The elephant in the wineroom: female alcoholism
The biggest taboo in the winemaking industry is not about ethanol in Brunello, it's about ladies who drink
This post is part of the inter-newsletter dialogue with my preferred wine expert and barbarian gastronomer Cris fromQuerid@ coleccionista,
We will be doing these tandems regularly, once a month at the beginning of the month.
Stay with us!
This week,
and I are reading this enlightening article by Claudia Gacituá.Its main theme is alcoholism in the wine industry, and specifically, the difference between a socially accepted and tolerated male alcoholism, believed to be a muse for painters and artists, and a hidden female one, all whilst, she writes “alcoholism, with all its negative burden, is lived differently between men and women, being the same evil that affects both”1.
It is not a lightweight topic, I know, but bear with us: we desperately need to talk about this issue, which is also one of the thousand facets of the pervasiveness of toxic masculinity and patriarchy in our world.
Patriarchy and toxic masculinity, really?
Well, yes.
When I read the trope that women prefer sweet wines I get very annoyed, especially when it is peddled by a woman - normally, a skimpy-dressed “winefluencer”2 of some sort, because the women I meet and with whom I drink, are nothing like this.
They are often educated, wine-savvy, and have a very international palette of flavours. No cheap Chardonnay or sweet Riesling: they go for bold, warm reds like plump Bourgogne or mouth-filling Barolo. They drink wisely, they are seekers and they know what they want.
But the trope of sweet drinks persists, especially because this sweet wine connection has a very obscure past, at least in Italy.
Forbidden by morality to be drinking in public, women loaded up on sweet liquors to haul home during groceries, allegedly to use in baking, but truly to down in the loneliness of the kitchens.
Claudia Gacituá as well in her article quotes Columbia University academic Leslie Jamison, and her book “The Trace of Days” (2020), where she says that “while the legendary male drunk manages to embody enviable abandon – the reckless and self-destructive search for the truth-, her female counterpart is almost always seen as guilty of having abandoned her loved ones, of the crime of negligence […] her alcoholism has led her to violate the first commandment of her sex: take care of others".
It is harrowing to learn that, at least according to the American Addiction Center, “research indicates that women often have a significantly shorter history of abusing alcohol than men before they are diagnosed with an alcohol use disorder, demonstrating a quicker progression from first use to developing an alcohol use disorder. In addition, women often enter treatment for alcohol use disorders with more severe psychological, medical, and social issues than men do, but they enter treatment less often”.
Moreover, “significantly more women with positive histories believe that social attitudes are more disapproving of women alcoholics than men, and they believe, to a significantly greater extent than those without such histories, that the effects of maternal alcoholism are worse than those of paternal alcoholism”.
The sanctification of motherhood, and the impossible pressure placed on girls and women from an early age to be responsible, caring, altruistic and thoughtful, shape a dark side to the addiction.
In a nutshell, women cannot fail.
A golden cage, a hidden burden.
As a child I was always wondering why the local shady bar was only frequented by men, and why my mum hurriedly strolled in front of it, dragging my curiosity away.
She (and I) never entered: I imagined it packed with forbidden sweets and cannoli, and what a deception when once older, peeping into its darkened curtains, I saw just a row of elderly men, glass in a hand, and empty gaze.
Where were all the women, I asked my parents. Aren’t women drinking too?
Not in that kind of bar, I was answered. In the darkness of their kitchens, when the house is asleep, without a sound. Opening a bottle of liquor used for soaking cakes, sipping into their soul.
Because a drunk woman is still much of a shameful view today as it was in the fifties. But an imbibed man is not so shameful. Why?
I tell you a story.
This is a story of a rather mythical dinner for a selected few, that has been already described in detail and talked about by more competent sources. So it happened that a very famous, very influential, very respected person was attending this dinner. A histrionic individual, tolerated by all the present thanks to a long career in the wine industry.
And that fateful night, he got spectacularly drunk.
So drunk he was that, besides completely monopolising the whole conversation at the table, he became so unaware of his spatial environment and his muscles became so unhinged from his motor control, that he started spitting out food and sending half-chewed bird bones flying everywhere on the table, hitting like confetti all the presents.
There were only two women at that table of twenty, and I could not help but wonder what would have happened if one of us would have been so astonishingly drunk instead.
Women are regarded in a very different light when it comes to alcohol and all its darker sides. As supposed upholders of domestic virtues, their fall is chastised in a harsher, bitter way.
And yet, I cannot fail to feel a pain for men and women alike: why is this mercifulness not extended to all?
Women and men who fall into an addiction deserve care and appropriate instruments to emerge from their darkness. But women in particular need to be especially cared for, because of their invisibility.
https://radio.uchile.cl/2022/01/28/para-beber-hay-que-ser-bien-hombre/
People can dress (or not dress) whatever they want. However, maybe to sell wine we should prioritise the words of an oenologist, rather than the beauties of some random lady or muscle-packed lad.
BTW, I forgot to mention, there are two elefhphunts!
Dear Sara, Thank you for yet another enticing article.
I sometimes feel that if Eve hadn’t been around, paradise would be a big hockey rink or football field surrounded by beer cans and disgruntled guys scratching their…ears and spitting nonsense among other things. Somehow, men may feel they have been saved by woman from this wretched fate, because woman impelled us to become courteous (l’amour courtois) and pushed away our uglier side. Hence, it is a fear of falling from grace once again when women exhibit this internal chaos that stirs many of us. This is not helped at all by the very strong « Madonna » nature of Catholic countries, where the « holy » mother is omnipresent and her image increases the divide between the hope of perfection and the reality of earthly souls. Coming from a protestant influenced country, we plainly see the difference in treatment. Think of Friday night London.
There is a distinctive relief, a tranquility that falls upon men who accept and suddenly recognise the imperfect nature of woman: men suddenly feel less lonely and understand they can share a certain existential angst. The curse is broken, we can learn to live together not in Paradise, but together in that great and challenging imperfection.