Who Has the Better Palate – Women or Men?

I first heard this years ago at a wine tasting: Women naturally have better palates than men. Now, when I hear it come up at whiskey tastings, my reaction is the same as then: Who says? How do you know this?

It’s not some battle of the sexes thing for me, it’s just a question: Upon what grounds do you base a claim that women have better palates than men?

Between working 11 years in restaurants and 33 years writing about food and drink, I’ve heard incredibly knowledgeable men and women talk about flavor, how they create it, how they manipulate it and how their customers perceive it. Making flavors was always objective, a “this plus that equals something new” equation. 

Perceiving flavor, however, was viewed as subjective for the simple fact that everyone’s tasting abilities and preferences are different. In restaurants, we knew not every customer liked everything we created, so naturally we hedged our bets by offering variety that created something for everyone. 

Sure, men gravitated toward certain food and drink, as did women, but those decisions weren’t simple enough to parse by gender. Numerous other factors affected how either group selected what they did.