In this article, we use attendance data from La Cité du Vin, a wine museum in the city of Bordeaux, to assess the impact of the recent wave of terror that affected France on wine tourism. We use recent count regression estimation techniques suited for time series data to build a prediction model of the demand for attendance at this museum. We conclude that the institution lost about 5,000 visitors over 426 days, during which 14 successive terrorist attacks took place. This corresponds to almost 1% of the total number of visitors in the sample period. (JEL Classifications: L83, Z30)

Austria has a quite small cooperative sector, only about 10 to 15% of all Austrian wine is produced by wine cooperatives. The first wine cooperative was established in 1882 (Eisenstadt-Ruster-Weinproduzentenverein). An intense wave of cooperative establishment took place in Austria and Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, lasting through the 1960s, that was due to the unfortunate general socio-economic situation of vintners.

We analyzed data from Oxford University Blind Tasting Society's 2018 training season to assess whether blind tasting training improves accuracy. Over time, guesses for grape variety increased in terms of accuracy as well as within-group agreement. Moreover, for grape variety, location, and vintage, the chances of the most common within-group guess being correct were significantly higher than the underlying frequency distribution. Finally, we observed a shift in preference towards older wines, with those with little initial experience gaining a preference for greater acidity and alcohol, and decreasing their preference for oak. Our results have important implications for growing wine markets with an increasingly educated consumer population. (JEL Classifications: C91, C92, D83, L15, L66).

Given the growing importance of the wine industry in the United States, wine special interests are on the rise. Data shows that campaign contributions from the wine industry to officials running for state offices have increased over time. Given this reality, one can expect wine excise tax to remain low in states that receive higher campaign contributions. In addition, there are theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that these tax rates are interdependent based on Tiebout competition and yardstick competition. Based on this reasoning, one can hypothesize wine excise tax rates to be spatially dependent. In this study, I test this hypothesis using state-level campaign contributions data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics and Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Inc. and find that there is strong statistical evidence of spatial dependence between state wine excise tax rates. (JEL Classifications: C12, C23, H71)

This article presents a micro-macro integrated model/framework for the disaggregated quantitative assessment of the impacts of various shocks generated in five socio-economic and climate-driven simulations on the wine-grape sector in Veneto, Italy. (JEL Classifications: C01, C67, Q12, Q54)

To test whether consumers can distinguish among different bottled waters and, if so, whether they prefer some to others, we recruited more than 100 subjects to participate in a blind taste test that consisted of four brands of bottled water featured in a restaurant's water menu and a guidebook to fine waters. The tasting involved three successive experiments. First, our subjects tried to distinguish bottled waters in a sensory discrimination test. They were only slightly better than random chance at doing so. Next, they rated bottled waters and tap water on a 14-point scale used at an international water competition. Some subjects preferred the inexpensive tap water to any of the bottled waters, and there was no association or a weak negative association between a bottled water's price and its rating. Finally, our subjects tried to distinguish tap from bottled water while matching the bottled waters to expert descriptions. They were no better than random chance at doing either of those things. Similar results have been found in previous taste tests of beer and wine. Overall, our results suggest consumers do not have strong preferences over different bottled waters to the extent they can even tell a difference. (JEL Classifications: D12, Q25)

This research examines long-run changes in alcohol consumption patterns for the United States, at the state level, and presents forecasts for per capita consumption of beer, wine, and spirits developed using the ARIMA methodology. The evidence is then presented on the extent of convergence in consumption through time. This evidence shows that from the 1970s through the early 2000s, a pattern of convergence in both the level of consumption and the consumption mix was evident, but since the early 2000s, and unlike the pattern observed globally, there has been a reversal of this trend. The changes in consumption through time are illustrated via ternary plots. Bayesian estimation methods are used to formally describe changes in historical consumption patterns and to investigate the impact of policy settings on consumption forecasts. There were no systematic correlations found between alcohol policy settings and forecast future consumption changes, or tax rate levels and forecast consumption changes. (JEL Classifications: D12, I18, L66)

Much research shows that women and men have different taste acuities and preferences. If female and male judges tend to assign different ratings to the same wines, then the gender balances of the judge panels will bias awards. Existing research supports the null hypothesis, however, that finding is based on small sample sizes. This article presents the results for a large sample; 260 wines and 1,736 wine-score observations. Subject to the strong qualification that non-gender-related variation is material, the results affirm that female and male judges do assign about the same ratings to the same wines. The expected value of the difference in their mean ratings is zero. (JEL Classifications: A10, C00, C10, C12, D12)

The Norwegian per capita sales of wine have more than doubled over the past 20 years, while the sales of sprits and beer have declined. These changes are likely to be the effect of changes in economic, demographic, and attitudinal factors as well as the availability of wine. We estimated age-period-cohort (APC) logit models using data from a large repeated cross-sectional survey over the period 1991–2015. The estimation results indicate substantial effects of the APC variables as well as income, availability, and attitudes. The model was used to simulate wine consumption over the life cycle in different birth cohorts. The simulation results indicate that wine consumption frequency increases by age, and younger cohorts are expected to increase their consumption frequencies more than older cohorts, which suggests an increased wine consumption over time. (JEL Classifications: D12, J10, Q13)

The purpose of this study is to examine how restaurants determine the percentage of wine mark-up. Wine sales are a substantial contributor to restaurants’ profitability, therefore a better understanding of the factors affecting mark-up is critical for the industry. Here, the mark-up is expressed as a percentage over the cost and refers to a cost-plus pricing strategy. Sommeliers from around the world, the majority of whom were members of the International Sommelier Association, were approached to complete our Internet-based questionnaire administered between February 2014 and May 2014. Of the 800 who began the survey, 267 fully completed the questionnaire, generating 1,869 observations. We regressed the declared percentage mark-up against restaurant and wine list characteristics, including managerial practices and wine steward characteristics, and showed that if the restaurants apply a simple rule of thumb to set wine prices, focusing on every price segment, it appears that sommeliers do not have much impact on the percentage mark-up. (JEL Classifications: C23, D21)

We build on Hart and Holmstrom (2010) to analyze the strategic choice of organizational form among wine producers. They claim that a firm's organizational form, when agreed upon competitively, conditions the sense of entitlement of the involved parties. The sense of entitlement determines their feeling of grievance for the outcome of the contract and, if so, their shading efforts by partially withholding consummate performance, creating deadweight losses. We consider two main organizational forms: non-integration, where growers interact in the winemaking process and can highlight the quality of their individual contributions, and integration, where individual contributions to the process may not be explicitly acknowledged and the winemaker cannot exert quality control over the production chain. We present a formal coordination model that illustrates how cooperatives and private firms can coexist within a market. Furthermore, given the reasonable parameter constraints, it illustrates how an integrated cooperative can obtain a higher social surplus than a non-integrated private firm. (JEL Classifications: C72, L22, L66)

In comparison with other organizational forms, cooperatives have been found to offer poor product quality and suffer from low reputation. The main reasons discussed in the literature are information asymmetries, which leads to adverse selection and moral hazard, as well as the absence of profit orientation due to poorly specified and diluted property rights. However, although, in reality, many cooperatives indeed perform poorly, and some are apparently able to completely avoid or at least reduce the problems that are considered prototypical for this hybrid organizational form. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics required to reduce the problems resulting from poorly specified property rights and information asymmetries and, hence, to successfully compete in the market. The data we use to identify the characteristics that separate “good” and “bad” cooperatives encompass 136 organizations in Austria, Germany, and northern Italy. Our logistic regression estimations show that older and larger cooperatives (in terms of acreage) have a significantly higher probability to be listed in at least one of two highly respected wine guides. Moreover, German cooperatives have a significantly lower probability of being listed than either Austrian or northern Italian cooperatives. The findings suggest that differences in performance can be explained by the management of cooperatives. (JEL Classifications: D23, D82, D86, J54, L22, L25, L66, P13, Q13)

The market structure and recipes for beer has been rapidly changing with craft beers attracting more consumers. Perceived hops quality (hoppiness) is one of the main attributes that microbrewers alter to differentiate their products to satisfy consumers’ changing tastes and preferences. We hypothesize that, in addition to manipulating beer-processing conditions, the conditions under which the hops are grown may also influence the final sensory properties of the beer. Using hops from a field experiment coupled with sensory attributes and sociodemographic characteristics from a contingent valuation survey, we analyzed the impact of under-fertilized hop treatments during the growing season on consumers’ willingness to pay for beer. The results indicate that uninformed consumers in a blind tasting could identify the differences in beer made from hops across the fertilization treatments and, thus, implying that all else equal sufficient fertilizer is required to achieve satisfactory hoppiness for which consumers are willing to pay. (JEL Classifications: C91, D12, L66, Q11)

This article analyzes consumer loyalty in the Italian market for Prosecco sparkling wines. In particular, we examine the relationship among wine appellation, price, and consumer loyalty. To that effect, we run a Dirichlet model on Nielsen scan data to estimate brand performance measures and study purchase patterns in the sparkling wine market. We find that Prosecco wines benefit from high-consumer loyalty, and that this loyalty can be explained by both the appeal of the Prosecco appellation and its upper-tier price point. We conclude that promotion strategies with deep discounts, as they affect the appellation's image, might hurt consumer loyalty in the long run. (JEL Classifications: D12, L11, L66, M31)

Crowdfunding has recently emerged as a novel way of financing new ventures. It coincides with a growing interest in wine as an investment good and with a search for new funding opportunities by wine makers. In this study, we examine potential investors willing to engage in wine crowdfunded projects and the kind of revenue that would attract them. We presented an original survey where respondents were asked about their wine consumption and purchase, their knowledge about crowdfunding, their relation to the internet, their investment and project related to wine crowdfunding, and their expectations concerning the returns from this type of contribution. Our results suggest that among all forms of crowdfunding, the donation/voluntary contribution side driven by intrinsic motivation is likely to remain marginal compared to crowdfunding as an investment or a form of early purchase. (JEL Classifications: G11, G12, G21, L17, L66)