Custom Taxonomy versus Post Meta for "featured" status

i’m wondering if anyone has any opinions on using a custom taxonomy versus post meta for a mutually exclusive categorization such as “status” where I want to restrict the possibilities to 1 of 3 choices: featured, normal and excluded.

i’ve got it completely worked out w/ a taxonomy, hiding the UI, and replacing it w/ a metabox. i’m just wondering if post meta would be a better option. now we can query posts by both, so is there any performance difference between the two query types?

i’m also doing some customization of the columns in the edit screen, and need to be able to sort by this status. it was sort of complicated making it work w/ taxonomy, but it can also be done w/ post meta right?