A new study of Manhattan wine shops has found that women and diverse consumers visiting the stores routinely got inferior service compared to white males.

"The results confirmed our perception that in New York City, at least, where wine and liquor is not sold in supermarkets, wine is a white-male preserve," said Marlene Rossman, president of the Manhattan market research firm Rossman, Graham Associates, which released the study's findings Monday.

The study was conducted by sending a mystery shopper and an observer to 11 wine retailers, including some of the city's best-known wine merchants and mom-and-pop stores, in different areas of Manhattan. Rossman declined to identify the stores.

The shoppers included a black woman, an Asian-American woman, a white woman and a white male.

Rossman, a professional wine educator and sommelier as well as a marketing consultant, said she undertook the study because of what she perceived as poor service provided to women in Manhattan wine shops. "I've done a lot of wine shopping," she said. "I get mediocre service." Among the results: The black woman was followed around, shouted at and insulted; the Asian-American woman was either ignored, not taken seriously or offered low-priced wines; the white woman was treated indifferently and was interrupted by sales clerks attempting to answer questions from men. Meanwhile, sales representatives tripped over themselves trying to serve the white male, according to the survey results.

Rossman, who is also the New York chapter president of Women for WineSense, an educational group, said she had expected the better-known shops to treat women better, but that wasn't necessarily the case. She cited the experience of a black female shopper at a prominent downtown wine shop who ended up in a shouting match with a sales clerk after she protested the clerk's attempt to sell her a heavy red wine to serve with a light fish dish.

Rossman said the study findings were fairly consistent from shop to shop.

"I'm not surprised. I believe it does exist," Roberta Morrell, an owner of Morrell &Co. in Rockefeller Center, said of the discrepancies, adding that sales staffers often become wine snobs who prefer talking to men, whom she said generally are more wine knowledgeable than women. "I don't think it's acceptable," she said of the practice.

"All I can guess is that women and men are very different retail consumers," said Morrell, noting that women consumers generally are more hurried and shop for a wine to serve at dinner, while men shop for wine to cellar.

At Union Square Wines & Spirits, general manager Katherine Moore said that as a black woman "I've been made to feel very unwelcome in some other shops." She said it was unlikely women would receive less service than men in her shop, because it employs three women and four men. "We also have a group of very educated female customers," she added.

Rossman's study was conducted between August and November, 1999. Shoppers visited stores Mondays through Thursdays between 6-8 p.m.

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