Ep. 476 wine2wine Session Recordings | Is Wine Gendered

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Italian wine podcast as wine to wine twenty twenty media partner is proud to present a series of sessions chosen to highlight key themes and ideas and recorded during the two day event held on November twenty third and twenty fourth twenty twenty. One to wine twenty twenty represented the first ever fully digital edition of the business to business forum. Visit wine to wine dot net and make sure to attend future editions of wine to wine business forum. Good afternoon, and, welcome to this wine to wine session. Title is Wind Gender. The commercial challenges and opportunities. I'll give you my warm welcome also on behalf of Regina Lee that we are going to meet in a few minutes. I was really excited when Steve Kim proposed me to introduce this session because I think it's a new interesting perspective on a issue that of gender and in particular of gender inequality. I really do care a lot about. I also think this is the right moment to keep talking about gender because we're somehow facing a watershed. On one side, we have never talked about inclusivity and diversity as much as we're doing now, but we also saw that the COVID epidemics had a very negative impact in particular on women when it comes to their economic and professional side. If you think of the wine sector, on one side, we see more and more talented women as a regime lead that, I'm really glad you to introduce today. But on the other side, we're facing a number of issue. And last most recent, but really serious, like, the sexual harassment case that arose just a few weeks ago in the Court of Master Sumeli in the US. And also on the consumer side, on one side, we see more and more women, which are passionate consumer. But on the other side, we know that women have a lower income than men in Italy. This percentage is really, I think, a scandal that goes women having sixty percent on average than the average, income of men. And we also know that women are more and more involved with non paid work in the household. All of this result in the fact that they have less money to spend more wine, also to try wine, and they have less time to invest on their education in wine. So I think the issue is is big and I'm really grateful to wine to wine for bringing that on stage. But, we're all anxious to hear from Regina. So let me just remember that, Regina, here she is. Welcome and good to see you. Regene is a master of wines since two thousand and eleven, and she's had a role for, I'm not from a couple of years at the WSE team, particularly on the development of the Asian market. And, she's a cofounder of the women in line in wine, London, a network of wine professional accounting more than six hundred members as of today. And, finally, she's holding the role of a national account manager at liberty wine. So, Regina welcome, and, for sure, the stage is yours. We're really anxious to listen to your session. Thank you. Thank you so much, Camilla. I really appreciate the introduction. Great. And I want this session to be a a conversation, so I appreciate any questions, and a dialogue, between me and Camilla as as we go along, in the presentation. Great. So this session is about is wine gendered. The commercial challenges and opportunity. What we'll talk about is, they'll do a quick introduction about women and wine and what we do. Then we'll talk about media portrayal of, wine and wine industry. And then we'll talk about how gender plays into the wine industry with tasting notes. Then we'll look at kind of, the male versus female wine consumer and what our industry should be doing in the future. So a a quick introduction, I co founded women in wine, London in two thousand fifteen with a, colleague of mine who I worked with while I was at WS Her name is Sula Richardson. And we have another co founder named Hannah VanCestrian as well. And so the three of us establish women in wine London to create a networking group for women working in the wine industry. We saw that there's a need for women to support each other as well as to have an opportunity where we develop ourselves professionally. So we have a series of events, that we put on throughout the year. And as Camilla mentioned, we have six hundred members now. And we do events talking about key topics in the wine industry, not necessarily about gender specifically, but the point is to become more intelligent and smarter about our work. And what we do. So we have events ranging from leadership to CV writing, negotiation skills, but also things like sustainability in the wine industry, the changing role of wine buying and the wine consumer, etcetera. So quite a lot of different events that we put on together. And I think that our success is based on the fact that there's a need in the wine industry for women to come together and network in support each other and to build our confidence up. And that's a theme that, you know, I'll cover a little bit later too as we look at women consumers. So I kind of wanted to start on the historical media portrayal of wine in in the wine industry. I thought it would be interesting to look backwards a couple decades to see how, the wine media has really treated gender. And I think it's quite a surprise when I saw some of these photos especially the the photo of the Decatur Magazine cover. Because, although not all wine adverts were like this, there's this huge focus on women being an object of what we call the male gaze. And the male gaze is a part of, well, it's a term that a lot of feminists use, and feminist theory to talk about media and arts and culture looking at it from only a male perspective and specifically a heterosexual, masculine male perspective. And what this male gaze theory says is that media art, etcetera, is focused on the man being the focal point and empowering him through, visual cues of women in particular, to make empower him, but also to make the woman an object of desire. And this is kind of how we've seen certain portrayals of of wine media, throughout the years. So, yeah, we we kind of see this hyper sexualization of women as a way to kind of sell wine and to market it. And this is kind of true in the advertising field in that period anyway. So wine isn't very different from other consumer products and how the media has been advertising them. For example, the picture on the left is an advertisement for women's deodorant. And it's interesting because this deodorant is kind of selling itself by, making women more attractive to men. So, you know, innocence is sexier than you think. Which is a bit of a creepy thing to say anyways. But still it's very much in the sense of women, buying a product or wanting to buy a product because, they are the object of the male gaze. Of of the male focus. Similarly, there's the advert on the right hand side. And this is an advert for a bra. And it's the the tagline is this is no shape for a girl in a pear shape. Which is, actually kind of another negative side of the male gaze advertisements, which is that there's body shaming. So women feel a shame of how they look. Therefore, need to buy a product to make them feel a little bit better and to be feel more attractive to men. So interestingly, even though these products are marketed to women, still very much a focus of the man being empowered body, the empowered person in the balance of these advertisements. Regina, if I may ask something for the Italians who are following us. When I saw the the image of the color of the counter, I was a bit shocked knowing the counter the way it is now. But if you remember, those are the years, the eighties, when espresso and panorama, which are basically news and economic, magazines used to have awful covers as well. So we have to put this back in the the right ages as Rajinn did very clearly. Absolutely. Yeah. As Camilla said, there's lots of examples around the world of this too. So I guess the question is, have we evolved since then, since the seventies and eighties? Has, the media portrayal of wine advertisement changed. And yes and no. So this is interesting. These are current, contemporary wine experts. And we see, of course, the man sitting in the chair looking very, you know, masculine and proud. And that's also an aspect of the male gaze, which is finding something aspirational for men to achieve. And that's a key part of advertising generally. But interestingly, you know, there's still quite a bit of objectification of women and adverts now. The ad for the Roan Valley wines has a woman unzipping her dress, for example, And I the, you know, the translation here is that, like, the the taste is really amazing. It's it's beautiful. It's happy. You can't wait, you know, to to try it. And there's a bit of humor now in in kind of the way that the media shows gender. So the the picture on the bottom left tastes the bush. You know, it's kind of a funny tongue and cheek thing to talk about, you know, women and their body parts, but also wine at the same time. But it still kind of has that overtone of the male gaze. You know, it's still very much, the man looking at woman as an an object of of desire. So now it's kind of interesting to kind of step aside from the media and now look at how the wine industry itself describes wine and how we use gender to talk about wine and describing it too. So these quotes are actually from bordeaux, tasting notes that were published. And I won't mention, you know, the journalist here, but it's still very revealing to to see that gender and sexuality plays a big part in how we describe wine. So the first quote is about with a curvy palette. This is a very sexy wine indeed, obviously equating that to a woman's body. And the second quote is also interest interesting because it's talking about the tannins, of a wine and describing it as equally male and female. I'm kind of wondering, you know, I'd I'd be curious to know from producers how they feel about their wines being described like this. And I'm also curious to know whether this helps us readers understand what a wine tastes like or the texture better. Maybe it does and maybe that's why it's a useful kind of description to have with wine to kind of describe it as male or female. Some other tasting notes are actually a little bit more shocking here, and a lot more overtly sexual, but the first one is about the palette is medium body with grippy tannins on the entry. And the second one is it's a glossy set there, I say, almost slutty wide. And this this is kind of to explain it a little bit more. I mean, glossiness is doesn't have a gender bias really. It's about kind of a silky texture. But certainly, word slutty, in the English language, in kind of a slang means describing a woman who is very sexually aggressive or sexually promiscuous in a very negative way. So it's, it's an insult to call someone a slut or to call someone slutty, but it's always negative. It's always derogatory. And it's weird because the wine industry, and I've heard it, and I've read about it, people calling wine is slutty. Actually, you know, could be argued that it denigrates the wine. It kind of puts down the wine a little bit and also makes the reader feel a bit uncomfortable with with the usage of that word. Again, I'm not sure if, producers themselves would appreciate their own wine being called slutty or not. So now we've looked at the media. We've looked at the wine industry ourselves and how we describe wine. So now I wanted to turn to the wine consumer and look at, okay, from a market perspective, what's the difference between men and women? And the first question, you know, I've asked just generally in research, Shar, are there more female or male regular wine drinkers? And so the answers to this question and the others are based on a wine intelligence, research paper published in two thousand eighteen. So for this question, are there more female or male regular wine drinkers? Wine intelligence has found no. There's almost an equal gender split between female and wine male wine drinkers in six major markets. Now another question that's important to ask is do men spend more money on wine than women? Are are the male wine drinkers a more important market than the women wine drinkers? And they found that, yes, actually men more frequently drink, and they have an average, higher spend per bottle, a higher average spend per bottle. So they spend more every time they do drink. Now the third question is, are men more knowledgeable and confident about why than women. Wine intelligence found they're not necessarily more knowledgeable, but they're definitely more definitely. So men have a natural culture around wine, more so than women. So I thought that was very interesting. There is a difference between male and female wine drinkers. It Regina, if I can add something we were talking about when we had, like, or nice talk about before, is that I I'm I really find most of all the last point you mentioned, really true because my impression is that very often men feel like they need to show off about why much more than women do. And this is for sure, like, a social problem of consumer and of being self confident and, a man feeling that they have much have a more dominant role, but there is another issue that needs to be addressed. And that has more to do with the professional education of Sommelier because I'm sure that everyone of you talking here have been, like, listening to us, have been sitting at a table, maybe with some very professional, educated in wine women, and having the or the matter to ask to be to demand at the table. So what are we going to do about wine? So I think there's also an education to do on the trade side in order not to to make it, normal, that just men will be the one who are in the know and that would who will decide about wine. Absolutely. I think the trade is so important. And for us, you know, we are the examples of the wine industry to the consumer as well. So if we are not being inclusive to everyone or automatically judging the man to be more confident or more knowledgeable, then people are going to perceive that as, you know, an industry that's a bit more exclusion, exclusive. Doesn't really include every everyone, that actually wants participate. So, yeah, I think, and, you know, having the wine industry be on the forefront of inclusion is is very important too. Our our behavior matters, and it will influence the consumer. So, that kinda goes on to the next set of questions is, does it have to be this way? You know, does the male market need to be more important than the female market? I guess another question is, well, isn't the wine industry overlooking women? And that's a whole another consumer market that we haven't really, you know, explored more or talked to properly to include. So, you know, one question is, is the female market overlooked? And are we not doing enough to include women consumers, which is, you know, a big proportion of our population into into the wine industry. The second question is, can we make female consumers more engaged with wine feel more confident, feel like their knowledge is being heard or or they're being included in in the wine industry and how we talk about wine to people. And I think that's an important part to tap into the female wine market more. And the third question is, can we have more inclusive or non gender bias marketing? Would that help, broaden out the wine industry and the wine market a lot more? I think a lot of the wine industry now is talking about are shrinking consumer markets. But right now, if that's the case, we need to look at how we expand the consumer markets even more. So we have to look at groups of people who we haven't, traditionally, talked to a lot or marketed to. And I think one thing to kinda note too is there's an actually a trend to talking to the female line consumer now. Mostly on the mass market and branded wine sector. So you see an advert for Blossom Hill, overtly marketing to women, and to, you know, have a voucher of beauty products voucher with the wine purchases and, you know, marketing directly to women not, you know, looking at the male gaze or not focusing on the male gaze as as the key focus. It's the female gaze. It's the female consumer that they care about. About? Similarly, there's a a trend in celebrity wines. And mostly when you look at celebrity wines, they're female celebrities. So people like Kylie Minogue or Cameron Diaz or Sarah Jess Parker. And again, they're they're directly talking to female consumers, not going through a male consumer and the male desire to get to the female consumer, which I think is a very interesting development This isn't something that I think the fine wine market, has really looked into or tapped into. And, you know, there's kind of debates as to why. But I think it's important to keep in mind that this is a trend happening now. So what do women consumers care about there I've read a lot of research as to what are the key things that women consumers care about. And one thing also to note is that, women, he'd and and this is kind of through quite a few studies, actually control much of the household spending. So women contribute to seventy eight to eighty percent of household spending for in, you know, for the US market as an example. And so when they looked at what women actually care about when they're purchasing, there's a few key values that they that they look for in products. One is authenticity. Two is the values of the people producing the product. Three is sustainability, and four is provenance. So another stat says that fifty seven percent of Malendic Seven care about the brand value as as a way to kind of decide what to purchase. And of women, you know, consume eighty five percent of women consumers stay loyal to a product if they find that that product fits their values. So that's really, really important to note. And I just I think another quite key thing is that the fine wine market has always been interested in communicating about these four things. I think. You know, authenticity, sustainability provenance. This is something that the fine wine market has always really try to emphasize. So there's a, you know, a clear connection between the female wine consumer and and what wine is trying to do generally, to market itself. Yeah. And, Virginia, if I can add something, I was really impressed by seeing these values as core for women on the consumer side because I think it fits very well with the research that I've seen a couple of years ago about a female wine producers in Italy because there is a strong link between the fact that, a winery is headed by a woman in Italy and the fact that it produces more d o c one wines or organic wines. So there's a a clear, preference of, we, women, the female producers towards sustainability and a strong link to their territory. So I think that the the the picture matches on the two sides of producing production and consume and consumption. Definitely. Thank you. That's such an interesting statistic because you're right. There's two size the producer, the consumer, and you're gonna come into your link. And then just looking at, you know, fine wine marketing and tasting notes, there are descriptions that we use for certain wines, red, and white that are often, you know, typically used for certain things. Like, Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon would be described as heavy or rich or muscular bold, whereas a shabbley would be elegant, delicate, light, floral, and we use these with kind of gender differences in mind. So if we were to turn these wine into people, you know, this is kind of what we would picture in Napa Valley cab Brenay to be versus a Shadrach, you know, Sean Connery as James Bond versus a Maryland Mon Road. But I kind of wonder now what is the future of of gender differences? Is there a different way to think about why and descriptions. And perhaps, you know, a future could be something like this, whereas, you know, Beyonce could definitely be described as bold and muscular and forceful. And someone like David Bowie, perhaps delicate or elegant or, you know, light. So there's so many different now blurring of lines between gender. We also see this, you know, in certain, key developments and the lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer movement where, you know, their kind of emphasis on equal rights and equal recognition has meant that our conception of gender is changing. It's evolving. It's not black and white, and it's not just male or female anymore. So just to kind of in summary, what can what can we do? Well, again, we can focus on consumers and how we talk and how we act towards them to be more inclusive and also look within ourselves in the wine industry and say, what can we do to be more inclusive and to have so many more diverse viewpoints on things like gender and inclusion? And this is just to end by saying, you know, there's been surveys done about women in the wine industry and what their concerns are because having a diverse workforce and a diverse industry will naturally bring some diversity into how we talk to consumers. So just some things to think about in our own companies, if we lead them or work in them, you know, pushing for things like equal pay, good working conditions for both men and women and working families, good maternity leave policies and really looking at sexism in the workplace. And that's something that the recent article from the New York Times really highlighted that their sexism in the workplace that shouldn't be tolerated and we shouldn't, really give any air to anymore. So that's it for the main presentation, and I was just going to open up to comments and questions now. Regine. Regina, thank you very much. I personally found it very, very interesting. And I have the impression that, the people following us had the same feeling. I think we do not have any question on the on the question session, but we have had a very interesting exchange on, on the chat. So, something I I found quite shocking that came up from the chat that I would link to the one of the very last point of your your presentation is Vinca. I'm sorry for the offer presentation. Volgar's who says as a university student, and I was still taught to use sex or provocation to sell wine in two thousand and sixteen. Honestly, this is something that should make all of us think of how much need we have of, of sessions like this, to to face the the situation. So Yeah. That's so recent. Two thousand and sixteen, that's not that long ago. And I I guess, you know, this this is, yeah, this session is to talk about it and to come up with ideas. I I don't have all the solutions, but I think together, just talking about it really helps flush out some of these key topics. Yeah. Another point that has been, risen by Julia Preprestya, is the fact that also, looking at social network and instagramers in particular. There are a lot of many female instagramers who are still using a kind of imagery that's, goes in the male gaze direction. And that is an issue, Regina. Yeah. It's true. And, I mean, Instagram, it's it's something that the wine industry can't control. You know, it's whoever wants to post about wine in however way they want to. That's up to them. Right? Like, it's kind of a similar argument about wine journalists and whether wine journalists are still, you know, the center of power and describing wine and talking about wine, maybe not. Maybe social media influencers might be the new ones. But I still think that even though, you know, social media influencers do their own thing and we can't really control that, as an industry, we ourselves have to be, you know, the models to to talk about inclusion. You know, we can also guide the conversation and the professionalism that we have as an industry towards gender equality. So Camilla, you were talking about animal sommeliers can be more, open to, you know, getting wine wine recommendations or or talking to both the male and female, wine consumer equally. That's something that the industry can do ourselves. I perfectly agree. Well, I think we promise to be on time. It's two thirty o'clock. So if you agree, Regina, I would like to to thank all of those who could follow us. I've I've seen some greetings from, the US Ottawa, Canada, from Italy, so from many parts of the world, I think your presentation has been very, very interesting. And I also thank them for the conversation that has been going on on the chat with many very and nice, steaming. So thank you very much. Thank you so much, Camilla. Thank you, wine to wine team. I really appreciate your opportunity to talk about this. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the sessions. Bye bye. Bye. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Himalaya FM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian Mind Podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time, Chin Chin.