Click to be added or removed.Female wine power ping.
Posted on 05/10/2005 7:06:04 PM PDT by quantim
More women than men winning coveted certification amid growing affinity for vino
Aki Koyabu, a 30-year-old employee at an electronics manufacturer, studies wine on weekends as a hobby -- one of the many students attending wine schools to become sommeliers.
"I love drinking and eating, and I thought if I knew more about wine I could enjoy it more," Koyabu said in explaining why she entered l'Ecole du Vin, a wine school in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. "Winning a wine certificate doesn't change my salary . . . it's totally a hobby."
Like Koyabu, some wine lovers are not satisfied with just drinking it and are eagerly taking classes for cultural enrichment. More women are also joining the elite world of sommeliers, once dominated by men, as professional wine experts in their own right.
In 1985, when the Japan Sommelier Association started issuing sommelier certificates, women made up only 5 percent of the total. But since 2002, there have been more women certified as new sommeliers than men each year.
The surge in their numbers is tracking the uptrend in Japan's wine consumption.
While annual consumption of alcoholic beverages has stagnated since peaking at about 10.17 million kiloliters in 1999, wine consumption has more than doubled in 10 years to 247,994 kiloliters in 2003, according to the Japan Wineries Association.
Although wine has had an image of being an expensive drink for special occasions, good wines with relatively low prices have been creeping into Japan since the bubble economy collapsed. In addition, the growing popularity of Western cuisine has lent a helping hand, said Toshiyuki Kawase, director of the Japan Sommelier Association.
Sommeliers have been taking a higher profile since Shinya Tasaki was named the world's best at the World Sommelier Competition in 1995. The profession was finally included in the labor ministry's classification of occupations in 2000.
Kawase, a senior sommelier, credits the surge in female sommeliers to women's advancement in the labor force.
"People used to believe that women should not work at night. But such mentality appears to have changed," Kawase said, referring to sommeliers, who mainly work at dinners.
Most people no longer consider alcohol "a man's thing," and are less resistant to female alcohol specialists, he added.
The surge in students forced l'Ecole du Vin to relocate in early May so it could offer more classes. The school sometimes holds events outside the classroom, such as a tour to a winery in Katsunuma, Yamanashi Prefecture, and a dinner at a formal French restaurant so students can get a chance to learn about the meaning of first-class service.
But not all of the students -- 70 percent of whom are women -- aim to become JSA-authorized sommeliers, because qualification requires five years of experience serving food and alcohol. Paper and practical tests, including tasting, are also required.
As a result, flight attendants, who meet the work experience qualification, account for a large share of certified sommeliers.
For those who do not have the required business background but have a sufficient knowledge of wine, the JSA issues a wine expert's certificate.
Although the paper test to become a wine expert is as difficult as the sommelier test, certification has rapidly gained popularity among wine lovers. The number of new wine experts certified each year has grown more than 17-fold compared with 1996, when the certification was established.
Yoshio Umeda, principal of l'Ecole du Vin, said exams for the wine certificates have become more difficult, and the number of wines that need to be remembered to pass the exams has increased.
"Compared to the 1990s, people who know wine well and drank many brands have increased. I think wine has become an ordinary thing and penetrated people's lives," said Umeda, who also teaches alcoholic metabolism and physiology at Tokyo University of Agriculture.
Click to be added or removed.Female wine power ping.
Well, at least she's honest.
I guess someone has to be an expert on White Zinfandel.
Well, at least she's honest
It's her inner man speaking!
My wife who will drink almost any wine with me will always revert back to her chardonnay, white zin and white merlot. Drives me nuts.
::cough::
I actually bought a bottle of ROSE' (Grenache and Cab Franc blend) for the first time in years last week. Man what a "girly wine."
(oh, I would make a great sommelier, wouldn't I? "hmmm....with that salmon I would definitely recommend the Sutter Home White Zinfandel". "Chicken? Only the truly unenlightened would drink anything except Sutter Home White Zinfandel with that?" "Doritos only taste right with Sutter Home White Zinfandel")
My oldest brother is a bit of a wine snob....has a fancy collection and everything. He has that t-shirt that says, "Friends Don't Let Friends Drink White Zinfandel". har har
LOL!
You sound just like my wife. She will only drink that or Arbor Mist.
Don't tell anyone, but I am a little bit of a wine snob myself.
I do tease my wife when she buys Arbor Mist, because it has a screw-off cap.
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