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Photo By:: Adil Arora
 The study was organised by the National President of the 30-year old women winemakers’ Association "Le Donne del Vino" (Women of Wine) Donatella Cinelli Colombini (owner of the family winery of the same name in Montalcino) on the basis of 1200 interviews with women between 18 and 60 years through www.wine2wine.net the Italian business forum for wines. It was conducted by Gabriele Micozzi, Professor of Marketing and Communication at the independent Luiss University of Rome.
Women surveyed believed it was best to drink wine with your partner (48%), lover (28%) or friends (17%). The majority (63%) of these surveyed consumers said they liked wines with lower alcohol content. In 66% of cases, women preferred local wines and territory (for instance residents of Montalcino would prefer Brunello docg and Rosso doc wines whereas Romans might prefer the wines from Lazio doc and women from Piedmont would prefer the local appellations like Barbera doc and Dolcetto d’Alba etc- editor). The survey also indicated more women than men in that age bracket of 18-16 years would like to participate in advanced courses in wine education.
Researcher Micozzi says the women consumers buy wine after a careful analysis combining her personal history and background with the information available,. She buys a label when she is convinced and hence she is a highly responsible consumer. He also concludes that the majority of women view wine essentially as “being social”; 34% of the subjects said that a meal which doesn’t include wine is not exactly a meal as it is a necessary means of nurturing oneself; 28% of women described a meal without wine “sad”; and 28% said that a meal without wine is the true sense of “being on a diet”.
The Report presented last week, on January 24 at the meeting of the Foreign Press Association, also says that when couple go to a restaurant for a meal, women choose the wine bottle in 34% of cases. When they do, they are oriented primarily towards price and the different types of white wines with a focus on organic and biodynamic wines. In the menu women customers are looking at the risparmiose budge options, while the high end labels are predominantly ordered by men. When they go out in groups, mostly men order the wine, according to the survey.
Although the survey might be considered flawed because of the relative smaller numbers studied with a location bias due to geographical constraints as it was conducted ostensibly with only Italian women as the subjects where wine has a lot of cultural background and is essentially a part of the food and considered a food product.
Nevertheless, it should nudge Indian men and in fact, men everywhere into thinking that wine is seductive for women- the presumption here would be that women already drink wine and are not teetotallers. Another study would need to be done for the teetotaller women.
Subhash Arora |