Tim James: Women and wine comment

Have you noticed how few comments there are from women on this website? Is it a feminist issue?

I confess that August passed without my thinking much about Women’s Month in relation to wine in South Africa – a mixture of complacency and thoughtlessness, I suppose, and I noticed nothing to shake me out of it. Complacency because, in the parts and at the level of the industry I’m mostly involved in, the position of women has improved greatly during my time there, it seems to me. Thoughtlessness, because, in the parts and at the level I seldom brush up against, comparatively little has changed significantly for women (or men, for that matter).

I do know, for example, of the admirable work of the Women on Farms Project, a feminist NGO whose work with women in commercial agriculture is certainly of relevance to the wine industry. Just a few months back, in June, for example, the Project led a few hundred women to Parliament to protest the decision of Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development to go back on its promise to phase out, by June 2024, harmful pesticides that are already banned in Europe. The women broke the police lines and were met with stun grenades. At home and work, they and their families are still met with the drifting pesticides.

As for Women’s Day and Women’s Month in South Africa generally, there’s a very good piece justifying their need, on the Commission for Gender Equality website.

Let me stick, though, as usual, to the nice side of things – which I was prompted to consider by the rather anomalous situation I initially noted above; I’ll return to that later. But, when I thought about it, I was rather surprised at the lack of attention paid in August to women-and-wine in South Africa (perhaps there was stuff on social media that passed me by). 

I did google for “woman winemaker award”, because I wanted to find the dreadful logo of a competition that used to operate here under that title a few decades ago: as I recall it showed a curvaceous silhouette of a female figure in long evening dress, and some lusciously red-lipsticked lips. That was also the kind of image usually projected back then when the old print Wine magazine profiled a woman whose wine had won some competition – the woman would usually have been persuaded to offer herself in a ”feminine” guise, high heels and all, that one might have thought hardly appropriate to accompany an article about their daily work amongst vines and vats.

I don’t think that sort of imagery to convey “femininity” would get by today. And I suspect, anyway, that even fewer women winemakers would welcome the idea of awards designed especially for them, when so many have so admirably demonstrated that there is no need to judge them away from male competition. No need either, perhaps to encourage them particularly, given the plethora of role models, if that’s useful.

There is, of course, no parity in numbers when it comes to winemakers (let alone viticulturists) and it’s impressive to note the work of the Cape Winemakers Guild in seriously addressing this through its protégé programme of three-year internships for young black winemakers (and now viticulturists). It’s surely not by accident that young women have featured so prominently in the programme. All nine of the current interns are women and, according to the CWG website, of the 36 protégés that have since become winemakers, 21 are female (the website actually gives contradictory numbers but this is the more impressive set). Of course, the gender profile of the CWG membership itself is (as yet, anyway) very differently balanced, with only four women amongst the 41 members – but that is a substantial improvement over the situation a decade ago. Incidentally, Andrea Mullineux served as chair from 2020 to 2021 and Samantha O’Keefe of Lismore is currently in that position until the end of next year.

The presence of women in South African winemaking generally has changed dramatically, to the point where announcements of new winemakers seldom even bother to underline the femaleness of the new appointments: they’re just winemakers. And women winemakers starting up their own businesses arouse equal lack of surprise. Again, the proportions scarcely correspond to the national demographic, but the change has been and continues to be substantial and positive (much more emphatic than the racial evolution, which is comparatively slow).

Moving away from the professional side of women’s involvement in wine, a crucial element, and one particularly germane to my opening question, is this: what about women as wine-drinkers? And wine-buyers? I’m sure there’s more market research into this than I am aware of, but it does seem likely that in many countries women are crucial to wine-buying and -drinking. A 2009 Vinexpo survey in Britain found, for example, that women buy 80% of bottles drunk at home. That last bit is important, I reckon: I wonder whether those women choose the wine at a restaurant table, or if men liked to take over that onerous responsibility. Where most wine is bought in supermarkets and shopping centres, it is more likely that women, more responsible for the chore of the weekly household shop, will also buy (but not always decide on, I suppose?) the wine for domestic consumption.

But that doesn’t necessarily translate into a full engagement with wine at the level of … what happens on this website. I’ve just had a look at recent articles that received a reasonable number of comments, and, judging by the names of the commenters, the vastly overwhelming proportion of them are men. Frankly, I have little to add to that count. If my observation is generalisable (and I suspect it is), is it the usual thing of male aggressiveness/assertiveness, wanting to question, argue … and explain? Or does it reflect a situation in which men are simply more engaged with the culture of wine? Of course, it should be pointed out that most of the Winemag articles to which comments are made are written by men.  But is that in itself a reflection of a greater interest, or of a greater arrogation to men of the places of public opinion-stating?

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.