As anyone who has ever read wine reviews can attest, wines are often described in terms of feminine or masculine. Some are even referred to as both feminine and masculine – more on that later. Here are a few examples where wines are referred to as either male or female.

Wine Enthusiast, Nov 15, 2006
Excellent with the essence of Maipo fruit. Licorice and black fruit carry the masculine bouquet, and next up is a palate of ripe berries that explode in a fireball of flavor.

Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate, December 2008
Stylistically faithful to the vintage, it is more monolithic and muscular as well as less expressive aromatically, but substantial in size, and somewhat masculine.

Adams Bench Winery, Describing their 2006 Red Wine Reckoning
Masculine, Cab dominant steak wine: black cherry, tobacco and spice.

Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate, April 2009
The 2006 Pongelli (Montepulciano, Sangiovese) is a gorgeous, floral wine with a pretty core of perfumed red cherries and sweet spices. This delicate, feminine wine is best paired with …

Alyssa J. Rapp, Founder & CEO of Bottlenotes, Inc., as appeared on Snooth.com May 8, 2009
Rosa Regale is superbly feminine and wonderfully sweet without being cloying, offers flavors of juicy, ripe raspberries and strawberries.

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the use of masculine and feminine language when describing wines.  But is there anything wrong with it?  I know there are some out there who are very troubled, if not down right mad, about this subject.  As one person passionately explained to me, (and I’m paraphrasing here) “The use of sexual descriptors is outdated and brings up stereotypes that don’t truly provide us with an adequate explanation about the wine.” Are they right, wrong or simply making too much out of some colorful language?

Most of the masculine terms are used to describe big, brawny and powerful red wines while feminine often accompanies soft, delicate, perfumed laced white wines.  You see there, now I have just done the same thing.  I must be a sexist pig living in the dark ages.  But when you read that sentence you knew exactly what I was inferring.

OK, fine, but what about a Pinot Noir?  This world famous grape can lead to all sorts of problems when trying to explain the bouquet, flavors and tasting experience  to someone.  I have talked with many people I consider to be wine industry experts that say the Pinot Noir manages to be both feminine and masculine with dark, bold muscular strands of fruit tamed by genteel nuances of soft floral notes and having a light, smooth silky mouth-feel. Wow, there’s alot going on that bottle.  So what are we to make of the Pinot Noir?  Is it male, female or both?  I know, Pinot Noir is a hermaphrodite.

Do you ever think of a wine as feminine or masculine?  If so, what wines are feminine and what wines are masculine?  Is it correct or proper to use these terms when referring to wines? Do you care?  As for me, I’m just going to keep enjoying wines and not worry about the sexual orientation of this wine or that, especially Pinot.  I’ve got my own issues to worry about. Cheers.

I consider myself to be a reasonably well informed wine enthusiast. However, when I performed my first Googleâ„¢ search on the subject I was completely amazed at the number and variety of rating or scoring systems being used. My search also revealed an emotional response that I did not expect or appreciate. Let me put it this way, there are wine enthusiasts among us that, in your author’s humble opinion, need to step back from their wine glass once in a while and join the rest of us in the real world. We’re not trying to solve all the world’s problems (well, maybe a few), we are tasting wine! You should enjoy yourself.

There are essentially two basic systems – descriptive (non-numerical) and numerical. Numerical systems include those such as Wine Spectators and Robert Parker’s 100-point scales. Non-numerical systems rate wine in descriptive terms in ranges from “I Would Kill My Neighbor for a Bottle” to “Toxic Waste.” While I do tend to enjoy some of the descriptor systems for the reactions they evoke from wine makers (I’m a little twisted that way), the numerical systems are generally best for providing enough granularity between various wines.

Our Scoring System: Quality + Value

The basic purpose of any wine scoring system is to provide a reference point for future purchasing decisions (again, my humble opinion). The rating system we use is a blend of several existing systems and allows us to assign both a quality and value rating to the wines our group tastes. It has been designed to be simple to use while also providing a reference for the future.

Our approach has been borrowed from a number of existing systems to provide a total numerical “quality” score of the wine’s individual attributes (How did it taste?) and a secondary “value” score (Is it worth buying?). The end result is a final score of a pair of numbers providing both quality and value indicators.

Quality

The quality score uses a 20-point scale to rate wines based upon our senses as we experience the wine. The table below highlights the four basic categories and their respective maximum scores.

Value

The value score provides a basic indicator of how good a value the wine is based upon its suggested retail price. For example, if a bottle of wine is priced at $15 and we give it a value of 100, then we are saying that we would gladly pay 100% of the retail price. If however we give a score of 80, then we are saying that we would prefer to pay only 80% of the $15 retail price or $12. But if we find a wine that we think is a great value and hand out a score of 150 then we would pay up to 150% the retail price or $22.50.

Final Score

So what does the final score look like? Well, using a score that was given to a Syrah that was recently tasted (future post) it looks something like this – 17:110.

At a glance you know it was rated quite high from a quality standpoint and was generally thought to be a decent value. The first number is the quality score, 17 out of 20, and the second is the value score, indicating we would pay 110% of the retail price.

There you have it. I welcome your comments and feedback on this subject.

To each of these groups, Thank you.

www.torbwine.com – Wine Tasting Training Notes – Lots of good information here.
www.winepeeps.com – Excellent site with plenty of information on tasting and comparing quality to value. They use a QPR (Quality-Price-Ratio) wine rating system.
www.winefoot.com – Their W.E.P. scale (worth every penny) is essentially the basis for our value score.