The upstairs room in Helen's Garden Res-taurant in Canton one Thursday eve-ning is bathed in candlelight and filled with the hum of talk, music and laughter.
About a dozen women sit at tables in the art-filled nook and chat as they nibble from carefully arranged trays of hors d'oeuvres and sip glasses of rose.
Welcome to the Women's Wine & Dine, a monthly event with wine tastings, a three-course gourmet meal, guest speakers and goody bags. No men are allowed.
The dinners, which began in April and sell out every month, offer women the chance to learn about wine in a relaxed "sisterly" setting while raising money for an organization that helps homeless women, says Wine & Dine founder Monyka Berrocosa-Marbach, a 34-year-old food and wine consultant.
The events also reflect a larger trend nationwide that is driving something of a feminine revolution in the multibillion-dollar American wine industry. Across the country and beyond, in private homes, bistros, art galleries and other venues, more women are attending wine tastings and buying and consuming more wine.
"I think women have always been interested in wine, but there were few opportunities to learn about it," says Marbach, a Montreal native who runs a food and wine consulting company, Grape Ventures, and lends her expertise to Smart Woman magazine and WAMD-AM radio.
"For years, the wine industry had not created a welcoming opportunity for women," she says. "Now all of a sudden, there's been a surge in women-and-wine groups, and people are paying more attention."
The increasing number of female wine enthusiasts is having an impact on the wine industry's advertising and marketing strategies, and even its product packaging.
"We have TV channels and everything else you can think of for women, but for some reason the wine industry was really slow to market to women," says national wine columnist Leslie Sbrocco, author of Wine for Women: A Guide to Buying, Pairing, and Sharing Wine, billed as the first book of its kind written exclusively for women. "There's been this image of male-dominated collectors or talk of how much you pay for it."
"But women own wineries and make wine," she says during a phone chat from her Sonoma County, Calif., home. "They buy wine in the supermarket. They go to restaurants and make choices. Women have buying power. And now the industry knows that."
