting held by Unicode to present their case.
Kendall-Jackon isn’t messing around — the winery is on its third revision of its white wine emoji proposal.
According to Curry, the most recent revisions are to abide by Unicode updating what needs to be included in an emoji proposal.
“The Kendall-Jackson team is working on their presentation now, excited to represent the white wine community across the globe, as we look to add this missing piece of communication to the modern communication zeitgeist,” Curry said.
It looks like we’ll have to wait until this summer to find out the future of the white wine emoji. Shoutout to Kendall-Jackson for fighting the good fight.
