Chauvinism and Wine Tasting — Sex Role Misunderstandings
Contributed by Daniel Rogov, wine writer
There are two popular wine-related beliefs making the rounds these days, both of which deserve to be put to rest because they are nothing more than pure and unadulterated nonsense. The first of these would have us believe that men are better qualified to taste wine than women and the second that some wines are more appropriate for men and others for women.
At least since the 1950's, it has been well demonstrated that the ability to taste wines (or for that matter any other food or beverage) is determined entirely by the number of taste buds on the tongues and the density of scent receptors in the nostrils. Thirty years passed with no major research into the question of taste but starting in the mid 1990's, largely because major food producers were interested in determining to whom to direct their advertising campaigns, interest in the subject revived in Europe and North America several major research studies were undertaken. At Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Grenoble biologists came up with two sets of findings. The first, that had been more or less known by people in the food and wine industry for a hundred or more years, was that people fall into three broad categories—non-tasters, normal tasters and super-tasters, that is to say, people with limited ability, normal ability and extra-ordinary ability to discern the flavors and aromas in foods and beverages.
What amazed the researchers (who were mostly males) and the wine-tasting public (especially the male chauvinists among that group) was the second finding—that nearly 80 percent of super-tasters are women and not men.
Simply stated, women have a genetic proclivity towards having a greater number of taste buds and a greater concentration of scent receptors and that makes them better qualified than the majority of men to taste wines. It is thus far more than mere coincidence that women rank very high indeed among the most highly respected people who write about and taste wines for a living. As to wines that are "appropriate" for women, all I can do is chuckle quietly. It is true that some wines are described as "masculine" and others as "feminine" but even a quick glance at that terminology shows that the descriptors used are taken from misguided beliefs and stereotypes about what men and women are supposed to be like. Wines that are said to be masculine, for example, are described in terms of being aggressive, deep, flinty, strong, forward, coarse and even vulgar, and those said to be feminine are soft, subtle, sensual, caressing, warm and even "sexy". Denying that all but the last of those terms can indeed be applied to wines might be politically correct, but it would also be rather silly, for those terms are, indeed, descriptive. On the other hand, stating that men tend to favor wines described as masculine and women those that are feminine is an obvious error. Many recent market analyses in France and the United States have shown that women and men have precisely the same partiality to deep, young and aggressive Cabernet Sauvignon wines than they do to soft, subtle and caressing white wines made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes. ___________________________________________________
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