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Predicting Italian Wine Quality from Weather Data and Expert Ratings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Alessandro Corsi
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Torino, Lungo Dora Siena, 100/A, 10153Torino, Italy; e-mail: alessandro.corsi@unito.it.
Orley Ashenfelter
Affiliation:
Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544-2098, USA; e-mail: c6789@princeton.edu.

Abstract

In this paper we estimate how a variety of subjective measures of quality taken from the published opinions of several experts on Italian wines (Barolo and Barbaresco) are determined by the weather conditions during the relevant season, in order to assess their reliability. Since these measures of quality are only ordinal, we estimate their determinants using an ordered probit model. The method provides measures of the determinants of vintage quality ratings and suggestions on the reliability of each expert. (JEL Classifications: D12, Q11, Q13)

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2019

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Footnotes

This is a slightly revised version of the paper presented at the 7th VDQS Conference held in Reims (France), on May 11–13, 2000. We are grateful to the conference participants for their comments and to Karl Storchmann (the editor) for publishing an otherwise difficult-to-retrieve paper. We also wish to thank Federico Spanna of Regione Piemonte for providing the weather data.

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