In "digging" about to best explain the term wheaten and what that means in our breed, I found out the following;

Wheaten is a common term among terrier breeds and it is mentioned in the standards for Borders, Irish, Lakeland, Norwich/Norfolk, Scottish and Soft-Coated Wheaten Terriers. Which makes me wonder if there was a "terrier person" in the committee when the original standard was changed
to say "wheaten preferred, fawn permissible".

Wheaten is also used among Irish Wolfhound folk although the term is not mentioned in their standard. ( Sorta like we use to say " liver" when our standard only said "brown nose".) When I looked this up , the IW standard also said that any  colors acceptable in the Scottish Deerhound
were acceptable in the IW.

Since Hawley mentions Deerhounds, rather than Greyhounds, in his book, I looked up SDs too. Although most of these dogs are a blue- grey color, the oldest strains were yellow and sandy red or red fawn with black muzzles and ears....hmmm. Perhaps this could be where we get black on
the face and ears in a wheaten dog.

As we move further from being an agrarian society, we don't have a reference for terms such as "wheaten" so we must look for other ways to convey its meaning. I picked this way:

Wheaten is not so much a color as it is a "pattern of color". The general color of a Ridgeback has a wonderful range of colors from light to dark in the brown family - from yellowish to coppery to reddish brown. The areas of the sides of the neck, behind the shoulder and "breeches" are much lighter than the general body colors and the dorsal (topline) and legs (below the stifle and elbows) tend to be darker.

The hair shaft itself is "banded", ie it is lighter at the root and darker at the tip. Of course, on longer haired breeds, such as most terriers, this is easier to see and gives a "mottled " appearance. As
the RR is shorter haired, it is not as evident. The more "wheaten" the dog, the more the "banding" shows on the individual hair shaft. The effect of the lighter color at the roots gives the illusion of a
yellowish base. In terms of coat colors, this "banded hair" is called "agouti".

Dogs should not be judged on their degree of "wheaten-ism"... this is just an explanation of the term and it's variations.