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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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