Women Don’t Spit (Part 1)

By Janet Eastman

EIGHT people were participating in a wine seminar. Two men; six women; eight bottles of wine. They sniffed, they swirled, two spat. Meanwhile, the women – the nonspitters – quaintly became tipsy.

Why is it that women don’t spit?

Granted, serious wine tasters – wine buyers, judges and festival goers – of both sexes spit. How else could anyone taste 100 different wines (do the math: 100 ounces = 8 bottles of wine) and still be upright and mentally connected to their taste buds if they didn’t spit out the alcohol?

But when it comes to wine lovers who aren’t professionals, few women use a spit bucket (it doesn’t count if they pour the remains of their glass into the bucket). But men, who have been practicing spitting since they were introduced to Gerbers, spit and do it with pride.

Donnal Mixon, winemaker of Madrone Mountain in Jacksonville, remembers a particularly impressive male wine journalist who shot a “perfectly arched” stream of wine from his mouth into a bucket a foot away. “I asked him how he did it, and he said, ‘Practice.’”

In contrast, Roy Garvin of Cliff Creek Cellars in Carlton remembers manning a table at the World of Wine Festival when a woman rushed up to him, nonverbally communicated that she had something in her mouth she didn’t want to swallow, pointed to her glass, then raced behind him to spit onto the grass. “I won’t tell you whose wine it was,” says Garvin, with a wry smile, “but it killed the grass.”

Which raises two facts:

1. Winemakers and Tasting Room employees will say they have seen “day trippers” – the non professional wine lover --  spit out wine, but it’s never their wine.

2. Spitters are usually male.

Day tripper Nancy Sawicki of Ashland says she never spits. If she doesn’t like what’s in her wine glass, she’ll pour it out. Her husband Rick does the same. But pouring out a glass is one thing; not swallowing what’s in your mouth is another.

Garvin says when he’s hosting wine tastings, he’ll encounter people who will state that they don’t like a particular grape or even declare they don’t like reds or don’t like whites. He says with sincerity that he still wants them to try his wine. “I tell them, ‘if you don’t like it, just spit it out.’”

He says that gets the nod from men, but most women still close their eyes into slits, purse their lips and shake their head “no.” He says after encouragement, a woman might try it, but he’s rarely seen them sniff, swirl and spit.

“We don’t feel bad if someone spits out our wine,” he says. “I’m not offended. I’d rather they try it and spit it out then not try it.”

Part 2: Is spitting seen by women as disrespectful?