Judging taste and creating value

Abstract

This research examines the procedural and substantive legitimacy of the Australian capital city wine show system as a cultural consecration project. The analysis is based on the ratings of 5654 wines by judges at four capital city wine shows in 2007. Large wineries are more likely to enter wines into these competitions than small wineries. In general, there is a moderate degree of agreement between judges in terms of the medals awarded to wines entered into multiple competitions. Disagreement among the judges was most pronounced in the distinctions between different medal classes and much less pronounced between wines that received medals and those that did not. The analysis confirms that wines that won medals, especially gold and silver, commanded higher release prices than other wines. The results generally confirm the legitimacy of the capital city wine show system as a means of assigning symbolic as well as economic value to premium wines.

The relation between Australian wine show results and prices

“…Dunphy and Lockshin () and Dalitz () interviews with Australian industry experts suggest that the show system plays many roles including wine quality and style guidance; information dissemination' expert and independent judgement; marketing and promotion; winemaker learning; social learning; and the validation of winemakers; inputs and innovations. In an Australian historical context, Dunphy and Lockshin () and Allen and Germov () argue that the success of the Australian wine industry in part is due to the show system and how it promotes competition among producers and knowledge sharing about styles and quality. The important role of shows for marketing, promotion, and brand building is also validated through interviews with producers in New Zealand (Beverland ), Chile (Kunc ), Greece (Vlachvei et al .…”

“…A number of studies have documented the lack of consensus exhibited by wine judges, see for example Gawel and Godden (), Hodgson (, ), and Bitter (). Of most relevance to our study, Allen and Germov () assessed the level of show medal agreement across the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and National shows for 2007. Pairwise weighted Kappa measures of agreement were estimated to be between 0.244 and 0.357 with an average of 0.285.…”

“…However, for various New Zealand wine shows, Bicknell and MacDonald () estimate that medals may have little economic and statistical impact on prices after controlling for quality using a wine‐guide measure. It appears that the only systematic study of the relation between Australian show medals and prices is that by Allen and Germov (). Based on all data from four shows (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth), important medal impacts were estimated for shiraz and chardonnay, but only silver medals had an important impact for cabernet sauvignon.…”

“…To explicitly recognise the categorical nature of the medal data, weighted Kappa (Allen and Germov ) measures of rater agreement are provided in Table for the medals data. All the pairwise measures for comparison among shows are statistically significant at the 5 per cent level, but are relatively small in magnitude ranging from 0.138 (Hobart and Adelaide) to 0.301 (Melbourne and Queensland) and averaging 0.215.…”

“…Only a few studies, however, have estimated the impact of show medals on prices for international markets such as Germany (Schamel ) and California (Lima ). It appears that Allen and Germov () is the only Australian study which has examined the relation between Australian show medals and prices.…”