China was one of the world's most important areas of growth in wine demand in the 2010s, accounting for 7% of the world's wine consumption and 8% of its value of wine imports by 2017. But China's per capita wine consumption peaked in the mid-2010s, and its wine imports have more than halved since then. As well, the sources of China's imports of wine have fluctuated considerably over the past two decades, making this a risky market for wine exporters. Certainly, the COVID-19 disruption played a role, but between 2019 and 2022, the fall in sales was considerably larger for wine (47%) than for spirits (17%) and beer (9%), such that wine's share of alcohol consumption in China fell by two-fifths over those 3 years alone. The article examines the reasons behind the dramatic gyrations in this globally important market and their impact on wine-exporting countries, and speculates on future trends.

Is the quality of a 91-point wine significantly different from that of an 89-point wine? Which wines are underpriced relative to their evaluation of quality? This paper addresses these questions by constructing a novel wine rating system based on scores assigned by a panel of wine experts to a set of wines. Wines are classified in ranked disjoint quality equivalence classes using measures of statistically significant and commercially relevant score differences. The rating system is applied to the “Judgment of Paris” wine competition, to data of Bordeaux en-primeur expert scores and prices, and to expert scores and price categories of a large database of Italian wines. The proposed wine rating system provides an informative assessment of wine quality for producers and consumers and a flexible rating methodology for commercial applications.

While a large body of literature explores how international wine trade correlates with country, market and national industry characteristics, research at firm level on the choice to export (export propensity) and on the importance of exports on production or sales (export intensity) remains scarce. More importantly, a review of the literature reveals inconsistent results across the different studies regarding the variables correlated with export choices. No such analysis was conducted in Italy. Based on a survey of 180 wine firms in Piedmont (Italy), we estimate the variables correlated to export propensity and intensity. Our findings indicate that the most relevant factors include belonging to a wine producer cluster, wine quality and the firm’s legal status. Other variables are analyzed, confirming the divergent findings in the literature. We conclude that local and individual characteristics play an important role in these decisions.

Wine is the most differentiated of all farm products, with much of the differentiation based on the location of production. In this paper, we estimate the effects of climate and vintage weather on California's varietal wine quality and prices. Our analysis is based on a sample of premium wines rated by Wine Spectator magazine between 1994 and 2022 and a comparable sample of secondary market auction prices from K&L Wine Merchants, each matched to spatially detailed weather data from PRISM. We find that extreme temperatures, particularly extremely hot temperatures, caused prices to decline. Absent additional adaptation, climate change will harm wine quality and disrupt quality signals from geographical indications in California's premier wine regions.

This article documents the sudden creation of a significant entrepôt for French wine, particularly Bordeaux claret, in Boulogne-Sur-Mer starting in 1720. Scottish Jacobites who practiced a rebellious version of “fair trade” dominated this commerce, and their network had direct links to 18th-century economic thinkers such as Richard Cantillon, Charles de Montesquieu, and David Hume. The research uses social network analysis to analyze and visualize the concurrent networks, which by the 1750s included the French physiocrats. The research shows how politically inspired actions and strategies affected not only the wine entrepôt’s formation but also the circulation of ideas regarding “fair,” “free,” and balanced trade among Franco-British economic theorists. It also documents the formation of a dedicated claret commodity chain as well as the advent of wine product, packaging, and marketing specialization in the 18th century. These Jacobites formed wine trading firms that lasted long after the relevance of their political objectives had waned.

This study examines the relationship between cannabis and wine consumption, investigating whether these substances function as substitutes or complements. Using data from an online survey of 523 German wine consumers, including 215 cannabis users, we analyze consumption across four wine categories: white, red, rosé/sparkling, and sweet wines. To address potential bias from endogeneity, we employ an IV-Ordered Probit model with endogenous covariates—cannabis user/usage. The findings provide evidence of a complementary relationship: cannabis users report significantly higher wine consumption than non-users across most categories, except red wine. The effect is particularly pronounced for rosé/sparkling and sweet wines. More frequent cannabis use also correlates with increased wine consumption. Motivation-specific analyses reveal nuanced dynamics. Using cannabis for relaxation decreases wine consumption, suggesting substitution, while enhancement motives increase rosé/sparkling consumption. Social motives, however, show negative associations with these wines. Overall, results suggest that the nature of the cannabis–wine relationship depends on user motivations.

The announcements by President Trump in April 2025, of unilateral hikes of 10–50 percentage points on U.S. import tariffs on all countries’ goods, are under threat of coming into force on July 9, 2025. This article estimates their likely effects on trade in alcoholic beverages, using a global model of national beverage markets. Various scenarios are compared. They suggest that if the tariff hike was restricted to just 20% on goods from the European Union, the value of global trade in each of the three beverages would shrink by one-tenth. But the U.S. tariff hikes are to apply to all countries’ goods, which are estimated to shrink global exports by 13% for wine, 22% for spirits and 33% for beer. In that broader scenario, most countries’ wine exports would shrink, but exports of beer and spirits would expand for some countries thanks to the trade divergence generated by the varying tariff hikes. If the increasing uncertainty associated with these developments led to a cumulated 2% drop in consumer spending, virtually all wine-exporting countries would sell less wine to both the U.S. and the rest of the world. That is, wine trade destruction would outweigh trade diversion.

This article examines the determinants of the profitability of European wine companies using dynamic panel models, analyzing 1,025 firms from 14 countries between 2015 and 2021. Unlike previous research that focused mainly on financial variables, this study incorporates financial, nonfinancial, macroeconomic, and institutional factors to provide a broader understanding of profitability drivers. Given significant differences between the individual categories, separate analyses were conducted for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large and very large companies (LVL) companies. The results show that higher debt reduces profitability, while a higher ratio of cash flow to operating revenue and firm growth improves profitability. Investment in fixed assets increases the profitability of SMEs, while net asset turnover positively affects both SMEs and LVL firms. Labor productivity significantly influences profitability when SMEs and LVL firms are analyzed separately. Public and private limited companies are more profitable than partnerships or sole traders. Finally, the rule of law positively affects SME profitability.

Until a few years ago, moderate alcohol consumption was thought to have (mild) beneficial effects on health. However, some recent studies have suggested that “there is no safe level” of alcohol intake. Consequently, public health institutions have responded by advising against any level of alcohol use and suggesting governments a number of policies to reduce overall alcohol consumption. Nonetheless, medical studies suffer from a variety of intrinsic limitations that could undermine the reliability of their findings, especially when focusing on low-intake levels. On the one hand, we show that the literature on alcohol consumption may suffer from publication bias; such a problem is known to be present in the scientific literature in general. On the other hand, we discuss other potential sources of bias, which are inevitable due to the infeasibility of randomized controlled trials. We assess a sample of articles for the presence of omitted variable bias, miscalculation of alcohol intake, use of linear in place of non-linear models, lack of validation of Mendelian randomization assumptions, and other possible weaknesses. We conclude that the claim that “there is no safe level” of alcohol intake is not sufficiently supported based on our current scientific knowledge.

Using longitudinal data on teams and quality competition results, this study examines the impact of team and task familiarity on brewing excellence in the Japanese sake industry from 1956 to 2018. Sake production involves teamwork at every stage, but while some teams work together long term, others experience high turnover. The study highlights two factors: team familiarity, the collective experience of working together, and task familiarity, the individual experience of the task. High familiarity can strengthen team bonds and improve teamwork, but it can also limit the inflow of new knowledge and thus hinder innovation. This study uses data from national quality competitions and brewer lists, and considers the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 as an external shock to address endogeneity and estimate the causal relationship between familiarity and competition outcomes. The empirical results show that increases in both team and task familiarity are negatively associated with quality superiority.

The study examines the influence of markups on the export decisions and subsequent export intensity of firms within the Hungarian wine sector. Additionally, we evaluate the impact of entering and sustaining a presence in export markets on firms’ markups and compare the markup levels between exporting and non-exporting firms. We find that markups have a positive impact on both the probability of exporting and the export intensity, which aligns with previous findings. We demonstrate that exporting leads to an increase in markups. We find that exporters maintain higher markups even when accounting for productivity differences. Additionally, exporting can lead to higher markups because of the learning-by-exporting phenomenon. The results have significant implications. The findings imply that markups have a significant impact on the decision-making process and performance of Hungarian wine exports. Policymakers should facilitate to increase the markups of firms in order to enhance the export of wine and promote economic growth. Wine exporting firms should enhance their productivity and implement strategic pricing strategies to increase their markups and expand their exports.

This paper studies the effects of the U.S. railroad expansion during the 19th century on exports of wine at the customs district level. I digitize previously unexploited data on wine trade flows for customs districts from 1870 to 1900 and combine these data with GIS-based measures of access to wine-producing regions for each district. I find that improved access to wine producers, driven by the ongoing construction of more railways, led to districts exporting more wine. My results suggest that the rollout of the U.S. railroad network had important effects on the spatial distribution of the wine trade across ports.

There is an increasing global focus on gender diversity and equality in the workplace, particularly regarding women in leadership roles. Our study explores this focus in the wine industry in Australia, examining women's representation in CEO, winemaker, viticulturist, and marketing roles. By using results from a previous Australian study, we find that women have significantly increased their presence in all roles but one (marketing role) when comparing 2007–2013 with 2021–2023. Our study also confirms that women are more likely to be in winemaking and viticulturist roles, conditional upon a woman being in the CEO role. However, women in winemaking and viticulturist roles still lag behind women in leadership roles across other industries in Australia. We offer conclusions and directions for future research.

Review systems, including quantitative measures as well as text-based expression of experiences, are omnipresent in today's digital platform economy. This paper studies the existence of reputation inflation, i.e., unjustified increases in ratings, with a special focus of heterogeneity between experienced and non-experienced users. Using data on more than 5 million reviews from an online wine platform we compare consistency between numerical feedback and textual reviews as well as sentiment measures. Overall the wine platform displays strongly increasing numerical feedback over our time period from 2014 to 2020 while the scores predicted by reviewers’ written feedback remain constant. This difference is consistent across both expert and non-expert reviewers. Online platforms as well as potential customers should be aware of the phenomenon of reputation inflation and simplifying feedback to one number might do a disservice to review platforms’ goal of providing a representative quality assessment.

Understanding consumer choices and their drivers of willingness to pay (WTP) for a bottle of wine has been a research challenge in wine economics, particularly in niche markets such as sparkling wine. This study investigates the determinants of WTP for sparkling wine based on data from Portuguese consumers. The results provided by two alternative methodologies are compared: a traditional econometric model, based on the estimation of an ordered probit model; and a modelling approach based on data-driven and using machine learning algorithms. Both approaches present similar results, highlighting the relevance of some determinants including income, Champagne brand, not being a protected designation of origin and being a red wine consumer as main predictors of WTP for sparkling wine in Portugal.

This study presents a comparative evaluation of sentiment analysis models applied to a large corpus of expert wine reviews from Wine Spectator, with the goal of classifying reviews into binary sentiment categories based on expert ratings. We assess six models: logistic regression, XGBoost, LSTM, BERT, the interpretable Attention-based Multiple Instance Classification (AMIC) model, and the generative language model LLAMA 3.1, highlighting their differences in accuracy, interpretability, and computational efficiency. While LLAMA 3.1 achieves the highest accuracy, its marginal improvement over AMIC and BERT comes at a significantly higher computational cost. Notably, AMIC matches the performance of pretrained large language models while offering superior interpretability, making it particularly effective for domain-specific tasks such as wine sentiment analysis. Through qualitative analysis of sentiment-bearing words, we demonstrate AMIC’s ability to uncover nuanced, context-dependent language patterns unique to wine reviews. These findings challenge the assumption of generative models’ universal superiority and underscore the importance of aligning model selection with domain-specific requirements, especially in applications where transparency and linguistic nuance are critical.

This study explores the relationship between tourism demand, both domestic and international, wine price, and wine consumption across European countries. Recognizing the cultural and economic significance of wine, particularly within Europe, this research examines how tourism spending influences wine consumption over time. Using panel data from 19 European countries between 2005 and 2021, the study finds that foreign tourism spending displays a nonlinear effect on wine consumption, initially decreasing but increasing at higher levels. Specifically, foreign spending initially reduces wine consumption but increases once spending crosses a critical threshold. Additionally, wine price shows a significant impact on consumption. These insights provide valuable implications for wine tourism stakeholders seeking to leverage tourism demand to support the wine sector and local economies.