They let Lettie Teague out again....

[Jenise]

....this time to comment on men vs. women in wine.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wine/2010/04/30/women-wine-talk-the-myth-of-the-fingerhook/

I was quite put off by this, enough so that I didn't bother reading after the jump--at the very least it's more the level of what you'd expect to find in Good Housekeeping, not the WSJ. The person who drinks Smoking Loon and crows about getting 7 bottles for $25 is not the female equivalent of any person who keeps a good cellar, regardless of how that person talks about its contents. That one happens to be female and one happens to be male isn't about the difference between the sexes, it's about the difference between geeks and nongeeks. And other than the fact that there are admittedly fewer of them, I don't think my female geek friends are any different from my male geek friends in the way they talk about wine. That she recklessly confuses the two....

Okay, we tend to like chardonnay better, I'll give you that.

Like I said before, anyone who thinks that high alcohol lends to the taste of wine is missing something between the ears.

Wow... just... wow. I have been giving Lettie the benefit of the doubt, but this piece (I won't grace it with the term article) is so far beyond the pale that it nearly leaves me speechless. She indulges in nearly every hackneyed stereotype available to the wine writer and provides next to no useful information about wine of any sort. What is the point of her piece? Women are different from men? Stop the presses! Men are more competitive than women? Maybe, but becoming less true with each passing year, if you ask me. In all seriousness, if these are the people she drinks wine with regularly (including Scott Manlin's group from the earlier piece) she needs to get out more. My mother drank Almaden French Colombard and my dad drank Charles Krug Zinfandel, both out of jugs. What does this have to do with what I drink? Precious little, I'd say, beyond inculcating me with an appreciation for wine as a part of the meal. Even my mother doesn't drink jug wine any more, and hasn't for several decades.

Sheesh!
Mark Lipton

[Jenise]

She indulges in nearly every hackneyed stereotype available to the wine writer and provides next to no useful information about wine of any sort.

You put it better than I did, but hence my comparing it to a women's magazine piece. It's demeaningly banal.

Bad article. I think she was going for yet another version of the "why do more men than women want to yak on and on about wine" article, but she really blew it. In my experience, men are more likely than women to want to talk analytically about wine and some are competitive about their cellars but that doesn't mean that all the women want to do is blather about the pretty labels and the bottle shapes. If I were her friend Ann, I'd be pissed. She makes her sound like Ralph Wiggum.

These pieces are such a waste of webspace and paper.

Completely stupid, seems like she's writing for an audience that's too young to buy/drink wine anywhere.