Erring Experts? A Critique of Wine Ratings as Hedonic Scaling

Abstract

Consumers use expert ratings to help choose wine, and economists find correlations between ratings and transaction prices. Rating scales resemble hedonic scales in the behavioral sciences, which suffer from an “intersubjectivity” problem. Taste is a private sensation; people taste differently (an external validity problem), so ratings are often unreliable hedonic markers of enjoyment. But why? Hedonic measurements from food science (“general Labeled Magnitude Scales”) attempt to adjust for differences in perceived sensory sensitivity and offer clues. Resulting insights illustrate wine ratings’ shortcomings as reliable guides to enjoyment. (JEL Classifications: C14, D12, D91, L15, L66)

Wine Ratings: Seeking a Consensus among Tasters via Normalization, Approval, and Aggregation

“…Numerical wine ratings are very popular. The scientific literature has paid attention to aspects such as (1) inconsistency of ratings in blind tastings (Lindley, 2006;Hodgson, 2008;Bodington, 2017Bodington, , 2020, (2) consensus among experienced wine experts (Ashton, 2012(Ashton, , 2013Cao, 2014;Luxen, 2018), (3) variations in the severity of experts (Masset, Weisskopf, and Cossutta, 2015;Stuen, Miller, and Stone, 2015), and (4) consumers' demand for wine ratings (Ashenfelter and Jones, 2013;Marks, 2015Marks, , 2020. In this article, we aimed at providing a comprehensive framework to reach a consensus among tasters' opinions (expressed via wine ratings).…”