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)

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)

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)

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)

Wine consumers and producers make decisions partly on ratings of wine critics. Research into reliability (correspondence of repeated ratings of the same wines by one critic) and consensus (correspondence of ratings between critics or competitions) have yielded low estimates. However, Ashton (2013), looking at the consensus among only prominent critics of red Bordeaux, vintages 2004–2010, found a correlation of around 0.60. Here, I revisit these data, and extend the analyses to the years 2011–2016 for the same wines, but with additional new critics. Agreement among the critics (r = 0.57) of these new years is comparable to those found by Ashton (r = 0.60), with a slight upward trend. Overall, critics agree more about what they do not like. Regarding prices and ratings, wines score below-average ratings when they cost less than 35 euro, and higher ratings between 35 and 100 euro. In wines more than 100 euro there is no correlation between ratings and price. (JEL Classification: C99)

Holmes and Anderson (2017a) introduce two extensive data sets on world alcohol consumption and expenditure and with them investigate, among other things, the possible convergence of national alcohol consumption patterns using wine, beer, and spirit shares. Such share data define a composition, on which conventional statistical analysis using covariances and correlations is invalid. This note reanalyses the data using techniques appropriate for a composition and introduces a statistic that can validly track the variation in national shares around the global mean through time. This variability statistic shows that such convergence of national alcohol patterns has clearly taken place over the period 1961 to 2014 and thus confirms Holmes and Anderson's findings using a valid statistical approach. (JEL Classifications: C18, D12, L66)