Climate change is a major challenge in wine production. Temperatures are increasing worldwide, and most regions are exposed to water deficits more frequently. Higher temperatures trigger advanced phenology. This shifts the ripening phase to warmer periods in the summer, which will affect grape composition, in particular with respect to aroma compounds. Increased water stress reduces yields and modifies fruit composition. The frequency of extreme climatic events (hail, flooding) is likely to increase. Depending on the region and the amount of change, this may have positive or negative implications on wine quality. Adaptation strategies are needed to continue to produce high-quality wines and to preserve their typicity according to their origin in a changing climate. The choice of plant material is a valuable resource to implement these strategies. (JEL Classifications: Q13, Q54)

The hedonic technique is applied to wines. In the price equation we include objective characteristics appearing on the label, as well as sensory characteristics and a grade assigned by expert tasters. We have three almost identically structured data sets (two on Bordeaux wines, and one on Burgundy wines). The results are used to make comparisons between two of the most important wine regions in France, and comparisons over time (the two Bordeaux data sets are sampled at different points in time). (JEL Classification: D49.)

Another puzzle is the lack of correlation between price and pleasure. Perhaps it is not so surprising that a first-rate example of a little known wine can seem much more memorable than something more famous selling at ten times the price; part of the thrill is the excitement of discovery and the feeling of having beaten the system. What is more extraordinary is the wild price variation at the very top end. Demand bubbles up mysteriously, apparently fuelled by fashion and rumour as much as by intrinsic quality.—Jancis Robinson, Confessions of a Wine Lover, Penguin Books, 1997.

We provide a mini-history of the craft beer segment of the U.S. brewing industry with particular emphasis on producer-entrepreneurs but also other pioneers involved in the promotion and marketing of craft beer who made contributions to brewing it. In contrast to the more commodity-like lager beer produced by the macrobrewers in the United States, the output of the craft segment more closely resembles the product differentiation and fragmentation in the wine industry. We develop a database that tracks the rise of craft brewing using various statistical measures of output, number of producers, concentration within the segment, and compares output with that of the macro and import segment of the industry. Integrating our database into Geographic Information Systems software enables us to map the spread of the craft beer segment from its taproot in San Francisco across the United States. Finally, we use regression analysis to explore variables influencing the entrants and craft beer production at the state level from 1980 to 2012. We use Tobit estimation for production and negative binomial estimation for the number of brewers. We also analyze whether strategic effects (e.g., locating near competing beer producers) explain the location choices of craft beer producers. (JEL Classifications: L26, L66, N82, R12)

Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a non-negative relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. These findings suggest that non-expert wine consumers should not anticipate greater enjoyment of the intrinsic qualities of a wine simply because it is expensive or is appreciated by experts. (JEL Classification: L15, L66, M30, Q13)

Wine judge performance at a major wine competition has been analyzed from 2005 to 2008 using replicate samples. Each panel of four expert judges received a flight of 30 wines imbedded with triplicate samples poured from the same bottle. Between 65 and 70 judges were tested each year. About 10 percent of the judges were able to replicate their score within a single medal group. Another 10 percent, on occasion, scored the same wine Bronze to Gold. Judges tend to be more consistent in what they don't like than what they do. An analysis of variance covering every panel over the study period indicates only about half of the panels presented awards based solely on wine quality. (JEL Classification: Q13, Q19)

Fine wine has a few characteristics that differentiate it from other agricultural commodities and beverages, rendering it an interesting topic for economists. Fine wine can regularly fetch bottle prices that exceed several thousand dollars. It can be stored a long time and can increase in value with age. Fine-wine quality and prices are extraordinarily sensitive to fluctuations in the weather the year in which the grapes were grown. Wine is an experience good, that is, its quality cannot be ascertained before consumption. As a result, consumers often rely on “expert opinion” regarding quality and maturation prospects. This article describes the emergence and the unparalleled rise of wine economics from the 1980s to the present and sheds light on its three main topics: finance, climate change, and the role of expert opinion. (JEL Classification: Q1, G11, Q54, L15)

Grapevines are cultivated on six out of seven continents, between latitudes 4° and 51° in the Northern Hemisphere and between latitudes 6° and 45° in the Southern Hemisphere across a large diversity of climates (oceanic, warm oceanic, transition temperate, continental, cold continental, Mediterranean, subtropical, attenuated tropical, and arid climates). Accordingly, the range and magnitude of environmental factors differ considerably from region to region and so do the principal environmental constraints for grape production. The type, number, and magnitude of environmental constraints are currently undergoing changes due to shifts in climate patterns already observed for the past and predicted for the future. These changes are already affecting grape composition with observed changes in sugar and acidity concentrations. As with other components such as polyphenols or aroma compounds, their relationships to environmental changes are more difficult to quantify. In general, one can divide the expected climatic changes during the grape-ripening period into two scenarios: warmer and dryer and warmer and moister, with different responses for red and white grape varieties. The production challenges within this broad separation are vastly different, and the strategies to ensure a sustainable product need to be adapted accordingly. The economic impact of these changes is difficult to assess. An in-depth analysis is necessary to construct relevant scenarios and risk analysis for individual regions and to quantify the costs and/or benefits of regional climate developments. (JEL Classifications: Q1, Q54)

The wine market in the European Union is heavily regulated. Despite the many distortions in the wine market as a consequence, reforming the regulations has proven difficult. This paper analyzes the political economy mechanism that created existing wine regulations. We document the historical origins of the regulations and relate these to political pressures that resulted from international integration, technological innovations, and economic developments. (JEL Classifications: K23, L51, N44, N54, Q13)

In this article, we provide an overview of the extensive literature on the impact of weather and climate on grapes and wine with the goal of describing how climate change is likely to affect their production. We start by discussing the physical impact of weather on vine phenology, berry composition, and yields and then survey the economic literature measuring the effects of temperature on wine quality, prices, costs, and profits and how climate change will affect these. We also describe what has been learned so far about possible adaptation strategies for grape growers that would allow them to mitigate the economic effects of climate change. We conclude that climate change is likely to produce winners and losers, with the winners being those closer to the North and South Poles. There are also likely to be some substantial short-run costs as growers adapt to climate change. Nevertheless, wine making has survived through thousands of years of recorded history, a history that includes large climate changes. (JEL Classifications: Q54, Q13)

With increasing globalisation and interactions between cultures, countries are converging in many ways, including in their consumption patterns. The extent to which this has been the case in alcohol consumption has been the subject of previous studies, but those studies have been limited in scope to a specific region or group of high-income countries or to just one or two types of alcohol. The present study updates earlier findings, covers all countries of the world since 1961, and introduces two new summary indicators to capture additional dimensions of the extent of convergence in total alcohol consumption and in its mix of beverages. It also distinguishes countries according to whether their alcoholic focus was on wine, beer, or spirits in the early 1960s as well as their geographic regions and their real per-capita incomes. For recent years, we add expenditure data and compare alcohol with soft drink retail expenditure, and we show the difference it makes when unrecorded alcohol volumes are included as part of total alcohol consumption. The final section summarizes our findings and suggests that further research could provide new demand elasticity estimates and use econometrics to explain the varying extents of convergence over time, space, and beverage type. (JEL Classifications: D12, L66, N10)

Using a dataset that spans the period 1996 to 2007 and contains transaction prices for all reported auctions at the Chicago Wine Company, we analyze how the prices of high-end wines have evolved during this time period. The best wines according to characteristics like vintage, rating and ranking earn higher returns and tend to have a lower variance than poorer wines. Nevertheless, the different categories of wines seem to follow a rather similar trend over the long run. Wine returns are only slightly correlated with other assets and can consequently be used to reduce the risk of an equity portfolio. Wine looks even more attractive when the investor also has concerns about the skewness of his portfolio. However, the part to be invested in wine is reduced once the kurtosis is included into the analysis. Finally, it seems advisable to diversify across different wine categories as their short-run movements are partially independent of each other. First growths and wines rated as extraordinary by Robert Parker deliver the best tradeoff in terms of portfolio expected returns, variance, skewness and kurtosis for most investor preference settings under consideration. (JEL Classification: C60, G11, Q11)

For repeat transactions data from monthly auction hammer prices, we analyze the level and quality of Bordeaux wine returns using the Fama-French Three-Factor Model and the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Returns average up to 0.75% per month above those predicted by these models. Further, investment grade wines benefit from low exposure to market risk factors, thus offering a valuable dimension of portfolio diversification. These findings are consistent with simple theoretical considerations and support a documented growing interest in wine investments (JEL Classification: G11.G12).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of expert opinion on the pricing of Bordeaux wines. To this end, we compile an original dataset including (1) retail prices, (2) scores attributed to wines from France, Spain, and the United States by nine experts from 2000 to 2010, and (3) the meteorological conditions under which the grapes were produced. With this dataset, we aim to determine the presence of bias rooted in the subjectivity of the experts. We assume that the expert wine scores have two main components: (1) an objective one that is driven by the fundamentals of wine production (the quality of soil, producers' skills, and climate conditions) and (2) a subjective one that is determined by the individual opinion of the experts. We use control function techniques to compare the respective impacts of these two factors and find that prices are influenced more deeply by the fundamental quality of the wine than they are by the judge's subjectivity. Furthermore, we notice the great impact of “highest ratings” on pricing, which we interpret as a “marketing effect”: the most favorable score is likely to be the most publicized, which influences the price of the respective wine. (JEL Classifications: C21, D89, L15)

Climate change will have a profound effect on vine growing worldwide. Wine quality will also be affected, which will raise economic issues. Possible adaptations may result from changes in plant material, viticultural techniques, and the wine-making process. Relocation of vineyards to cooler areas and increased irrigation are other options, but they may result in potential conflicts for land and water use. Grapes are currently grown in many regions around the world, and growers have adapted their practices to the wide range of climatic conditions that can be found among or inside these areas. This knowledge is precious for identifying potential adaptations to climate change. Because climate change affects all activities linked to wine production (grape growing, wine making, wine economics, and environmental issues), multidisciplinary research is needed to guide growers to continue to produce high-quality wines in an economical and environmentally sustainable way. An example of such an interdisciplinary study is the French LACCAVE (long-term adaptation to climate change in viticulture and enology) project, in which researchers from 23 institutes work together on all issues related to the impact of climate change on wine production. (JEL Classifications: Q1, Q5)

This paper considers the levels of reliability and consensus of wine quality judgments found in studies of experienced wine judges. Both reliability, which concerns the similarity of repeat judgments of a particular wine by the same judge, and consensus, which concerns the similarity of judgments of a particular wine across judges, are necessary requirements for expertise in wine judging. Reliability and consensus levels found in wine judging are compared to those documented by a large body of research in six other fields: medicine, clinical psychology, business, auditing, personnel management, and meteorology. In all fields, including wine judging, reliability is greater than consensus. Both reliability and consensus are, on average, substantially lower in wine judging than in other fields, although tremendous variability exists across judges in every field. Overall, little support is found for the idea that experienced wine judges should be regarded as experts. (JEL Classification: C91)

In this paper, we use unique data from the market for Bordeaux wine to test the hypothesis that consumers are willing to pay for expert opinion because it is accurate. Using proprietary indicators of the quality of the vintage, which are based on both publicly and privately available information, we find that additional publicly available information on the weather improves the expert's predictions of subsequent prices. This establishes that the expert opinions are not efficient, in the sense that they can be easily improved, and that these opinions must be demanded, at least in part, for some purpose other than their accuracy. (JEL Classification: D8, Q13)

In this paper, we use a revised, expanded, and updated version of a global model first developed by Wittwer et al. (2003) to project the wine markets of its 44 countries plus seven residual country groups to 2018. Because real exchange rate (RER) changes have played a key role in the fortunes of wine market participants in some countries in recent years, we use the model to analyze their impact, first retrospectively during 2007–11 and then prospectively during the period to 2018 under two alternative sets of RERs: no change, and a halfway return to 2009 rates. In both scenarios, we assume a return to the gradual trend toward premium wines and away from nonpremium wines. The other major development expected to affect the world's wine trade is growth in China's import demand. Alternative simulations provide a range of possibilities, but even the low-growth scenario suggests that China's place in global wine markets is likely to become increasingly prominent. (JEL Classifications: C53, F11, F17, Q13).

The purpose of the study was to investigate the respective influences of price and country of origin as extrinsic cues on consumer evaluations of wine quality when all intrinsic cues are experienced through sensory perception. Taste testing experiments were conducted (N = 263) using Chardonnay as the test product in a 3 (country of origin, COO) × 3 (price) × 3 (acid level) conjoint analysis fractional factorial design. Price and COO were both found to be more important contributors to perception of wine quality than taste. Reliance on extrinsic cues was found to remain extremely robust even when all intrinsic cues were available through sensory experience for respondent evaluation. The research demonstrated that even when evaluating a product through consumption, consumer belief in the price/value schema dominates quality assessment. These findings mean that marketers cannot assume that intrinsic product attributes, even when experienced, will be weighted and interpreted accurately by consumers. The research significantly advances our understanding of consumers' use of extrinsic cues (price and COO specifically), and their respective influence in their determination of both expected and experienced quality. (JEL Classification: Q11, D12, M31)

Globalization has created an international wine market and global brands. However, consumers continue to regard regional origin as a dominant criterion in their wine buying decisions. Indicators of collective regional reputation as well as individual producer (or brand) reputation guide consumers in their buying decisions. We measure regional and brand reputation indicators for 27 growing regions around the world. Regional reputation is based on a region's overall quality performance through time. Positive and negative brand reputation based on relative regional peer performance is a distinct feature of this empirical application. Noting competing as well as common interest among regional producers, we hypothesize that wines from producers with a high quality reputation rely more on their own strengths and will depend less on their region's reputation and vice versa. We also test whether this assertion is valid over time covering six recent vintages. We apply a hedonic model to measure the significance of these regional and brand reputation indicators in determining wine prices. Our model largely confirms our hypothesis, but it also suggests that for some regions (Germany and New Zealand), high quality brands rely heavily on overall regional reputation. In other regions (including Napa and Sonoma Valley), high reputation brands seem to lose their strength and start to rely on regional reputation. Regions holding on to their strong individual brand reputations include the Rhone Valley, Spain, and Bordeaux. The analysis sheds light on how regional and producer brands are performing as wine markets mature in terms of global branding and consumers becoming more knowledgeable about wine regions, quality, and reputation. (JEL Classification: D4, L1, Q13)

This paper analyzes the causes of the rise and the fall of the Algerian wine industry. It is hard to imagine in the twenty-first century global wine economy, but until about 50 years ago Algeria was the largest exporter of wine in the world—and by a wide margin. Between 1880 and 1930 Algerian wine production grew dramatically. Equally spectacular was the decline of Algerian wine production: today, Algeria produces and exports little wine. There was an important bidirectional impact between developments in the Algerian wine sector and French regulations. French regulations had a major impact on the Algerian wine industry, and the growth of the Algerian wine industry triggered the introduction of important wine regulations in France at the beginning of the twentieth century and during the 1930s. Important elements of these regulations are still present in European wine policy today. (JEL Classifications: K23, L51, N44, N54, Q13)