The Ecuadorian winery, Dos Hemisferios, had started as a hobby in 1999 but quickly grew into a business and passion for the Wright family. After receiving an international award in 2009 for its cabernet sauvignon-malbec blend called Paradoja, the winery realized its potential and decided to expand its vineyards and production of wines. As part of the strategy to increase sales, Robert Wright, the Dos Hemisferios President, and his father, Guillermo Wright, developed a rebranding proposal for the next board of directors meeting. This rebranding initiative hinged on the belief that people in the Ecuadorian wine market did not know much about wine. To address this issue, they decided to be more specific regarding what each of the Dos Hemisferios brands represented and to whom each would be sold. Additionally, Quito represented the largest wine market in Ecuador. However, the market posed several challenges, including a lack of awareness about Ecuadorian wines at bars, restaurants, cafés, and hotels, and an unwillingness to try Ecuadorian wines. Robert understood that overcoming this negative mental paradigm and creating awareness about Ecuadorian wines would be critical for Dos Hemisferios moving forward. Robert wondered if the rebranding proposal they had prepared would be effective.

This study aims to determine the attitudes of primary care physicians in Spain towards the consumption of wine and its effects on health. To this end, 199 surveys were conducted on primary care physicians in Spain. The study concludes that medical professionals associate moderate wine drinking with possible cardiovascular benefits, although there are three groups of physicians with different attitudes toward the consumption of wine and its relationship to health. All of the groups, however, coincide in the view that the amount of wine consumed must be limited. This paper makes an important contribution to research knowledge as it focuses on perceptions of the wine-health relationship among primary care physicians in particular.

The global COVID-19 pandemic initially devastated the economy, particularly impacting tourism and service sectors, along with causing supply chain shortages. Even the wine industry, vital for the U.S. wine sector, faced significant strain. While California’s wine tourism industry suffered severely, it began rebounding in 2022 and is expected to continue recovering after 2024. Our research aims to understand if pandemic-induced economic disruptions, coupled with shifting work and vacation trends, aided in the wine country’s recovery and local entrepreneurship efforts through case studies of counties in Northern California. Contrary to expectations, all three northern California wine counties experienced population declines by 2024, undermining the notion of wine country status mitigating population loss. Despite this, the tourism industry exhibited robust growth in domestic visitors, with rebound percentages ranging from 13% to over 100%, indicating a rapid recovery. For instance, Sonoma County surpassed Napa County in overall tourism spending for 2023, with tourism spending in Mendocino County also showing signs of recovery, nearing pre-pandemic levels by 2023. We acknowledge the context-bound nature of our case study research. It was conducted in three counties of Northern California renowned for their wine industry and so we urge readers to consider the applicability of the findings to other regions and industries before extending our results to additional areas. This context bounded nature also leads to avenues for future research such as examining different areas in California, or wine industry areas in different states or nations.

This quantitative analysis explores the key determinants affecting the price per bottle and expert ratings within the Italian wine market. It posits that collective reputation, as signified by Geographic Indicators (GIs), Protected Designation of Origin (PDOs), and certification, primarily drive these factors. The study presents a comprehensive contextual backdrop and literature review to address this hypothesis. This conceptual overview is followed by a novel research design, incorporating significant elements influencing wine pricing and expert evaluations. The investigation employs dual multivariate regression models, thereby corroborating and enriching existing literature on the impact of collective reputation in the wine industry. Key findings reveal that PDO ratings and specific certifications such as classico, reserva, millesimato, or organic production significantly influence Italian wines’ price and expert ratings. The analysis further quantifies these impacts, suggesting that specific certifications can predict notable increases in wine prices and expert evaluations, underlining the importance of geographic origin and diverse certifications in shaping the market dynamics of the Italian wine industry.

This study delves into an often-overlooked aspect of wine consumer decision-making – the desire to appear knowledgeable in social settings. Focusing on Texas wines, which are often less well known and more intimidating to say aloud, an exploratory survey examined the impact of phonetic guides on respondents’ choice of wine off a menu. Analysis through nominal logistic regression revealed the presence of phonetic guides as the most significant predictor, suggesting consumers feel pressure to appear knowledgeable or sophisticated. Respondents who were provided menus with phonetic spellings were more inclined to choose wines with intimidating names. The inclusion of phonetic spellings not only reduced the perceived risk in ordering the wine but also served an educational role. By recognizing the influence of social factors, such as a consumer’s perceived sophistication, this study recommends establishments enhance menus with phonetic guides to empower consumers in making confident, informed choices.

This study seeks to explore the multifaceted impacts of the Green Intellectual Capital (GIC) within viticulture enterprises on the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This endeavor holds significant academic value, as, to the best of our understanding, no prior investigations have delved into this specific correlation. The impetus for this inquiry is rooted in two foundational beliefs: firstly, that an enhanced GIC equips firms with the tools to more effectively navigate environmental hurdles; and secondly, that GIC serves as a transformative agent within entities, fostering enriched knowledge acquisition. To methodically address the stipulated aim, a qualitative methodology was employed, underpinned by a singular case study. The findings underscore the instrumental role of the three facets of GIC—Green Human Capital, Green Structural Capital, and Green Relational Capital—in facilitating the attainment of SDGs 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, and 17.

There is large variation amongst food service operators in pricing wine, and many questions remain about how wine is priced and what objectives are used to determine wine price in restaurants. In this essay-style article, we examine the practices that the industry have adopted when pricing wine in restaurants. Beyond the basic rule of thumb – applying proportionally smaller mark-up to higher-priced wines –, pricing can be driven by the market, customer or competition. The restaurant’s characteristics as well as institutional and environmental factors can influence the price of wine at restaurants.

Wine tasting rooms in the United States play an important role in the wine industry and the economic vitality of the regions that wine tourists visit, as wine tourists are generally well-educated and affluent, and they eagerly buy wine when they experience “pleasure” with their wine tourism experience (Bruwer & Rueger-Muck, 2019). When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many winery tasting rooms to shut down for months and operate under severe constraints once allowed to reopen, many wineries turned to virtual wine tastings to stay engaged with their consumers and attract new ones. This paper is an exploratory study of the features of a virtual wine tasting that participants in the U.S. find most engaging. We adopted the concept of winery tourism as a hedonic experience as the framework for our study of virtual wine tastings and apply the experiential view first applied to wine tourism by Bruwer and Alant (2009) to create an online survey employing the Best – Worst methodology first published by Finn and Louviere (1992). We collected 261 valid responses from people in the U.S. who participated in at least one virtual wine tasting. Using the classic agglomerative method, we performed unsupervised clustering on the raw survey response data to identify five main clusters of virtual wine tasting participant segments.

In the last week of February 2020, Sfriso Winery, a small, family-owned winery in the countryside of northeastern Italy, was forced to indefinitely suspend operations as one of the first wine businesses affected by the crisis resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic. The prospect of indefinite delays affecting their traditional distribution model forced the husband and wife team of Pier Sfriso and Réka Háros to rely on innovation as a means to find new customers. With the couple predominantly relying on tourism for new client acquisition before COVID-19, the prospect of attracting enough customers via alternative means appeared daunting. The impact of COVID-19 hit when a commercially life-saving order fell through in the early weeks of the pandemic. This small business in a global market suddenly became impacted by a crisis. The challenge to this husband and wife team at Sfriso Winery was to thus find a way to turn this constraint in traditional sales revenues into a profitable market opportunity. This case thus explores two key research questions. Firstly, how can a small business identify a market opportunity in the midst of a supply chain crisis? Secondly, how does a little-known winery create sufficient demand using electronic word-of-mouth? The Sfrisos’ responses to these two questions resulted in a defaulted sale of 6000 bottles of wine becoming the centerpiece of a successful online campaign. #The6000Project was born. The case follows the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on a small wine business. This case illustrates how a little-known winery, in a little-known winemaking village was able to utilize knowledge of marketing as a means to identify an opportunity during a crisis. By using the advantages of online communications via a social media campaign, the owners succeeded in attracting enough new consumers to their small brand. This research project is ideally run as a 2-stage, multimedia case study. The case study is outlined in the following pages, as two sets of supports: for the case moderator(s), and for case participants. This case would be valuable for any wine producer wanting to follow a template for identifying opportunity in the midst of a crisis, and/or any business wanting to investigate means for utilizing social media for the purpose of initiating a crowdfunding campaign when limited funds are available for marketing.

Despite the importance of innovation for survival and success of wineries around the world, research in wine industry innovation is limited. This editorial note discusses recent developments in the research of innovation in the wine industry. Special attention is given to the intersectoral nature of the wine industry, which involves agricultural, manufacturing, and marketing/sales activities. The implications of widespread family ownership and management in the wine industry for the innovation process are reviewed. Differences in how experts and consumers measure and define wine quality and value are discussed.