There’s a long list of first date do’s and don’ts.
To start, a first date should involve an activity that you both can enjoy. For example, some women say that a shared experience like going to the zoo, or even something silly like mini-golf, can make for a great first date activity.
Alternatively, there are some first-date moves that can definitely give your partner the ick. If you take your date to a super-expensive restaurant without running it by them first, for example, chances are high that you’re not getting called again.
Sometimes, it’s not the activity itself that can ruin a date, but what your date does during it. In a video, TikTok user Marissa Holguin (@marissaholguin5) recounts a mediocre first date that she recently experienced. The man’s drink order, she says, brought her pause.
What Was Wrong With This Man’s Drink Order?
There were a few issues with the date, she says. First, she says that the pair simply had no chemistry. Second, she states that she felt that the man, who was a well-traveled photographer, was trying to belittle her own travel experiences.
“He would, like, s— on me for the places that I’ve been to or the fact that I’m not as well-traveled,” she says. “I feel like I would mention places that I wanna go to, and he was just like, ‘Nah, you gotta go to this place and this place and this place’ and like, ‘That’s not that great.’”
“I don’t know—like, why do you gotta do that?” she adds. “Let me enjoy what I enjoy. And, absolutely, I’m sure there’s better places that I haven’t seen yet—but you don’t have to s— on the places that I like because you’ve seen better.”
However, among other red flags, one thing that stuck out to Holguin was the man’s wine order.
“Then, he orders a Moscato,” she states. “No offense to people who like Moscato, but like, Moscato is the gateway, I feel like, to wine. Like, you drink that when you don’t know wine yet.”
What Your Moscato Order Says About You
For context, Moscato is a wine that is known for being sweet. For example, while a 5-ounce glass of a dry Merlot may have less than 2 grams of sugar, a Moscato can have between 5 and 18 grams of sugar. While Moscato can be a dessert wine, it also pairs nicely with spicy foods and lighter meats.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying a sweeter wine. That said, Moscato does have a stereotype. One Reddit thread called the drink the “chicken tenders of the wine world,” while others have simply derided the beverage as candy-like.
Naturally, that doesn’t tell the whole story. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, it’s commonly believed that Moscato and other sweet wines are more desirable to women, though data does not necessarily back this up. This is why some Moscato is marketed specifically toward women.
Additionally, after Moscato became popular with rappers in the early 2010s, the drink and other sweet wines saw a rise in popularity amongst Black diners—and, subsequently, a series of racially motivated stereotypes emerged about the drink and those who order it.
Ordering Moscato Isn’t Bad
In a TikTok DM exchange, Holguin clarified that she doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with ordering Moscato. In fact, for the nervous dudes out there who love a sweet beverage, she says that no drink order is an immediate red flag—unless one drinks too much.
Instead, she says that this specific Moscato order was only an issue because of the pair’s previous conversation.
“I was talking to him about how I really wanted to go to Italy and how I’m planning on going there in September this year, and he’s like, ‘Oh, where are you going in Italy?’ He’s like, ‘I love Italy. It’s where I’ve been the most. I’ve traveled all over, and blah blah blah.'”
When she answered that she wanted to and planned to visit cities like Naples, he responded that she shouldn’t go there and should instead go to places of which Holguin had never heard.
“He’s like, ‘I spent so much time there, and like, really learned so much about the culture and, like, really immersed myself and went to all these wineries where we drink straight out of the wine barrel,'” she explains.
It was only because he said this that the Moscato order struck her as odd.
“I just don’t think it’s a wine that wine drinkers tend to choose,” she says, adding that she only made note of it because of the context.
So, Should I Order Moscato?
In her video, Holguin says that she believes Moscato to be the “gateway” to wine.
She’s actually partially correct about this. A 2021 study found that 1 in 3 new wine consumers entered the wine market with a sweet wine. Other studies, such as this one from 2018, also found that people tend to prefer sweeter wines when they’re just learning about wine, then gradually come to prefer dryer, less-sweet wines.
That doesn’t mean that someone drinking Moscato or a similar sweet wine is a newbie. In fact, sweeter wines are taking up a bigger share of the American wine market in recent years. Sweet and flavored wines accounted for over 30% of all wine bottles sold in the United States in 2023, and from 2022 to 2023, the sales of sweet wine grew by 10%.
So, if you’re at a bar and you order a sweet wine, there’s definitely a chance that one will associate you with their preconceived notions about the kinds of people who order sweet wines or believe that you’re new to wines.
In response, you can open a conversation about the kinds of wine you like. Alternatively, if you truly are new to wine, you can begin a dialogue about what other wines you could try or why your conversation partner prefers one wine over another.
At the end of the day, if Moscato is just the kind of wine that you like, drink it with pride. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a sweeter wine.