Women in Wine
Major changes are happening in the world of wine, as consumer preferences shift and overall drinking habits evolve. Many of these are being driven by demographic change, with one in particular playing a key role: the increasing involvement of women in wine. More women than ever before are occupying vital positions of authority related to wine, from winemakers and sommeliers to beverage directors, and this professional acclaim has forever changed what is produced around the world and what is commonly sold to consumers.
This is something both as women and wine lovers that we wholeheartedly support here at EWL. However, as excited as we are to see these changes arise, we also have to admit how far we still have to go. Recent industry surveys have found that only 32% of sommeliers are women, and for winemakers, the number is even less–roughly 18%. Clearly, this is a far cry from gender parity. To the average person with little exposure to the wine industry, these numbers probably seem horrendously antiquated, especially in light of other fields where parity is closer to being achieved. To better understand the significance of the gains made so far and to see why it’s taken so long to reach this point, we first have to break down just how stark the gender divide in wine has been historically.
As with seemingly everything in wine, it begins with the Greeks and the Romans. For our ancestors in antiquity, even the drinking of wine was an extremely gendered affair; just the possibility of women being intoxicated set off misogynistic, paternalistic alarm bells due to concerns over female adultery and safety. Legal codes of the era sought to alleviate these concerns by forbidding women entry into men’s-only drinking clubs (except as entertainment or waitstaff, naturally), and any wine served to women in other venues was diluted even more than that served to men.
This trend of separate spaces for male enjoyment of wine and alcohol more generally was a trend that continued for centuries. And you don’t have to go back to Victorian England to find a recent example; female exclusion from wine has been alive and well through the 80s and 90s, with many prestigious tasting panels and events denying women entry through those decades only 30 years removed from our own. Capitalism’s pressures eventually brought these barriers tumbling down, but when it comes to exposure to fine wines, women have only recently been afforded access to what was an exclusively male space for all of recorded history.
We mention access to wine for a simple yet vital reason: to cultivate expertise in anything, you have to be able to get your hands on it. And with women kept from fine wine for so long, they were simultaneously prevented from gaining the experience necessary to become winemakers, sommeliers, and other wine professionals. In the interim, bogus myths flourished–women lacked the skill necessary to taste all the nuances of wine, or the strength needed to do the heavy lifting involved in cellar work. There was even a belief that women couldn’t make wine because menstrual cycles would somehow taint fermentation.
Despite women having been present on family vineyards throughout history, these pernicious myths kept them from participating in the cellar and the actual production of wine. Those who wanted to get involved began taking a more circuitous approach starting in the late 60s and early 70s, going to college for degrees in chemistry, oenology, and viticulture. Unfortunately, education only got women so far; those who pursued employment at wineries found themselves relegated to positions in laboratories doing quality control, or removed from wine entirely in administrative roles. Still, this era created trailblazers, one of whom fundamentally changed the way we speak about wine even to this day: Dr. Anne Noble. By developing the Wine Aroma Wheel, Dr. Noble and her collaborators caused a paradigm shift in the wine lexicon, transitioning from descriptions of a wine’s purported “masculinity” or “femininity” (you can guess which trait was more highly valued at the time) to more objective characterizations grounded in concrete terms like nutty, fruity, and floral.
Their achievement highlights an important fact of wine production: women have better sensory capabilities than men, meaning they are better equipped to both evaluate and produce fine wines. Numerous studies have verified these enhanced capabilities, and the increasing numbers of women winemakers and sommeliers is a further testament to this truth that will continue to have repercussions in the wine industry. Men have held a monopoly over cellars and wine lists due to physical strength, but the future of wine will be held by women and their nuanced perceptions.
As a case in point, consider the rarefied world of wine collectors. On paper, this is the sector of the wine industry furthest from achieving parity–recent estimates place the number of women wine collectors at only 1%. These same studies have far more interesting conclusions, however, delving into the rationales behind wine collecting and how collector preferences are indicative of changing consumer attitudes. While men still represent the vast majority of wine collectors, they tend to approach collecting as investment, treating their wine racks as stock portfolios primarily composed of large-cap securities; they buy from the same regions and producers, rarely varying their acquisitions. Women collectors, on the other hand, are building up incredibly diverse cellars filled with different styles of wine from every corner of the globe. To continue the stock analogy, we would consider this a particularly wise, diversified investment strategy, as consumers at large are starting to explore wine produced in less famous lands and climate change threatens historically lucrative growing regions. Furthermore, the number of women collectors are growing, as female sommeliers and winemakers take the natural leap into collection and building wealth through wine that men were able to make generations ago.
Where does all of this leave us? Women in wine are here to stay, and their numbers will only continue to grow. The current global dominance of Sauvignon Blanc is a testament to this market power, reflecting women’s tastes and preferences and their ability to reshape the industry. More women will invariably enter the ranks of wine professionals, and in the meantime, consumers can lend their support in a variety of ways. Whether you want to donate to women in wine initiatives like the LIFT Collective, patronize wine bars run by women beverage directors, or buy wine directly from female winemakers like Day Wines, if you want to accelerate gender parity in the wine world, these days you have more options than ever before. All you have to do is raise a glass.
