Do wine judges give higher scores to wines made with less-known grape varieties?

Florine Livat and Hervé Remaud

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2021, vol. 44, issue 2, 106-117

Abstract: In this study, we investigate judges' decisions for various wines, characterised with various attributes (region of origin, colour, still versus sparkling, and so on), with a focus on grape variety. Our investigation suggests that wine judges tend to score wines made with less-known varieties higher. To support our suggestion, we analysed 27,470 wines from the 2013 to 2016 International Wine and Spirit Competitions. On average, wines made from the top ten varietal grapes are graded lower than wines made from other, less frequently used, grapes. Wines of the new world and those produced under a certification of origin rule are given greater scores. Wine producers should focus on creating wine from less-known grape varieties to increase their chances of getting a higher score (and medal). Consciously or not, wine judges tend to incentivise wine amateurs and buyers to discover less 'mainstream' wines.

Keywords: wine judge; wine score; International Wine and Spirit Competition; IWSC; grape varieties. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=118432 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:44:y:2021:i:2:p:106-117

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().