“Whiskey is a man’s drink.”
Or “whiskey is a boy’s club.”
It’s true, women are outnumbered in the whiskey industry, although our representative numbers have increased over time to almost a third. Get it ladies! Women are still extremely outnumbered in making whiskey. Though, those numbers are slowly creeping up, and we’re steadily overcoming the very deep-rooted stereotype that whiskey is only for men.
What’s surprising to some is that women actually had a huge influence on the history of whiskey. There are books and articles written about it. (Might I recommend Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey by Fred Minnick.)
But instead of diving into the history of women and whiskey, I want to talk about the science behind this! After all, I am a scientist. Regardless of whether or not you believe whiskey is a man’s drink, science will prove this stereotype wrong. See, there are standardized tests used to quantify a person’s smelling abilities, one of which is called the “Sniffin’ Sticks Tests.” (Yes, really.) These tests assess your sensitivities to aromas, including your ability to identify and label an aroma and discriminate between two or more aromas. A recent review published in Frontiers in Psychology compiled a handful of studies that analyzed the olfactory abilities of men and women. They reported “the results of our meta-analysis indicate that women generally outperform men in olfactory abilities. What is more, they do so in every aspect of olfaction analyzed in the current study” especially in olfactory threshold. Meaning, women are actually superior when it comes to nosing and tasting whiskey. Well, when it comes to nosing anything really, but we’re focussing on whiskey here.
The study attributes this outcome to hormonal level variations and anatomical differences, such as higher density in microcircuitry of female olfactory bulbs. Another popular theory claims it’s purely based on women having more odor awareness. This innate awareness could be hardwired into us for specific biological functions as a survival mechanism or it could come from experiencing gender-based societal norms. Nevertheless, the more you’re exposed to different aromas, the greater your olfactory database will be. And women are wired to remember those scents and store that data away forever. We’re more capable of identifying the aromas of different flowers, grasses, baking spices, syrups, wood, fruit and nuts. And, believe it or not, all these aromas can be found in whiskey along with a slu of others!
