Why Women Are Better Wine Tasters: Fact and Eve’s Fiction

According to Wikipedia and other Google sources, a “SuperTaster” is defined as, “a person who experiences the sense of taste with far greater intensity than average. Women are more likely to be supertasters as are individuals of Asian, African and South American descent. The cause of this heightened response is currently unknown, although it is thought to be, at least in part, due to an increased number of fungiform papillae.”
It’s educated literature-driven women that form book clubs, not men, and the running joke about these book clubs is that they’ve all morphed into big wine tasting nights. So while we are examining prose, it that the next thing we would do is examining our wines.
“I probably do have more female customers than male, although not necessarily by a landslide. I get a fair bit of males as well,” Tanya Green, owner of Wine 661 began, “Women drink more wine (and frequent wine bars) because they love a glass or two of wine and a chat with their girlfriends. I mean, who doesn’t love a ‘girl’s night out?’”
One of the co-owners of Newhall Press Room, Charles Potter said, “We find that, in our experience, we may have more women – at some given times – than men. When we designed The Newhall Press Room we wanted it attractive – clean and relatable – to both women and men. Recently at our Saturday Wine Education Class, we blind tasted seven wines of different varietals from around the world. There was a group of women that were high-fiving each other as they were able to distinguish each varietal. This was quite impressive considering I was serving wine from France, Germany, Italy, California and Australia. We all had a great time talking about what we were seeing and tasting.”
There are two large Santa Clarita-based meet-up groups centered on wine. Of these there are about 1,200 members in the Wine-y Women Unwind group and there are only about 750 in the SCV Wine Enthusiasts group, which includes women of course. I’m a member of both groups. They each hold events that educate wine drinkers.
I’ve tasted with wine store owners, winemakers and wine distributors, been in wine classes with and judged wine with both men and women. I haven’t noticed either sex being more adept in general, but I do enjoy tasting with like minded “supertasters” that have one thing in common: they taste often.
My own husband leans in when I taste a wine, waiting for my thoughts before he shares his own. It’s not because I’m a supertaster, though I have been told that I am, it’s because I’ve been studying wine while he’s been protecting the universe. Yep, I married a super hero. So we both win. My advice to anyone , that aspires to be a supertaster: just keep tasting.
Eve Bushman has a Level Two Intermediate Certification from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), a “certification in first globally-recognized course” as an American Wine Specialist ® from the North American Sommelier Association (NASA), Level 1 Sake Award from WSET, was the subject of a 60-minute Wine Immersion video (over 15k views), authored “Wine Etiquette for Everyone” and has served as a judge for the Long Beach Grand Cru and the Global Wine Awards. You can email [email protected] to ask a question about wine or spirits. You can also seek her marketing advice via [email protected] 

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