Can a wine be accurately described as feminine or masculine?

You Neanderthal!

:wink:

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To the OP: Yes.

To the PC: get a life!

That’s a rather queer response. :wink:

My issue with the term has nothing to do with political correctness. Rather, it is using a term meant to describe sexual characteristics and/or gender being used for a beverage. It is an unnecessary personification of wine for me.

With gender not even close to being in the picture, the old school British wine writers used the terms regularly and for decades.

In The Great Vintage Wine Book, Broadbent repeatedly refers to Ch Margaux as feminine in varying degrees and Latour and Haut Brion as masculine and even “gentlemanly”. More specifically the 1945, 1947, 1953 and 1961 vintages have some colorful descriptors and consistent parameters, or they are noted as aberrant.

If you are not familiar with the book, the 1982 Edition by Alfred Knopf, NY, is easy to find and cheap, but the color photos of wines in glasses from various regions in different degrees of maturity is a visual lesson beyond dollar value.

Your clear moral superiority is duly noted. /sarcasm/



quoting just to highlight where this is an ambiguous term.

maybe we already found your answer: Chevillon NSG.

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Difficulty and easy compliment each other;
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Front and back follow one another;
One can see Masculine easier because there is feminine;
One can see life better because there is darkness; darkness within darkness -the gate to all mystery; so, on and on, then life will be better or perhaps easier blahblah .

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John took one extreme in Nuits-St-Georges and put Chevillon in a different category within that context. I took one extreme in Burgundy and put Chevillon in a different category within that context. I thought about using Gouges for masculine, but I’m more familiar with Chevillon’s wines. I don’t necessarily see a contradiction here, and if there is, it’s probably because our opinions differ on the wines, rather than the two of us having different interpretations of the terms. I don’t think the terms are any less clear than at least 80% (and probably 90+%) of the other words people use to describe wine. Even some of the alternatives suggested in this thread are pretty abstract. Even terms that are clear tend to be relative. I think these are both.

Phil, rightly or wrongly, I described Bollinger Special Cuvee as “masculine” in this TN. champagne.gif
https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2983823#p2983823

Doug…very well put. I agree.

Even some of the alternatives suggested in this thread are pretty abstract. Even terms that are clear tend to be relative. I think these are both.

When I do pair tastings ( under the title : l2 red of same age, same AC but from different producers)…we often notice the first thing …are… the difference in structure of the wine.

I guess that’s my point though. That’s a lot of explanation to get your point across. If someone walks into a wine shop and says ‘I really liked chevillon’ and the wine shop owner says ‘oh ok; you like masculine wines’ then are they right or are they wrong? In the overall scheme of wines, I would not consider Chevillon to be so. But also, if I walked into that shop and said ‘I had this very feminine wine last night (referring to the chevillon)’ would I likely end up with something comparable to it? Or would I end up with a Volnay that is far more ‘feminine’?

But I agree with your post overall. The same could just as easily be said about ‘fruit forward’ or ‘powerful’ or any other number of wine descriptors. This one also just happens to be tied to words that are themselves being redefined in our culture at this point.

But mostly I just quoted you both because the juxtaposition of the two as I scrolled through the thread made me laugh.

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I think I can resolve this. Chevillon Cailles is feminine, Chevillon Vaucrains masculine.

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I know I’m late to this party, but I think this post speaks to me. I know what folks mean when they say a wine is feminine because of how often it is used and with which other descriptive terms it is often associated. But I think it is grossly overused when discussing wines, generally. For instance, I have a bunch of 2012 Telegraphe and don’t find it feminine at all. After reading this post, I went and looked at some critics’ descriptions of the wine, and most talk about power, structure, classic styling, grippy tannins, etc. A bunch of phrases almost never associated with a feminine wine. I know the idea here is to compare wines and show that the phrase can be aptly used, but I’m not sure it’s that applicable. Is Dunn Howell Mountain really masculine when compared to some 15.5% abv 100% new oak bruiser? Is Beaucastel masculine compared only to other CdP, or is it masculine compared to something like a 2004 Grange. Is Chave masculine or feminine?

I lean towards agreeing with Golodetz’s editor. I think there are much better ways to describe a wine.

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I would say rightly :slight_smile:. Ain’t no reason it can’t be used for bubbly or whites. This reminds me that Martin Picard (chef/owner of Pied de Cochon in Montreal) created two gins: Gin de Mononcle and Gin de Matante. This loosely translates to Uncle’s Gin and Auntie’s Gin. If that is not masculine versus feminine, I don’t know what is!

Cru Beaujolais?

And then we have those big assertive wines out of the bottle that fall apart to a soft mess after some time in the glass. You know who you are.

To the original question, the answer to accuracy is a definite ‘sometimes’ . To the unasked question of appropriateness, I’d say it depends on the audience. I do think we tend to overthink these issues sometimes in peripheral areas (to the primary issues of equality in society and the economy) such as wine tasting, but as a slightly privileged white male I may not have perspective.

Makes sense to me.

What is wrong with personifying wine when we write or speak about it? I feel like the best wine writers often connect us to their experience by invoking the idea of people, places, pets, art, music, weather, all sorts of thing.

I totally agree. Interesting wines have personalities.

These are great examples of words that you think convey meaning but really are vague and best avoided. What do you mean when you say “masculine”? Muscular? Brash? Why not use that language. Say what you mean. By “feminine” do you mean perfumed, lithe, tender? Then why are you making things about gender? I know muscular woman and lithe men. Is the implication of your language that such things are wrong. Are you still even talking about wine?

Be more precise with your language. Say what you mean. And most of all, don’t be the person who dismisses things like this as being political correctness. Accept responsibility for your language.

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