What A Drink Says About A Girl

Wouldn’t it be great if you could walk into a bar and read a girl’s mind? What if you could tell at first glance whether she was looking for a distinguished man with discriminating taste or a wild frat boy with unbridled testosterone?

Sure, a woman’s fashion sense might unveil secrets about her drives and desires. A girl with a butterfly tattoo on her lower back is more likely to be adventurous than one wearing loose jeans and a baggy sweater. And a woman with a plunging neckline and five-inch stilettos has to be confident to flaunt her body...

But what if you could tell more about a woman from the drink in her hand? What if her taste in alcohol revealed whether she wanted to be carried gently into a candle-lit bedroom, or pushed passionately against a wall?

Bartenders and sociologists reckon that a woman ordering a margarita, a woman sipping a gin and tonic, and a woman holding a Merlot are all in different classes. They don’t think alike, act alike or want the same things in life. So a man should take a woman’s drink into account before approaching her. It could make the difference between walking away with her phone number – or an egg on your face.

Psychologist Ros Taylor has spent years studying human behaviour in Britain. She’s written several books that delve into what moves the human mind to act, and has recently investigated what a woman’s drink says about her personality.

Taylor took a poll at a popular pub in London, questioning customers on their favourite drinks and putting them through a written test that revealed hidden attributes of their personalities. The results convinced Taylor that a girl’s drink can reveal as much about her personality as her clothes and hair. “This is understandable as everything is an extension of ourselves,” she says.

Simply put, a woman ordering a Jack Daniels and Coke knows that a stiff cocktail will get her to her destination faster than a weak beer. Traditionally, most men learned this early in life; and today it’s no different with women. On the basis of their drink preferences, Taylor came up with five different personality types: Mature, Entrepreneurial, Extroverted, Stable and Experimental.

Let’s start with the easiest: the Extrovert, recognisable as the girl drinking tequila. You’ve all seen margarita girls. They’ll talk to anyone, so they probably won’t shoot you down for working up the courage to approach them. For a guy with a low self-confidence, this is the girl to start with. Tequila girls are always the fun ones, smiling, laughing and flirting with strangers. They rarely meet a guy they don’t like, and for some reason, also seem to understand male-dominated sports like football. That’s because at heart, these women are just like men: they want to live for today.

Dennis is a bartender on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He’s so popular that he doesn’t even have a last name with his customers: patrons yell “Dennis” across the bar as if he’s a friend or relative. Dennis didn’t study sociology or psychology at university, but at the school of life. He’s learned from experience that a woman’s drink will tell him everything he needs to know about her personality.

“When a girl walks into my bar and orders a margarita, I know it’s going to be a good night, especially if she’s cute. A girl who orders a tequila shot wants instant gratification,” he says. “And when she’s encouraging others to join in, you can bet she’s out for a good time. You don’t want to give a girl like that time to think. If she’s cute and smiles at you, approach her fast because her attention span is short. If you don’t, she’s on to the next guy.”

Taylor agrees: her study found that tequila-drinkers weren’t hung up on status. When asked to name a car that best fitted their personality, they opted for averagely-priced models such as a Volkswagen Jetta, rather than an upmarket Mercedes. “A girl drinking margaritas is living for the moment,” explains Dennis. “She has to because after having three or four margaritas, she’s not going to have a next day. She’s going to be so hung over after that she might as well cross the next day off her calendar.”

A woman drinking rum or lager is the Experimental type. Her definition of experimenting is probably different from a guy’s – she’s not looking for a threesome or bondage. “Inspiration and invigoration come from meeting and interacting with other disparate, off-the-wall people,” says Taylor. “They can be slightly eccentric in behaviour and rather self-consciously enjoy their difference.” Often found in neighbourhood bars and likely to enjoy jazz and the arts, such women are creative, though you may need to push them a bit to bring out their wild side.

Conversely, the Stable type prefers drinking gin-based cocktails. “They are into relationships, soap operas, novels with happy ending and saving the whale,” Taylor asserts. If you meet a girl drinking gin, Dennis recommends that you act like a friend who can be trusted at all times, and don’t come on in a hurry. “You can make a mistake with a girl drinking tequila. She’ll be forgiving because she knows life in the present comes at you fast. But with a girl drinking gin, be cautious with your words.

Entrepreneurial types drink white wine or vodka martinis. Fashionable, aspirational and with expensive tastes, they want to be in charge yet enjoy being challenged by a worthy mate. When approaching such girls it helps if you can display an expensive watch; according to Taylor, they identify themselves with executive cars like a Mercedes or Audi. Be free with your emotions and opinions – they’ll respond to this.

Women drinking Merlot or other red wines are likely to be the oldest in the bar or, if they’re young, then old at heart. As Dennis notes, “Few women order Merlot at my bar” because it caters to mostly young people. “It’s hard to find a young girl out of college drinking Merlot.” According to Taylor, a woman drinking Merlot will likely be organized, a professional and rarely adventurous – hence the designation Mature.

So the next time you’re in a bar, take a moment to look at the woman’s hand. She’ll be pleased to see a man paying attention to a nonsexual part of her body, and won’t suspect that the drink in her hand discloses nearly everything a man needs to know about her hidden passions and desires.