A few years ago, at a tasting at Grand Cata, a shop in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., a producer described one of his wines to a group of customers as “masculine.” Pedro J. Rodríguez, Grand Cata’s co-founder, remembers taking him aside to ask whether he could use another word.

“Wine is for everybody. We don’t want to classify it in a way that feels antagonistic for people from different backgrounds and orientations,” Rodríguez told me on the phone recently. “You need that sensitivity. You need to know your audience.”

It’s a diplomatic approach to a complicated conversation. Whether it’s “mansize” Kleenex or Chick Beer, gendered marketing language, contentious in many circles, abounds in winespeak. Sommeliers and salespeople frequently describe tannic, high-alcohol reds as masculine and light-bodied, lower-proof white wines as feminine. While some find this binary framework useful, others say these terms are outdated, off-putting and may prevent drinkers from developing their palates on their own terms.

Varying opinions aside, the ongoing discourse about gender binaries raises questions about whether they have a place in wine. Does a masculine-vs.-feminine classification system help people find wines they love? Or does it alienate prospective drinkers before they even pick up a glass?

Most wine professionals agree: For wine to appeal to more people, straightforward language is better than industry jargon. “There’s so much intimidation with wine,” says Eric Teasley, a certified wine specialist and educator in Wyoming, Michigan. “If we can simplify the terminology, that’s better.”

In 2023, Teasley wrote a blog post on the website of the wine shop where he works using gender binaries to explain how to analyze a wine’s weight and mouthfeel. “Ask yourself while tasting, is this wine BIG (masculine),” he wrote, or a “little girl of a glass?”

His goal was to help shoppers understand how delicate pinot grigios and heavy-hitting barolos express themselves differently, Teasley says. Although he didn’t receive any pushback from customers or colleagues, he understands that this framing veers into sensitive territory.

“Politically, it’s a challenging area,” he says. “It’s dangerous ice to be walking on with gender, but I’m just trying to speak to simple, sensory reception.”

Whatever your thoughts on gender binaries, definitionally, they contain two poles: masculine and feminine. Teasley notes that this oppositional framework is an imperfect way to encompass the entirety of wine’s multifaceted expressiveness. He describes an “androgynous” rosé of pinot noir he recently tasted that defied these categories. “It could have been a boy, and it could have been a girl,” he says.

Others prefer to keep gender politics out of their tasting notes. Characteristics such as aromas, flavors and food-pairing potential are not only less divisive, but also clearer and more utilitarian “than something very arbitrary, like a human state of masculine or feminine,” says Chris Taylor, a wine professor at the University of Houston’s Conrad N. Hilton College.

Let’s say you’re eyeing the cabernet sauvignon on a restaurant wine list. If the sommelier says it has red fruit and leather flavors and will pair nicely with your lamb, that leaves less room for interpretation than if they had said it was a manly wine.

There’s still some variability, of course. You might envision strawberries and rustic cowhide, while I might picture raspberries and a soft lambskin jacket. But we’re more likely to share a baseline understanding of what fruit and leather are than identical definitions of masculinity.

Best of all, neither of us has to unpack or defend our worldviews while trying to pick out something to drink.

“Are we truly wanting to educate and make people comfortable with wine and wine purchasing?” Taylor asks. If so, he recommends keeping the conversation pragmatic and inclusive. “Speak in plain terms to help people understand whether they’re going to enjoy something or not.”

Usually, when you buy a new-to-you glass or bottle of wine, you’re gambling on whether you’ll like something you’ve never tasted before. Dividing wine along gender lines might limit one’s options, because it could make some people feel as if they should pay attention to only half the wine list. “We risk flattening the complexity and the richness of wine,” says Valentina Di Camillo, a winemaker at Tenuta i Fauri in Chieti, Italy. Gendering these choices “can keep people from discovering wines they will love, just because you told them it was masculine or feminine.”

As an example, Di Camillo describes a male friend who favors wines that some people categorize as feminine, such as rosé. If he were repeatedly informed that not only does rosé have a gender identity but also it just so happens to not be his, would he continue to order it? Or would he feel social pressure to stick to the so-called masculine options that he enjoys less, then perhaps gravitate away from wine altogether because he isn’t drinking what he likes?

This may sound dramatic to the casual drinker, but the stakes are high. Wine sales are waning worldwide. As a result, during the past two years, the French government said it would spend more than 200 million euros (about $228 million) destroying surplus wine, Australian growers uprooted millions of grapevines, and winemakers in California were advised to tear up some 50,000 acres planted to wine grapes.

In this landscape, few wine businesses can afford to lose market share to linguistic provocations or positionings that could discourage deeper engagement with their product.

“We have to move forward and be more inclusive,” says Grand Cata’s Rodríguez. “At the end of the day, everyone needs to feel welcome.”