An exploratory analysis of cross-country biases in expert wine reviews

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether online reviews by wine experts use different language to describe wines from different countries, and whether this reveals a certain bias. This is important because the language used in wine reviews can make a wine seem more or less appealing, and therefore may have a significant impact on consumers’ perceptions and purchase intentions. An automated content analysis was conducted of 28,858 reviews for top-rated wines that were published on the Wine Enthusiast magazine website. While the initial objective was to focus on the Old World versus New World dichotomy, the findings are more nuanced. Most of the differences that were found between reviews for wines from particular countries can be explained based on for example climate and whether or not the wine is purchased for immediate consumption. However, it was also found that reviews for wines from France, Italy and the United States use much more figurative language, and refer more often to the vineyard and the winemaking process, while this is much less the case for wines from Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Chile. This could indicate that reviewers have a bias based on their level of knowledge of, and/or interest in, particular countries.