No gender difference on
wine
Andrea Immer, corporate director for beverage programs at Starwood
Hotels & Resorts, who is one of nine women in the world
with the title of Master Sommelier, agreed that the red wine
trend continues to get a boost from the French paradox. Immer,
the beverage director at New York's Windows on the World and
the Rainbow Room before joining Starwood last year, said she
did not think there was a difference in wine preference between
men and women. "I don't really think it's a gender thing,"
she said.
Bill Boywid, manager of Buster's, a large liquor store in
Memphis, Tennessee, said he did not see a difference in preferences
between men and women. "Women are the majority of our
shoppers and they buy it all." Merlot is very popular.
Gary Fisch, co-owner of Shoppers of Madison and Shoppers of
Livingston, New Jersey gourmet food and wine stores, said
the majority of wine buyers in his store on weekdays are women
and they are also definitely buying red wines. He said he
thought much of the change had to do with the emphasis on
pairing food with wine. "In the last couple of years,
women have become much more discerning and they now buy wine
as part of the meal, not as a cocktail." For example,
in the summer women buy wines to go with outdoor cookouts
at their homes. "They are drinking big Cabernets,"
Fisch said. "When they ask what to serve with salmon,
when I suggest Pinot Noir, they jump at it." He said
the big difference between male and female buying habits is
that men care about how the experts rate wines. "But
women come in looking for a good glass of wine."
So the bottom line, as you can see, is that women regard
taste as the deterring factor in their wine purchase, not
what an ad or the men in their life tell them and that includes
the male "experts."
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