First major women and wine survey overturns perceptions
April 2, 2009
Maggie Rosen and Erica Loi
The first comprehensive survey of women's attitudes toward wine has overturned several perceptions.
Over 4,000 women in the UK, France, Japan, Germany and the US responded to a survey commissioned by Vinexpo, revealing a preference for red wine and skepticism for marketing campaigns that target them specifically.
Local polls were conducted on magazine websites in each country, including decanter.com and livingetc.com in the UK.
Among the more surprising results were that women prefer red wine to both white and rosé, and consider wine compatible with a balanced diet.
'The image we had of Japanese and American women, especially, was that they prefer white wine. It was a surprise that this is not true,' said Robert Beynat, chief executive of Vinexpo.
He was particularly pleased with the response of 79% of women who said they drink wine because they like the taste – as opposed to its compatibility with food or fashion status, calling it 'extraordinary'.
Of the 1300 UK-based respondents, 80% choose the wine for their household, with price as the main criterion, followed by varietal and country of origin; and 54% said they were undeterred by government warnings.
'Bang goes the stereotype that women in the UK go for light, white wine,' said Decanter publishing director Sarah Kemp, who presented the results with Sara Norrman, managing editor of Livingetc, the UK's leading model homes magazine.
'But probably the most interesting result was that they aren't influenced by government health warnings. Clearly the "sledgehammer" approach doesn't work.'
Consultant and presenter Angela Mount said other results – notably that women continue to be more price-led than brand- or quality-led - were worrisome, with only 10% choosing wine over £9.99 a bottle.
'The UK is a nation of promotion junkies,' she said.
'I've stood in the supermarket aisle, watching women take wine off the shelf, and if you ask "what did you buy", they say "I don't know, whatever's on offer".'
Have your say... To post your comment on this story, email us at news@decanter.com, making sure the relevant headline is in the subject field
Why no link to the survey itself or to a more detailed report on the survey? Some of your readers would like to see the details, the breakdowns, the wording of the questions, rather than simply depending on Decanter's interpretation of the results. I'd love to see greater detail on this survey.
Mark Fisher, Dayton, Ohio USA
As with most voluntary surveys, the participants cannot be considered as an even percentage of the masses, nor can their volunteered data be directly compared to non-invasive observations and/or data collected from the mass population.
It just doesn't seem surprising that women interested in participating in a wine survey would have more interest and appetite for wine than the total population of woman that are recorded and analyzed for their wine-drinking habits.
Your story, and others like it, report that the general impression of female wine drinkers is that they drink white, rose or sweet wines and don't particularly like the taste of reds. If you look at the entire female population of the countries you list in your article, I would expect that to be the case. But equally expected is that the female wine fans within those countries, interested enough in wine to complete a survey would a) like the taste and b) prefer reds over rose.
It seems obvious right? I can only hope this was an independent survey, paid for with private, not tax payers' money…
Carol
I, too, would like to see the entire survey results. Perhaps you could post a link to the results or at least direct us to a site where the entire thing could be found.
De-Anna Alba, Director National Women's Wine Competition, Santa Rosa, California USA
Since when surveys performed on a several web-sites in different countries have become a reliable source of statistics? Do you really believe that women, I underline women, that visit wine magazine sites and answer questionnaires on them are even closely representative of their gender? Do you? Really? If the survey said "Among the more surprising results were that women visiting wine magazine sites prefer red wine to both white and rosé" I would gladly believe you. But all women? ... I have the data from the official French research held every 5 years by Viniflhor and the University of Montpellier with much greater precision and it states completely different things. Backing up surveys like Vinexpo's is sending a wrong signal to the industry.
Or did you mean to publish this on April 1st?
Bisso Atanassov, Moscow, Russia
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