100 women to taste 100 wines – top tipplers of vino invited

IT IS funny how the topic of wine always stirs up issues of gender, romantic liaisons, the melancholy of forced solitude as well as tumult between the sexes.

It is, therefore, not surprising that many quotations on wine underscore the enduring tension between the two genders with wine – thankfully – always playing the happy medium in-between.

Naturally such utterances as the one attributed to author Kathleen Mifsud do very little to mitigate the great battle of sexes: “Men are like fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it’s our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.”

Ouch! Give me a glass of wine.

Given Mifsud’s contentious sentiments, should we then be worried that wine is continually used as a metaphor to perpetuate the battle of the sexes?

Maybe not, if TV host-cum-actress Padma Lakshmi’s more sober reflections on wine are anything to go by.

“Wine, like food, is so emotional. If you think about it, so much of the courting ritual is surrounded by wine and food. There’s a built-in romance to wine,” she once said.

For a long time, women have been portrayed as the third vice in that notorious triad of hedonism – wine, women and song – much to their chagrin.

Quotes like Mifsud’s suggest that women, tired of their objectification by drink-soaked men, are beginning to get their own back.

This is demonstrated none more so radically than in South Africa where statistics show that women are the dominant drinkers of wine.

Mark Norish of Ultra Liquors says 80% of the purchase decisions for wine are made by women.

We should not be surprised when men sneer at this statistic by bellowing: “But, who pays the bill?”

Anyway, that’s beside the point since Ultra Liquors and Sandton’s Maslow Hotel will be gathering 100 women in Gauteng on November 1 to choose 100 wines they most enjoy.

And the men will be where they belong – in the kitchen as chefs.

Behind this exercise is the notion that women are not only the more influential when it comes to deciding which wine to buy during an outing or at home, but have also been found to be the biggest tipplers of the fermented juice.

To be part of this concept and be a judge at the event, all interested female wine drinkers have to do is submit a letter to the “100 Women 100 Wines” organisers, motivating why they would like to be part of the 100-women-strong tasting panel.

The organiser can be e-mailed at [email protected] before October 16.