Wine Women Want

Filed in archive Wine Awards on March 10, 2007

I saw this article in my local paper today and was lucky enough to also stumble across it on line. As most wine bloggers know, the wine world seems (for whatever reason) to be dominated by men for the most part. This is something I've always thought was kind of weird. I guess because I'm not a guy, but also, hey, I buy a heck of a lot of wine as do many of my gal-pals. So, what's up boyz?

Well, the jig is up because women now want in on the wine deal and that includes judging what wine is best. From Vintage suffrage: Women to judge wine in national competition:

Women buy much of the wine purchased in the United States, and they make quite a bit of it too. But it's mostly male critics who proclaim what's prime and what's plonk.

Enter the National Women's Wine Competition being held this month in Northern California. The event, judged entirely by women, boldly sports the slogan "Wine Women Want." There's even a separate category of entries from women winemakers to add an extra fillip of vintage suffrage.

The competition runs March 13-15 in Santa Rosa, and interest in being a single-gender contender has been keen. Wineries from across the country responded and about 1,800 entries have come in, more than double expectations.

"We seem to have hit a nerve," said organizer Lea Pierce.

Having an all-woman panel is a departure for the wine industry, where judging remains largely a man's world, something Pierce and others attribute more to slowly changing trends in the wine industry than overt discrimination.

Organizers believe this is the first contest judged by an all-woman panel in the United States. An international competition to be judged by women is planned in April in Monaco.

"Women want to be recognized. They want to have their own venue," said Pierce. "I do think it's very important, long-term, to raise up a new set of women critics."

The competition began as a "bolt from the blue," during a conversation about wine contests in general a few years ago, said Pierce, co-owner of an advertising agency and member of a networking group called Women for WineSense.

"At that point, I'd been in the wine industry for a couple of years, I was really aware of how many women are involved in wine and how it was growing. It was just sort of this insight that it would be a good thing to showcase women," she said.