(WSJ) - MANY YEARS AGO, when I first met the wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr., he told me something that I have never forgotten. "My wife, Pat, has a much better palate than I do," he said. (Was it really possible that the most influential wine critic of the modern age was a mere runner-up to a woman named Pat?) The idea that women are better tasters than men is hardly new. It's a "truth" I've heard repeated over and over again—though, oddly enough, it's almost always asserted by men. But do they really believe it—or are they tossing some sort of an oenological bone to the "fairer sex"? And more important, is it even correct?