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Consensus between Ratings of Red Bordeaux Wines by Prominent Critics and Correlations with Prices 2004–2010 and 2011–2016: Ashton Revisited and Expanded

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

Marc F. Luxen
Marc F. Luxen*
Affiliation:
Satori Research, Pluutwerf 43, Gouda, The Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Wine consumers and producers make decisions partly on ratings of wine critics. Research into reliability (correspondence of repeated ratings of the same wines by one critic) and consensus (correspondence of ratings between critics or competitions) have yielded low estimates. However, Ashton (2013), looking at the consensus among only prominent critics of red Bordeaux, vintages 2004–2010, found a correlation of around 0.60. Here, I revisit these data, and extend the analyses to the years 2011–2016 for the same wines, but with additional new critics. Agreement among the critics (r = 0.57) of these new years is comparable to those found by Ashton (r = 0.60), with a slight upward trend. Overall, critics agree more about what they do not like. Regarding prices and ratings, wines score below-average ratings when they cost less than 35 euro, and higher ratings between 35 and 100 euro. In wines more than 100 euro there is no correlation between ratings and price. (JEL Classification: C99)

Keywords

Bordeaux quality ratingswine critic agreementwine critic consensuswine quality evaluationhedonic wine evaluationrating and costwine prices
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Wine Economics , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 83 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2018 

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Footnotes

I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for useful comments.

References

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