Women of Wine: The Rise of Women in the Global Wine Industry

Women of Wine: The Rise of Women in the Global Wine Industry is a must have book for every female wine oenophile!

Written in 2006 by Ann B. Matasar, this book is packed full of history and an eye opening perspective on how women have not only impacted wine making but the consumption of wine too. Is it any wonder that in the U.S. women make 77% of the wine purchases and consume 64% of it.

Wet your whistle with chapter 1: Women Need Not Apply

Persistent superstition compounded the problem. In some French wineries to this day, women are not allowed near fermenting wine because of the belief that if they are menstruating the wine might turn to vinegar or referment monthly. One French woman winemaker vividly remembers this biased treatment: “When I started, there wasn’t a field more sexist than vine-growing and enology! At that time, it was said that a woman shouldn’t get into a wine cellar, because if she did, her ‘petticoat’ would make the wine turn sour.”

Ironically, there is at least one physical distinction that should have worked to the benefit of women: the sense of taste, including the sense of smell. In two olfactory sensitivity studies, one conducted at the Clinical Smell and Taste Research Center of the University of Pennsylvania and the other at the Social Issues Research Centre of the University of Cardiff in Wales, women consistently outperformed men in odor identification and sensitivity on the Smell Identification Test, regardless of age, ethnicity, or cultural background.27 Additional research on taste perceptions conducted by Dr. Linda Bartoshuk, professor of neuroscience in the ear, nose, and throat section of the Yale School of Medicine’s Surgery Department, established three categories of tasters: nontasters (a projected 25 percent of the population), medium tasters (50 percent), and supertasters (25 percent). The group of supertasters, who had the most taste buds and the greatest sensitivity to taste differences, was made up predominantly of women.