This Wine is Gay!

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be Gay.

Pansy
It’s not that the wives of my male friends have to start worrying about my charms. No, instead I’ve been thinking about the notion of marketing wine to the gay niche. It came about when the folks at the "Food & Wine For the Gay Palate" blog asked if they could post an old entry of mine about the subject of a gay-facing wine website. At this blog there is a truly fascinating post about a wine called "Pansy" that is produced for and marketed to the Gay community.

Now, marketing wine to the Gay community isn’t brain surgery. You do it in the same way you’d market wine specifically to the Hispanic community or the Baseball loving community or the community of middle aged snake charmers: you simply speak to them directly in a voice, with an attitude and with language that they’ll recognize. In large part it’s about paying attention to them and their specific world view.

But what I’m really interested in and what I found fascinating about "Pansy" is the idea of producing a wine that is made for the "gay palate". According to Erica Crawford, Pansy’s Co-founder:

"We didn’t want to make a winemaker’s wine. The first
one we made was 4 grams RS (residual sugar); I’d like it bone-dry but
it’s important to make wine for your consumers, not for yourself."

I get the idea that a wine aimed specifically at the Gay community might naturally be a rose or pink wine. After all, trading on stereotypes that are adopted and even not adopted by groups is a standard method of speaking to a group in voice they will recognize as their own. The association of the color pink with the Gay community is an old and recognizable one. But here, according to Ms. Crawford, the direct implication is that the proper way to make a wine that will appeal to the gay community is to make the wine pretty damn sweet.

I can’t figure this out. But I’m trying. A 4% Residual Sugar Rose borders on being slightly alcoholic soda pop. You really need to chill that thing down to make it drinkable. Personally, I’d be pouring it over ice and sipping it while floating on a lounger in the pool on a warm day. It’s the kind of wine you give to someone who doesn’t drink wine because, "wine’s just too sour!". Consider that the vast majority of "White Zinfandel" on the market comes in at about 1% to 3% residual sugar. This one is 4%. A half of percent residual sugar is very noticeable.

Does one’s palate become particularly attuned to sweetness once it is determined they are gay?

Or is this just another case of "speaking" to the Gay community in a liquid language that they would recognize?

If this is a case of speaking a liquid language recognizable by Gays then we are witnessing a really intricate form of marketing. It would be a case of recognizing that the sensation of sweetness on the palate is not just a physiological experience whereby sweetness is detected by "G protein" receptors found on tastebuds. It would also be a recognition that "sweetness" experienced on the palate can act as a language that gays can "read" and comprehend as specifically applying to them.

This raises a number of questions. Do gays acquire a taste for sweetness far beyond that of straights by virtue of consuming larger amounts of sweet foods? I don’t think so.

Is there a genetic connection between the "gay gene" and a gene for appreciating sweetness on the palate. Who knows? At the least we know this hasn’t been demonstrated and I’d be inclined to doubt it.

Instead I think it’s a matter of again falling back on stereotypes that work as a form of communication that can be used in marketing. The stereotype of gay men being feminine, "light in the loafers", and drastically unmasculine seems to mesh well with the concept and associations that come with "sweetness". And this begs the question, could a wine made for the gay community be successful were it a big, brawny, tanic, dry Petite Sirah?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I suspect that one could just as easily make and successfully market such a wine to the gay community just by falling back on standard marketing techniques that have the marketer paying real attention to the community it is selling to and speaking in a language that is theirs and that they would recognize.

Still, I’m lead to wonder if their are styles (sweet, dry, big, alcoholic, fruity, earthy) of wines that one would produce specifically for another demographic or community. What kind of wine, for example, would one produce for Golfers or Fans of "Oprah" or Liberals or Rockhounds or Trekkies?

The analysis of the social and intellectual meaning of Sweet, Bitter, Tannic, Dry, Alcoholic, Fruity, Earthy and other wine styles is one that probably deserves some significant investigation. Yet I’m convinced that using any meanings associated with these characteristics of wine to sell more wine to a particular niche group will not work without a explicit pitch to the group through other, more direct means—such as speaking directly to that group and saying, "this wine is for you" just as the folks at Kim Crawford Wines have done with "Pansy".

And what of the name of this wine—"Pansy". Clearly it is a case of the now common practice of groups re-appropriating and embracing a disparaging term in order to diminish its usefulness as a slur—a tool I’m very much in favor of using in a world where language is too often used slap folks around with. Any marketer would have to be extraordinarily careful in using such a tool. Yet in this case it appears to not have caused any problems.

So, this has all set me on a mission: if a style of wine can be used to market that wine to the gay community, I want to try to figure out what style of wine needs to be produced to market specifically to the bland, vanilla, over-bite-while-dancing, wine-country-living, over worked, straight male niche.


21 Responses

  1. Christopher Pratt - March 18, 2008

    Hey Tom! A couple of random comments for you…
    1. Don’t worry about capitalizing Gay unless you’re aiming for that retro 70s look. The last time I was in the Castro, Gus van Sant had redecorated it to film Milk, and I’d forgotten that people used to capitalize that. Feel free to use “the gay community” or even “the GLBT community” for that extra modern touch. 🙂
    2. It’s important to note that the GLBT community is fairly diverse. Sure, a sickly sweet, flabby pink wine with a wannabe “outrageous” name might go down well with Kiwi drag queens in Auckland, but a huge petite sirah might be a better bet for us bears. (Heck, I just wrote about Quixote last week, come to think of it). For every Queer As Folk aficionado who wants it big, pink, and sweet, there’s surely a lesbian with a glass of Kistler Cuvée Cathleen or a biker who loves the funk of a good Bandol.
    3. As long as we’re talking niche markets, does anyone know what Jeff Gordon, Childress, or Caduceus taste like? Is there a correlation with NASCAR or Tool fans’ palates? I’d love to know more…

  2. Fiorenzo - March 18, 2008

    Tsk, I don’t understand. What if the gay is a “macho gay”? Will he still enjoy the smooth rose?

  3. Tom Wark - March 18, 2008

    Christopher, I’m all for an extra modern touch.
    Your last point, though tongue in cheek, gets to the heart of this post. Despite what may or may not work for the New Zealand drag queen community, I find the idea of identifying particular styles of wine that are capable of communicating a complex idea utterly fascinating. The whole idea and discussion is very post-modern and very Harbermas.

  4. Tom Wark - March 18, 2008

    Fiorenzo,
    Maybe the question is, will a macho gay or bear be able to sufficiently identify with a sickly sweet rose only because that wine does speak to gay stereotypes and the bears are a sub group within the larger gay community?

  5. Mark Koppen - March 18, 2008

    Re Christopher’s question, Joe Briggs (August Briggs Winery) makes the Jeff Gordon wines, and I know for a FACT that just a touch of Quaker State is added to the blend for that authentic NASCAR flavor…
    Re gay wines, I think I’ll set up a special gay tasting table in our TR to see whether our GLBT patrons prefer our light in the loafers Pinot Noir or the manly, brawny Petite Sirah. It could be groundbreaking research…

  6. Arthur - March 18, 2008

    Oy vey….

  7. Arthur Przebinda - March 18, 2008

    To elaborate on my earlier comment, the SRY gene may have been linked to homosxual behavior in males of some species but I don’t know if gayness makes one more attuned to sweet flavors. This sounds like something from a 1970’s Mel Brooks movie…
    If one is going to cater to stereotypical notions of what it means to be gay, than why not focus on the stereotype of gays as having a more attuned, if avant garde, sense of fashion, arts and all things esthetic? In that sense, wouldn’t they have a greater appreciation for esoteric and complex wines?
    I can understand that marketting a wine to a group is done through language that resonates with their values and attitudes, but I find this Pansy wine concept a bit base and low brow.
    Still, I cannot speak for the GLBT group so I will defer to them on the final anaylsis.

  8. 1WineDude - March 18, 2008

    You know what?
    Gay people like good wine. There isn’t anything special about a wine that would make it appeal to the gay community any more than a good wine can appeal to those of us who are straight.
    I’ve got gay friends. My hairdresser is a good friend and he’s gay (yeah, yeah, I know, I know). Guess what? When I introduce him to a good wine he likes it. When he drinks a sh*t wine, he doesn’t like it.
    There’s no question that marketing to the gay community is different than marketing to, say, ultra-right-wing religious conservatives, but while the labels may change, you can server them up the same wine – it’s got nothing to do with what’s *in* the bottle.

  9. Tom Wark - March 18, 2008

    “There’s no question that marketing to the gay community is different than marketing to, say, ultra-right-wing religious conservatives, but while the labels may change, you can server them up the same wine – it’s got nothing to do with what’s *in* the bottle.”
    WineDude:
    Clearly marketing to distinctive sociopolitical groups means speaking different language. This goes without saying. But I did say that. I noted that it’s not brain surgery to figure out how to market a wine or a soda pop to a gay community. You simply talk to them in a language that they identify with. That much is marketing 101.
    It’s this idea that a particular taste, be it sweet or bitter or sour or umami, can alone have some sort of intrinsic idea associated with it or carried with it that might be communicated to a particular group.
    For example: what ideas or concepts are associated with the characteristic of “sour”. What ideas or places or peole or philosophies come to mind when you think of sourness. It seems to me that the producers of Pansy think of gays when they think of the notion of sweetness. Or at least, they believe that sweetness is much more associated with gays than is sour, bitter, tannic, dry or alcoholic. Sue me, but I think this is a fascinating idea.

  10. Morton Leslie - March 18, 2008

    We hear a lot of stupid ideas from amateurs. This is the latest. First it is an insult, sort of like making watermelon wine for the African American community. Second, the gay community has been disproportionately represented in all phases of leadership, winemaking, wine marketing, wine writing, wine distribution, and sales for at least the last century. Gays are among the strongest demographics of the ultra premium, import, and luxury markets. Pansy will sell some wine, but it will be a short lived curiosity…a joke of sorts that a few gays and homophobes will have a lot of fun with, but it will get old quickly. When it comes to food and wine there is no lacking of taste and refinement in the gay community.

  11. Mark Bunter - March 19, 2008

    Tom
    I’m not gay, so I can’t speak to most of the themes, implicit or explicit, in this blog. However, I do know that when measuring stuff, units are important, no matter what you might be measuring. When winemakers or lab rats speak of sugar, there are two different units commonly employed. This leads to some confusion, especially outside the WMEL(winemaker/enologist/labrat) community. Usually when someone says the word “grams” in reference to residual sugar, they mean “grams per litre”, which, since there are a thousand grams of water in a litre, is one part in one thousand weight per volume. When they use “per cent” that’s exactly what they mean, one part in one hundred. A wine that is 4 per cent residual sugar (RS) would indeed be sweet. Port is about 10 per cent. A wine of 4 grams (per litre) RS is one-tenth as sweet, and would be noticeably not dry to some people, or could possibly pass for dry among others. The very popular Australian wines are, I’m guessing, over 3 grams per litre RS. What this suggests about Australian men, I don’t know, but if I were gay, I think I’d go check it out. And I’d take a metric ruler.

  12. Mike - March 19, 2008

    “So, this has all set me on a mission: if a style of wine can be used to market that wine to the gay community, I want to try to figure out what style of wine needs to be produced to market specifically to the bland, vanilla, over-bite-while-dancing, wine-country-living, over worked, straight male niche.” – Quote
    I think it’s called Barley Wine. Or you could go with a beer.

  13. Fredric Koeppel - March 19, 2008

    so does this mean that Bitch red wine from Australia should be aimed at the niche market of really bad women? come on, all sorts of people of all sorts of genders, races, creeds, demographics and so on like all different sorts of wine. narrow marketing of wine is, I think, a mistake.

  14. mamacork - March 19, 2008

    I have to applaud the article and the comments. I run a wine club for women and most of my members are lesbians. Let’s be quite clear, they love the gammet of wines that the rest of the oenophiles love. Big and bold cabs, some spicy zins, and even the oaky chards. Truly shocking!
    Just to add another nice stereotype to the discussion – “lesbians are cheap which is why lesbian bars never make it.” Shame, shame. I have a handy club charging all members $80 to $120 per package every month to sample some great boutique wines that aren’t in widespread distribution…now, how cheap are we really?
    Thank you Tom for the compelling post.

  15. 1WineDude - March 22, 2008

    “It seems to me that the producers of Pansy think of gays when they think of the notion of sweetness. Or at least, they believe that sweetness is much more associated with gays than is sour, bitter, tannic, dry or alcoholic. Sue me, but I think this is a fascinating idea.”
    Fascinating for sure but what I’m sayin’ is they’re probably missing the mark.
    I think mamacork’s comment underscores this:
    “I run a wine club for women and most of my members are lesbians. Let’s be quite clear, they love the gammet of wines that the rest of the oenophiles love.”
    Taste is personal, and it’s cultural, but I’d be hard-pressed to believe it also discriminates based on sexual preference. :-). I think marketers are much better served in changing *how* the present wine to the gay community (not *what* the present).
    Cheers.

  16. Tom Wark - March 22, 2008

    WineDude,
    I have no doubt they are missing the mark. The point of saying the notion is fascinating is not an attempt to endorse their contention. What I’m wondering is is this: Do certain characteristics of, say, wine carry with them connotations or ideas? For example, beyond the “grip” we associate with tannin, does this this characteristic of tannin naturally make us think of other things or ideas such as “Harsh” or “Mean” or “Authoritative” or “Immature”? I think one could make some pretty valid assumptions that certain taste characteristics do have a natural association with other ideas. Once you identify those other ideas, then the question becomes, is there a group or demographic that also encompasses those ideas as part of their identity?
    Again, I’m not sure “Pansy” did this. But I still think this is a pretty interesting thing, this association of taste characteristics with ideas.

  17. 1WineDude - March 26, 2008

    Thanks, Tom – do agree with you there. I think in American society we tend to label high-tannin wines as “manly” for example…

  18. beerdrinker - December 23, 2008

    ALL wine is gay

  19. andrew h. - October 8, 2009

    Hey Mark Bunter got it right!!!
    Please check your math, this wine is 0.4% sugar not 4%. Further to that point an often quoted threshold for perception of sweetness in wine is 7 grams/liter or 0.7% so this wine might likley taste “dry” to many/most tasters.

  20. Lionel Ulloa Jr. - February 17, 2012

    White Zinfandel is gay…


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