Part 2
Who Gets to Drink What? The Myth of “Men’s” and “Women’s” Drinks
You can read Chapters 4,5 and 6 here…
Chapter 7
The Conversation That Turned Out to Matter More Than the Drinks
They had made their choices. And those choices mattered only to the two of them. The waiter took their order and walked away. A few minutes later, their drinks arrived. Neither of them paid much attention to them. By then, the conversation had become far more interesting.
──── 🪞 ────
“He” and “She”
I asked her,
— Do you remember the very first drink you ever tried? And when it was?
She thought for a moment before answering.
— Champagne. At my high school graduation. Back then, I honestly thought adults were only pretending that it tasted good.
I smiled.
— My first was brandy. On my eighteenth birthday. My father poured me just enough for a single sip and said, ‘Now you can honestly say you’ve tried it.’ To be honest, I wasn’t impressed at all.
Little by little, the conversation pulled me in.
— Do you remember your very first toast?
—Of course. I raised my glass with such solemnity, as if I were signing an international treaty or the Declaration of Independence.
— And what did you drink to?
— To adulthood. Which, as it turned out, had absolutely no intention of beginning the next morning.
She smiled.
— Then came college. We bought whatever we could afford. For some reason, we were convinced that was part of the freedom we loved so much.
— We called it ‘having choices,’ — I said. — In reality, the only choice was between cheap and even cheaper.
She laughed.
— Later, I tasted wine for the first time—not because it happened to be on the table or because someone offered it to me, but because I wanted to remember the place.
— Where?
— A little bar by the sea. I don’t remember the name of the wine anymore. But I still remember the breeze off the water and the taste of salt on my lips.
— Do you remember the first bottle you ever bought with your own money?
— I do. It was far too expensive for me back then. And, in truth, probably nothing special. But I carried it home as if I hadn’t bought a bottle at all—I had bought proof that I could finally decide for myself what would be on my table.
— My father had an old family wine glass that no one else was ever allowed to touch.
— My mother had the opposite habit, — she said. — She poured wine only for guests. Almost never for herself. As if celebrating something just for herself somehow felt inappropriate.
— Is there a drink that reminds you of someone you haven’t seen in years?
She was quiet for a moment.
— There is.
— And?
— I haven’t ordered it in a very long time.
They talked less and less about drinks and more and more about the people behind them. The people who had first poured them half a glass to taste. The people with whom they had shared their very first toast. And the people beside whom they had spent far too long ordering not what they truly liked, but what was expected of them.
— Do you like whiskey? — she asked unexpectedly.
He smiled.
— Honestly? I can’t stand it.
She looked at him in surprise.
— Seriously?
— Never liked it. One day I simply decided that men were supposed to like whiskey. That’s what everyone around me seemed to think. After a while, ordering it just became a habit.
She laughed.
— That’s funny.
— What is?
— My story was almost the opposite.
— How so?
— I can’t stand sweet cocktails.
Now it was his turn to look surprised.
— Then why…
— Because somehow a woman drinking bourbon made people uncomfortable. It was much easier to order something with syrup, fruit, a fancy straw, and one of those little paper umbrellas. After that, hardly anyone asked questions.
He slowly shook his head.
— So…
She finished the sentence for him.
— …we both spent years ordering drinks we didn’t actually like.
She smiled.
— We were prisoners of stereotypes.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Perhaps everyone has a few small compromises with the world around them. Quiet ones. Almost harmless ones. The moments when you choose not what you truly want, but what seems acceptable in other people’s eyes.
But that evening, neither of them had to pretend. Neither had anything to prove. At their table sat neither a man nor a woman trying to choose a “man’s drink” or a “woman’s drink.” There were simply two people, each carrying their own memories, their own habits, and their own quiet departures from other people’s expectations.
— So what do you order now? — he asked.
She smiled.
— Whatever I actually feel like drinking.
He nodded.
— So do I.
──── 🪞 ────
Chapter 8
How Did Drinks Become “Male” or “Female”?
If two completely different people suddenly admit that, for years, they chose their drinks not according to their own tastes but according to other people’s expectations, a natural question follows:
Who wrote that script in the first place? And when?
► Antiquity: When Drinks Belonged to Everyone
• Ancient Greece
In ancient Greece, alcoholic beverages were divided primarily by status, religion, social class, and age—not by gender. The famous symposia were attended almost exclusively by men. Women were rarely present, except for hetairai (educated courtesans). Yet the distinction reflected social roles rather than the wine itself. Both men and women drank wine, although under different social norms. No one spoke of “men’s wine” or “women’s wine.”
What mattered was the wine’s origin, how much it was diluted with water, and the customs that surrounded drinking.
In Ancient Greece, what mattered was not what was poured into the cup, but who was seated at the table
──── 🪞 ────
• Ancient Rome
In ancient Rome, women were at times forbidden even to drink strong wine because intoxication was believed to threaten female virtue. Ancient writers even recorded stories of husbands killing their wives for drinking wine.
Yet this was less about declaring wine a “man’s drink” than about controlling women’s behavior and sexuality through restrictions on intoxication.
──── 🪞 ────
► The Middle Ages: Women Were the Makers of Alcohol
During the Middle Ages, women often stood at the very center of alcohol production. They brewed ale, made beer, sold alcoholic drinks, and ran taverns.
In England, the alewife—a woman who brewed and sold ale—was an ordinary and familiar figure. Beer was not regarded as a masculine drink. Homemade alcohol was simply part of everyday household life, and producing it was often considered a woman’s responsibility.
Alcohol began to acquire a masculine identity largely when it ceased to be a household product and became a commercial commodity associated with clubs, trade, and public life.
In the Middle Ages, what mattered was not who brewed the beer, but how well it was brewed. More often than not, that brewer was a woman
──── 🪞 ────
► The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Alcohol and Male Spaces in Britain
The turning point came with the rise of coffeehouses, gentlemen’s clubs, merchant houses, colonial trade, and the culture of the navy and the officer class. Certain drinks gradually became associated with the British Empire, military service, finance, and seafaring.
For example:
• Rum became the drink of the Royal Navy.
• Port became associated with Britain’s political and social elite.
• Brandy acquired an air of diplomacy and high society.
• Whiskey gradually became linked with rugged masculinity—particularly through later images of the American frontier and the Wild West.
Great advertising never sells just a drink. It sells the person the customer dreams of becoming
Alcohol was increasingly becoming part of the public world of men, while women were being pushed more firmly into the domestic sphere
──── 🪞 ────
► The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: The Birth of Lasting Gender Stereotypes
This was the period when everything began to crystallize. Much of what we now think of as traditional ideas about “men’s” and “women’s” drinks took shape during the Victorian era, when society drew increasingly sharp boundaries between the public world of men and the private world of women.
Gentlemen’s clubs, smoking rooms, after-dinner rituals, and the custom known as “ladies retire” all became part of everyday upper-class life.
No drink symbolized this culture more clearly than port—rich, expensive, imported from Britain’s oldest wine-trading partner, and closely associated with ceremony, tradition, and male society.
👉 Gentlemen’s clubs were private British clubs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where men gathered to socialize, read newspapers, conduct business, dine, and exchange ideas. Within these clubs, many spirits acquired their reputation as essential attributes of a gentleman.
Drinks were never inherently “masculine.” Tradition, ritual, and the long-standing culture of British gentlemen’s clubs made them seem that way
👉 “Ladies retire” was a long-standing British social custom. After dinner, the women withdrew to the drawing room while the men remained at the table with port, brandy, and cigars. In this setting, strong drinks gradually became identified with the male world.
👉 Port became perhaps the clearest example of a “man’s drink.” Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became deeply woven into the traditions of aristocratic households, universities, and gentlemen’s clubs across Britain. After dinner, once the ladies had retired to the drawing room, the decanter of port was passed around the table as the men lingered over cigars and long conversations about politics, business, finance, and public affairs. The ritual continued for generations. Over time, port became associated less with its flavor than with the image of the British gentleman, access to influence, and membership in an exclusively male world.
In Portugal itself, however, port was never regarded as an exclusively masculine drink. It was British tradition that gave it that identity.
And traditions, as history often shows, can sometimes become stronger than taste itself
At the same time, women were viewed as both too pure to drink alcohol and too delicate to handle “serious” spirits.
This gave rise to the idea of “women’s drinks”—liqueurs, sweet wines, champagne, punches, and, later, cocktails “for ladies.”
In other words, drinks marketed to women were often presented as safe, elegant, and decorative alternatives to the “real” drinks reserved for men.
──── 🪞 ────
► The Twentieth Century: Marketing Turns Stereotypes into “Common Sense”
Beginning in the early twentieth century, especially after the 1920s and again following the Second World War, advertising became one of the strongest forces shaping the gender identity of alcoholic beverages.
The drinks industry increasingly marketed whiskey as a symbol of masculinity, cigars as a sign of power, cocktails as an expression of feminine charm, champagne as the drink of romance, and beer as the badge of male camaraderie.
Popular culture reinforced the same message:
• James Bond → martinis and Scotch.
• The femme fatale → champagne and cocktails.
• The cowboy → whiskey.
• The suburban housewife → sweet sherry.
Advertising rarely told a woman which drink tasted better. Far more often, it told her what kind of woman she should be—a caring homemaker for whom a glass of sweet sherry became a well-earned reward at the end of the day
The more exclusive and prestigious a drink became, the more “masculine” it was presented to be.
Conversely, drinks that were sweet, light, festive, or colorful increasingly came to be labeled as feminine.
Biology, of course, had very little to do with any of this.
These distinctions were largely cultural constructions.
Much of what many people now assume to be an age-old tradition is, in fact, the product of surprisingly modern marketing.
Advertising Examples:
• One mid-twentieth-century beer advertisement proudly declared:
“It’s brewed for men—but women like it too.”
The real audience, however, was clearly male. Men were presented as the primary consumers, while women appeared merely as approving companions whose admiration confirmed the quality of the product. It was one of the clearest expressions of gendered marketing.
• Whiskey and the Image of the “Real Man”
Advertising for Scotch and bourbon during the 1950s through the 1970s almost always revolved around strength, confidence, authority, cigars, wood-paneled offices, leather armchairs, hunting lodges, and business success. Many campaigns explicitly associated whiskey with “uncompromising men.” The imagery resembled an exclusive initiation into a private male world.
In countless advertisements of the 1960s and 1970s, a bottle of Scotch stood beside a leather armchair occupied by a confident man, while a woman appeared almost as part of the room’s décor. She was not the central figure. She was an accessory to the “right” drink.
Although advertisements rarely stated it directly, they constantly suggested that strong spirits required maturity, toughness, and strength of character.
Women, meanwhile, were encouraged to choose sweet sherry, cream liqueurs, light cocktails, sparkling drinks, and fruit-based alcoholic beverages.
Sweetness became associated with femininity
──── 🪞 ────
• Babycham: Marketing Assigns a Gender
One of the clearest examples was Babycham, a British drink introduced in 1953. Strictly speaking, it was neither champagne nor wine, but a sparkling perry—a lightly sparkling pear cider. Its advertising emphasized everything that marketers believed women were looking for: a small, elegant bottle, a delicate glass, a sweet taste, femininity, elegance, and a touch of flirtation.
Babycham became one of the first alcoholic brands to deliberately market not simply a drink, but a female identity. The message was subtle but unmistakable:
“This is the kind of alcohol a respectable woman should drink.”
In ancient times, drinks were divided by custom. In the twentieth century, they were increasingly divided by advertising agencies
Many beverages aimed at women were promoted less as alcoholic drinks than as symbols of romance, beauty, celebration, and lighthearted living.
Dryness, strength, smoke, and bitterness became symbols of masculinity
A “real man,” advertising implied, learned to appreciate bitterness. That idea helped create the lasting prestige of IPA, bitter amari, dry martinis, and neat Scotch—not simply because of their flavor, but because enjoying difficult tastes became a symbol of maturity and masculine identity.
In the end, “men’s” and “women’s” drinks were never really about alcohol. They reflected society’s assumptions about who was expected to be serious or playful, powerful or decorative, strong or delicate
──── 🪞 ────
But at the same time, the twentieth century also brought gradual change. Women were becoming better educated, entering the workforce, traveling more freely, and appearing in public without the expectation of being accompanied by men.
As society changed, so did the culture of drinking
Bars gradually ceased to be exclusively male territory. First came new urban spaces—cocktail bars, hotel lounges, and jazz clubs. Then came a new generation of young women known as the Flappers, who no longer believed they had to follow the old rules.
👉 Flappers were young American women of the 1920s who rejected many traditional expectations of female behavior. With their short hair, jazz, the Charleston, public smoking, and a new urban lifestyle, they became symbols of women’s independence. Their rise coincided with the era of Prohibition in the United States, and Hollywood quickly transformed the Flapper into an enduring cultural icon.
At the same time, the drinks industry was changing as well. Bartenders were creating dozens of new cocktails. Producers increasingly recognized women as an important market.
Advertising was no longer selling alcohol. It was selling a lifestyle
──── 🪞 ────
► How Did Women Respond?
Many women looked at so-called “men’s drinks” with a certain skepticism.
— You don’t drink them because they taste better, — they might have said. — You drink them because of what they say about you. You’re always competing—who can handle the strongest spirit, who drinks it neat, who never flinches, who looks like the ‘real man.’ For you, alcohol has become a measure of toughness.
• Some women accepted these traditions as simply the natural order of things.
— Men drink whiskey. We drink liqueurs.
It was treated almost like etiquette—a social dress code that few people questioned.
• Others quietly began to ignore those expectations. They walked into bars and ordered Martinis, Manhattans, or Old Fashioneds—not to shock anyone, but simply because that was what they genuinely enjoyed. Not with slogans. Not with protests. But through one remarkably ordinary act. They sat down at the bar and ordered bourbon, whiskey, or gin.
The world did not come to an end. Yet every such order quietly changed what people considered normal.
Little by little, women stopped asking whether they could order a particular drink.
Instead, they began asking themselves a different question: “Do I actually want it?”
That was the moment when the idea that women were supposed to drink only certain beverages began to shift from an unquestioned rule to a matter of personal choice.
──── 🪞 ────
► How Men Defended Their Territory
For centuries, many bars, gentlemen’s clubs, and smoking rooms were regarded as exclusively male spaces. When women began appearing there more frequently, some men saw it as more than simply a question of who ordered which drink. To them, it represented a challenge to a familiar way of life.
They were not really defending port or whiskey. They were trying to preserve long-established rituals—places where men could speak openly, discuss business, exchange ideas, or simply enjoy one another’s company.
From that perspective, a woman sitting alone at the bar could easily be seen as too independent, too masculine, or even somehow threatening.
But society was already changing. Gradually, it became clear that the presence of women did not destroy bar culture. It simply changed it.
If a tradition is truly valuable, it has nothing to fear from new participants
──── 🪞 ────
► When Drinks Changed Gender
History offers many examples of the very same drink being perceived in completely different ways from one era to another.
A beverage that was considered masculine in one century might be regarded as feminine in the next, exclusive in another, and eventually become an everyday drink enjoyed by everyone.
Port became a symbol of the British gentleman through generations of after-dinner rituals in gentlemen’s clubs and aristocratic households.
Gin was once dismissed as the rough drink of the urban poor.
Champagne has, at different times, symbolized fashionable society, diplomatic receptions, military victories, and state celebrations.
Cocktails began as an overwhelmingly male part of bar culture before later acquiring a reputation as “women’s drinks”—despite the fact that bartenders had never created them with any gender in mind.
Even whiskey, long regarded as the very image of rugged masculinity, is now appreciated by people regardless of gender.
Every era seemed to assign new roles to the same glasses.
And the next era often rewrote the script.
The drinks themselves never changed. Society did
Продолжение следует…
Leave a Reply