From: The Wino Club

I don't normally get bothered but this has been gnawing at me for some time. Please just stick with this little rant.

Let's start with the facts. Did you know that 60% of the wine sold in the United States is to women? So if we start there, logic dictates that the wine market is already on target with its products. If women are already buying a good deal of the wine, why would marketers suddenly change their market to better accommodate them? We already like wine.

Why are the marketing companies shifting their focus? We don't want to be pandered to. We want to learn and grow into sophisticated wine drinkers. We DON'T want to buy Italian wines labeled 'Mommy's Time Out' and we don't all want lower alcohol roses. I have girlfriends who wouldn't touch a white wine or rose if their lives depended on it (unless it was going to go to waste and that's a totally different conversation). And other friends who love the heat that comes from a high alcohol Zin (yours truly included).

Hello?

We're being sold special PMS chocolates (ok this one makes sense, never mind) low taste, I mean low carb, beer and femine rum (yes it exists - pink label and all). So if it's pink we'll buy it? Novelties. Do we really want our wine to be a novelty too?

I think that as women develop as wine drinkers, and we are seeing so many more women enter in to the male dominated profession of wine directors and makers, we don't want the experience cheapened. How can we be taken seriously as winos if we're interested in too sweet shallow gunk with the tasting depth of a SoCal rain storm?

So my plea is this. Leave male verses female out of wine and concentrate on making better wine.

Completely agree...just give us great wine. I was at a wine dinner last night with a bunch of women and realize how much I have learned from drinking great wine on a regular basis. Learning through osmosis and enjoying it at the same time...that works!

Gillian Parrillo
SacWomen.com