It pains me to see good wine being sloshed into the glasses of those who have not asked for it and may not want it,” Hitchens writes. It pains me, on the other hand, to see good wine not being sloshed into the glasses of those who can’t ask for it and want it desperately—frequently, women with nice manners. According to Amy Vanderbilt’s “Complete Book of Etiquette,” it is the responsibility of the male host or the male guest of honor to keep glasses filled. So, like seconds and sex, women are supposed to play coy even if they want it. (The French, unsurprisingly, are really adamant on this point.) Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, says that there’s no specific prohibition on women requesting refills, but that a man commonly attends to a woman’s glass as a courtesy, the way he might pull out her chair. This is good, except that a host may be overly eager to impute abstemiousness to his female companions, perhaps to his own advantage. Hitchens writes, “Not everybody likes wine as much as I do. Many females, for example, confine themselves to one glass per meal or even half a glass.” This is why chicks dig the waiter approach.
[ Handling the Pour, in the New Yorker ]
I did not know there were Rules about which gender got to pour the wine. What do gay couples do?
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