Cat Fitzpatrick writes Cat Fitzpatrick is the author of Glamourpuss (Topside Press, 2016) and The Call Out (Seven Stories, 2022). She is the recipient of the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction and the 2018 American Library Association Stonewall Award for Literature. She is the Editrix at LittlePuss Press and teaches at Rutgers University. Her next book is The Dinner Party, forthcoming from Seven Stories in Spring 2026. Long ago, she did about 2/3 of the WSET diploma course, but dropped out because working in the wine trade as a trans woman in 2005 was giving her a nervous breakdown
Gewürztraminer: the most transsexual grape
It’s a trying time to be trans. Followers of current affairs may have noticed that in both the US and the UK our long-held (though always limited) legal rights are now being stripped away by indefensible court decisions, as a result of an extended and well-funded campaign of hate in the mainstream press. Amidst all this, as a transsexual, one question has been preoccupying me: Which is the most transsexual grape variety? I believe the answer is clear. It is Gewürztraminer. Obviously.
This is not to say Gewürztraminer is my favourite grape variety. It’s probably weird to have a favourite grape variety. Like you pick one kind of grape from this astonishing diversity and proliferation of closely related grapes that we use to make fermented juice and put your little stamp on it, this is mine, it’s my favourite. Weird. But since you ask, my favourite grape variety is Riesling. Obviously.
I do adore Gewürztraminer, though. In 2003 I was young and working in the Oddbins in Tower Hill and we accidentally received, on an purchase order for the basic Trimbach Gewürztraminer 2002, a six-box of the 1993 Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre instead. I had the vague impression Gewürztraminer was a bit tacky and that it certainly didn’t age, but this was too good to pass up, I bought the whole box at the price point of the standard Gewürz, and with my staff discount too, I think about six quid a bottle, which then seemed expensive to me. I’d never really drunk old wine before, I thought ten years was agèd, and I was amazed by how good it was: how elegant, rich, sour, and above all stony, like licking rocks.
I remember sneaking a bottle of it (and a wine glass, natch) into the Odeon Camden Town for an empty late-night showing of The Station Agent, and drinking the whole thing by myself. This remains one of the most ecstatic wine experiences of my life. Good movie, too. I saw Peter Dinklage on the street in Brooklyn the other day. He is just as hot in person.
So Gewürztraminer is great. But also, more importantly, Gewürztraminer is trans. I make this judgment on absurd, baseless grounds. As someone who lives a life of publishing trans literature, putting on trans literary events, throwing elaborate dinner parties to which I only invite transsexuals (I have a book coming out in the spring called The Dinner Party containing a long rhyming poem about such a dinner, specifying the wines in detail) I think I have a pretty good feel for transness, and so I am just telling you, yeah this grape is totally trans. But I have also prepared a list of extremely persuasive arguments to illustrate my case.
First, Gewürztrmainer has always been with us, and always will be, just like transsexuals. Traminer, or Savagnin, of which Gewürztraminer is a form (as Pinot Noir is a form of Pinot) has been, anyway. Traminer is recorded in documents from 1000 AD, and seeds with identical DNA to modern Savagnin have been found in 900-year-old archaeological sites. Like Gouais Blanc, it sits upstream of the great modern grape varieties. It’s a grandparent of Riesling and the progenitor of Sauvignon Blanc, and through that, it is the mother of Cabernet Sauvignon. And it’s a parent of Chenin Blanc. And and and….
Similarly, if you dig up a lot of clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia and rediscover the history and literature of the civilisations what were ancient when the civilisations we think are ancient were new, you find they are full of cross-dressers and gender changes. Huh, fancy that.
Secondly, Gewürztraminer is supposedly instantly recognisable (of Gewürz in blind tastings, as of transsexuals in public life, the haters are prone to insist WE CAN ALWAYS TELL) but covers a lot of variation. It is constantly mutating. Caroline Schoffit of Domaine Schoffit once told me that older clones of Gewürz are spicier, hence the name, whereas relatively newer ones have grown more fruity. Certainly, you put Schoffit’s excellent (and underpriced) Cuvee Caroline, from old clones of Gewürz in the Harth vineyard, so spiced and savoury, next to Albert Mann’s laser-guided fruit-bomb of a Mambourg Grand Cru, it becomes clear that Gewürztraminer is not so singular. Add that stony sour Trimbach Seigneurs, and Ostertag’s flowery, gauzy Fronholz to create a second axis and you’re starting to have diversity. And that’s not even considering the sweet styles.
And yet (and yet) there is something distinctive about Gewürztraminer. Even as it contains multitudes, it also stands apart. Riesling may be the greatest, but Albariño, Grüner, or even Assyrtiko have something of the same character. What is like Gewürztraminer? Torrontes? Don’t make me laugh. Viognier? Not even close. Pinot Gris? Pffft. Gewürz is sui generis: excessive, intoxicating (yes all wine is technically intoxicating but you know what I mean) marginal, joyous. It represents a whole range of possibilities, but almost all of them lie beyond the bounds of what other grapes can even dream of. Gewürztraminer is trans.
Thirdly, finally, people are weird about Gewürztraminer. No-one ever says Gewürztraminer is their favourite varietal. Even I, above, rushed to assure you that really I preferred Riesling. You give it to people who don’t know wine, they adore it, it’s their favourite, they call you up two months later from a store to ask the name of that one grape they liked, but as you get really into wine it’s a taste, you gradually intuit, that you’re supposed to outgrow. To look down on a little, politely. Maybe to indulge in furtively, but not to proclaim in public. Just like transsexuals, for some people.
I say enough! Gewürztraminer is the most transsexual grape and it is glorious. Let this be a Gewürztraminer summer, a hot sticky summer of beautiful weird tall girls drinking heady luscious golden wine on stoops and in empty cinemas and in meadows. Gewürztraminer is the most transsexual grape. We must embrace it!
The image was provided by the author.
