Why Women Drink More White Wine

Women seem to have a thing for white wine, with many drinking it almost exclusively. What’s at the root of this love connection? Wall Street Journal wine columnist Lettie Teague explores.

Source: WSJ

By LETTIE TEAGUE

March 2, 2017

THERE’S A TRUE love connection between white wine and women. Everywhere I turn lately I’m meeting yet another woman who is white-wine exclusive for reasons ranging from refreshment to health.

My friend Gabrielle, a freelance journalist, said she converted to white from red several years ago after finding that most reds, especially tannic varieties like Cabernet and Malbec, gave her headaches. White wines did not. Save for the occasional Pinot Noir, she now mostly drinks Spanish whites like Albariño and Godello. For the most part, her all-white-wine-diet works, although she conceded there are drawbacks. “It does seem ridiculous to order white wine with a steak,” Gabrielle said, adding that she has at times been “shamed” into ordering a red.

The women I spoke with most often cited health-related issues as their primary reason for drinking white wine. Indigestion caused my friend Kathy to reluctantly shelve her beloved red. “I had a burning sensation whenever I drank a red,” she said. Kathy, who owns a craft store, found that the only wines that didn’t trigger side effects were whites. She still misses red wine and compares her move to white to her relocation to suburban New Jersey from Manhattan: “I love my life in New Jersey, but it’s not New York.”

Migraines led Laura, a doctor specializing in infectious disease, to opt for white wine-but she said they weren’t the only reason she’s eliminated reds. Since she rarely drank the latter, Laura found it “harder to distinguish between the good and the not-so-good reds.”

Claudia, a book editor, never drank much red wine either. She found it “rather heavy and unpleasant,” and preferred the refreshing quality of white. (“Refreshing” was frequently invoked by white-wine-drinking women; interestingly, I don’t recall ever hearing a man cite it as a quality he sought in a wine.) “Refreshment” is also the main reason Rachel, a real-estate agent, prefers whites. More superficial reasons play a part, too: “Red wine stains my teeth,” she said.

I drink red and white wine in equal measure, including both full-bodied reds and lighter ones that I’d call refreshing, such as Chinon and Beaujolais from France and Frappato and Lagrein from Italy. I’ve never worried about stains on my teeth, but I have sometimes had headaches after drinking more tannic, full-bodied reds-which, by the way, I’ve rarely heard men complain was a problem for them.

Perhaps that’s because women are especially susceptible to migraines, said Louise Klebanoff, vice chairwoman of neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “Red wine is a common migraine trigger,” she said. But it isn’t the only culprit: “White wine can trigger headaches, too.” Migraine sufferers are better off drinking a clear alcohol such as vodka, said Dr. Klebanoff, who prefers red wine to white. (White wine gives her a stomachache.)

To understand more about the link between wine and headaches, I turned to Andrew Waterhouse, professor of enology at the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis. He began with a disclaimer of sorts, saying “wine-related health research has been extremely limited up to now.” However, Prof. Waterhouse noted in an email, red wine “contains ten times as much phenolic substances as white wine.” Some of these compounds, which include pigments and tannins, are broken down in the liver to “a form that can inhibit superoxide in the bloodstream,” he said. When the superoxide is inhibited, nitrogen oxide accumulates, which can cause blood vessels to widen, “a well known cause of headaches.” He couldn’t think of any reason, though, why they’d affect women more than men.

While women may be saving themselves from headaches by drinking white wine, they could be courting other health risks, according to a 2016 study published by Brown University. Following three groups of men and women over decades, the study showed a clear link between alcohol consumption and a higher risk of melanoma. That risk was particularly high among participants of both genders who drank white wine, said lead researcher Eunyoung Cho, an associate professor of dermatology at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School (and a white wine drinker).

I speculated that the connection might be stronger because people often sit out in the sun while drinking white wine, but Dr. Cho debunked my theory. “We have adjusted for some sunlight exposure in our analysis,” she wrote in an email. Besides, she said, “alcohol consumption was more strongly associated with melanomas of the trunk (less sunlight exposure).”

For me, the greatest downside to drinking only white wine wouldn’t be the threat of cancer-although I’m not pleased by the news-but the need to forgo so many great wines, not to mention potentially alienate friends. Indeed, I found out just how important red wine was to my social life when I decided, as an experiment, to drink only white wine for a week. I made it through the first three days easily enough. Then I went out with my friends Nikos and Isiah at L’Artusi in New York.

I warned them ahead of time that I could only drink white wine. Isiah was game, though he was quick to add that it was a shame as he was going to bring along a nice Barolo to our meal. Nikos’s response was more spirited. He was, in fact, clearly appalled. “My answer is ‘No,'” he said, adding that he prefers to drink red wine 90% of the time. “Why should I do that to myself?” Even when I explained that I was conducting an experiment, Nikos was unmoved. “I thought we were friends!” he exclaimed. “It would have been better if you said you were on the wagon.”

Nevertheless Nikos ordered a nice white to start, a Riesling from Piedmont. But when we were ready for the next bottle, he chose a Rosso di Montalcino. The lively Tuscan red was the perfect choice, pairing as well with my chicken as Nikos’s octopus and Isiah’s fish. It was easily the best wine of the night.

‘Everywhere I turn lately I’m meeting yet another woman who is white-wine exclusive for reasons ranging from refreshment to health.’

With one fell swoop Nikos had upended my plans. But he wasn’t finished. “You know why women like white wine so much?” he asked. I ticked off the theories: Headaches? Indigestion? Refreshment? “No,” he said, “because they are afraid that red wine will stain the carpet.”

Never mind that I know plenty of men with similar fears-my ex-husband didn’t let people walk around our house with glasses of red wine-Nikos was missing the point. The best reason for drinking white wine isn’t a stain-free existence, but pleasure, refreshment and maybe even a migraine-free life.