In France recently, while visiting wineries in the Rhone Valley (more on this in a later column), I was struck by the number of times winemakers described their wines with reference to gender. One wine might be "feminine" because it was light and elegant, while another could be "masculine" because it had more body and firmer tannins.
You hardly ever see "feminine" and "masculine" used as descriptors of North American wine, but it's fairly widespread in Europe. I can understand where the practice comes from and how it might once have made sense, but it strikes me as bizarre.
For one thing, it relies on stereotypes of men and women that fly in the face of our experience. Surely we don't think that, to be feminine, wines and women have to be light-bodied, delicate and elegant. And does a wine or a man have to be brawny, full-bodied and firm to be masculine?
For another thing, there are contradictions in the way these terms are used. Some feminine wines are described as voluptuous and seductive, qualities that sit awkwardly with the delicate, light-bodied image.
While these terms are used for individual wines, there's a broad tendency to attach "masculine" to the wines of Bordeaux, especially the big-bodied, full-tannin, Cabernet Sauvignon–dominant wines of the Left Bank, and "feminine" to the Pinot Noirs of Burgundy. It's true that many Bordeaux have a kind of power and impact that Burgundies lack, and that many Burgundies possess a kind of finesse you only rarely find in a Bordeaux. But I'm not sure how much further it takes us to describe them in terms of gender.
It gets worse. I've read in some places that Bordeaux and Burgundy bottles are different in terms of their gender, too. If you compare a Bordeaux bottle with a Burgundy bottle, you'll see the Bordeaux has well-defined shoulders and straight lines, whereas the Burgundy bottle slopes more elegantly from neck to base. Some wine writers argue these bottle-types reinforce the essential masculinity of Bordeaux and the femininity of Burgundy.
Sometimes the language of gender ties wine reviewers up. I recall seeing one wine described as masculine in its youth but becoming feminine with age. I suppose we all lose some of our strength and firmness as we get older, but do we change gender?
This kind of language is just part of the problem of describing wine that I think about from time to time. I'm pretty convinced that too many wine reviewers don't give much thought to the way they describe wines. They throw in every descriptor they can reasonably come up with, and love to include weird terms that mean nothing to most of the people who read the reviews.
I think we ought to be aiming to give readers a general sense of the style of the wine we're reviewing, not bombard them with a fruit salad of descriptors. I'm surprised I haven't seen wines described as having "blond femininity" and "tattooed masculinity."
The New Zealand Wine Fair comes to Ottawa tomorrow and features 30 wineries and about 70 wines. It's at the Conference Centre and runs from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets ($50, including tax) can be purchased at www.nzwine-events.ca.
Four varied wines today, none of them particularly masculine or feminine.