dossier

Feminine taste and masculine taste

[vc_row full_screen_section_height=”no”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Does this distinction really exist or is the only real difference between an “educated” palate and one that is not?

The question arises spontaneously when coming across wine competitions with only female judges, such as the Spanish Vino Y Mujer competition, the Argentinean La Mujer Elige – organized over twenty years ago by the will of the late Raul Castellani – or the French Feminalise which will soon be held in Beaune.

 

What are the motivations for creating competitions with only female judges?
Raul Castellani, one of the figures who shaped Argentine oenology, told me during the annual gathering at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition that with La Mujer Elige he wanted to formalize the commitment that women carried out and carry out in oenology but that twenty years ago was still passed over in silence.
Martin Didier, organizer of Feminalise, started instead from the impact that women have on the consumer market: they are the ones who buy wine, in charge of household shopping. Women are responsible for 83% of wine purchases in the US, 80% in the UK, 70% in France, 60% in Switzerland, 57% in Australia (Feminalise data based on Vinexpo, Survey/IWSR/beverage dynamics, Vinsetsociété, MyVitibox, Ipsos and US WineMarketCouncil data).

 

The French association - whose competition last year saw 4 wines tasted by 600 tasters from all over the world - also conducted a survey on the wines drunk by women. Contrary to the opinion that would have women consume only white wines with a high sugar content, it emerged that in Europe and America they drink mostly red wine (57%), followed by white wine (30%) and rosé (13%) while women in Asia prefer red wine in 70% of cases, also thanks to a solid tradition of French and Bordeaux imports. (in primis).

 

Also striking are the investigations into the reasons why men and women choose a wine: if men appear to pay more attention to the brand and the price, women choose the wine based on the grape variety, the region of origin and the pairing with food.

And if women's predisposition to identify the organoleptic range of a wine seems more developed than men's - probably for cultural reasons of education (and not physical ones of gender), linked to familiarity with aromas - women are also making progress in the specific knowledge of wine.

 

In the case of olfactory memory, research is still ongoing: two professors at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, Christie Default and Robert Bath, who have taught thousands of students, confirm that women are able to assimilate the characteristics of various wines more quickly. In terms of taste, research conducted at Yale has shown that only a small number of people have a particularly high number of taste buds and if for men the percentage is 15%, for women it is around 35% of the sample. Further data from the same study suggest that men tend to categorize wine using the left hemisphere, while women use the right, the seat of creativity.

 

As for the knowledge gap, it is decreasing thanks to an ever-increasing presence of women along the entire wine chain: from production to sales and service. The data says that 30% of Italian wine companies are run by women and the number of female sommeliers is ever-increasing (in Rome the AIS records a constant 50% female presence at courses) to which are added associations such as Donne del Vino and Donne della Vite, which bring together wine professionals.

 

Some reading suggestions on the topic:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/31/427735692/are-women-better-tasters-than-men
http://socialvignerons.com/2016/12/08/women-and-wine-lets-shrug-off-dusty-cliches/
http://www.nature.com/articles/nn803.epdf

 

A special mention to Marilisa Allegrini, the first Italian woman to grace the cover of Wine Spectator, the most widely distributed and influential wine magazine in the world.
The April 2017 issue features her in the cover story with the title:
“Italy's Allegrini – A family saga leads to great wines”.
For the interview with Marilisa Allegrini .

[/ Vc_column_text] [/ vc_column] [/ vc_row]