'Are women better tasters than men?' This is a question filled with landmines - no matter what my answer is, I can't win. I think most journalists expect me to say emphatically: 'Yes, of course women are better tasters. We just haven't had as much exposure to wine!'
When I begin to explain that women are good at certain aspects of wine tasting but not others, I see their crestfallen faces as they nod their heads and slowly fade me out. I hear them thinking: 'Oh, another 'it depends' answer again, with a long explanation and no concrete answer.'
I try my best to articulate what it means to be a good wine taster: it isn't just about having a wide and deep range of tasting experiences, although this helps tremendously. Being a good taster requires a certain level of appreciation for flavours and sensations, but most people living in Asia who love food already fit this criterion.
A sensitive palate, or passionate foodie, will easily recall the precise flavours of gaeng som, a sweet and sour dense Thai soup sold on street-side stalls in Bangkok, as well as they will remember the three-Michelin star restaurant meal they had in Paris. They will remember other details - the day it was tasted, who they were with, how the smell and flavours made them feel and why it was so good.
A good wine taster has an equally detailed memory - recalling the shape of the bottle, the label, the name and producer of the wine, the region, country and vintage, what they ate with it and who they were with. In time, a good taster will build an extensive memory bank of information, or 'wine memory hooks' as I like to call them, in which to store a growing file of wine details.
Men are often fantastic at this, memorising all the great vintages for regions such as Bordeaux like they remember sports scores. Male Burgundy enthusiasts will talk about Grand Cru vineyards like Chambertin, Musigny or Romanee-Conti with the same reverence and technical details as they talk about their Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari or Porsche.
Just building this wine memory bank, unfortunately, is not enough to be a great taster; one must be able to articulate how these wines taste. In this realm, women are generally superior. In my women-only wine classes that I ran for years, most women were precise tasters with a wide vocabulary to describe wine flavours. Their descriptors were spontaneous, rich and varied, arising from their love for food, ingredients and smells from the kitchen.