Global Wine Research Articles

Destination-Centric Wine Exports: Offering Design Concepts and Sustainability

With more than 40% of produced wine crossing borders, wine represents a truly global beverage. Wine export serves as a sales lever, especially for producers where home wine consumption diminishes but the global wine business is highly competitive. The literature tells that in competitive market innovation, customer centrism, and increasing sustainability are key. Wine export offerings need to meet the customer’s desires in the targeted foreign destinations. German wine providers have to catch-up in regard to destination-specific preferences so they can offer adaptation or suffer a competitive disadvantage in sustainability positioning. The main aims of this study were to validate the importance of sustainability in wine import and to explore destination-specific preferences and potential sustainable offer designs on the basis of new, fungus-resistant grape (FRG) wines by an explorative, qualitative approach. Evaluating the key export markets for German wine, the study delved into a performance assessment on how German providers who are marked by small-scale structures and fragmentation are positioned in regard to the primary purchasing factors in global wine competition, in regard to sustainability, and how to overcome performance gaps by tailoring destination-specific export offerings. In order to close a lack of research on destination-oriented sustainable wine offer design and to provide orientation for practitioners, an empirical study tested wine export offerings in the form of four concepts with a strong emphasis on sustainability and FRGs. More than 100 wine experts in the five key countries for German wine exports served to explore country preferences for offer elements and perceived performance of German wine producers. The interviews revealed (a) that sustainability is a must for wine export sales; (b) that German wine producers limp in sustainability reputation; (c) the existence of country-specific preferences allowing exporters to tailor their offerings to the specific needs in their ambition to increase export performance; (d) that German wine producers can potentially claim sustainability on the basis of a fitting concept; (e) FRGs are potentially suited to reposition innovatively and sustainably; (f) a playful exploitation of stereotypes for German suppliers is risky; (g) that an offer concept on sustainability and “made in Germany” characteristics (design, technology, and reliability) is highly regarded potentially allowing to escape price cutting in their key export destinations.

Marketing Challenges and Trends Influencing Wine Producers and Consumers

The global wine market is constantly evolving, and wine producers need to adapt to climate change and, in some cases, to new marketing trends to remain competitive and sustain their business. The main aim of this article is to highlight, conceptually, the main marketing issues and trends that can affect both consumers and wine producers. To meet this objective, we have adopted a conceptual approach. We draw on a recent literature review, our understanding of the wine industry and a few statistics and professional articles, to describe how these marketing trends influence consumer choices and, in some cases, the marketing strategies of wineries. This article therefore provides a more general and synthetic view of some of the marketing issues and trends that can impact both producers and consumers in the wine industry. We'll be focusing on six trends: wine in boxes and bags, e-commerce, digital marketing, immersive experiences, natural and organic wine, and transparent labeling. More specifically, we'll look at the impact these can have on both wine consumers and producers, mostly treated independently in academic research. Although our article is conceptual, it offers an integrative and complementary perspective on certain marketing issues and trends.

State of the International Wine Markets in 2022: New market trends for wines require new strategies

The objective of this discussion paper is to provide an overview of the state of the global wine sector in 2022 and discuss the effects of recent events on the wine trade’s development. First, long-term trends in the global consumption and production of wine and the development of the international wine trade are discussed. The growth trend of global wine consumption ceased in 2008, but the last decade in the global wine trade has been characterised by stagnant volumes but increasing values driven by premiumisation. Several recent events have affected the volume or composition of the global wine trade: the recovery of the wine trade after Covid-19, global cost increases and inflation, the shift of Chinese wine consumption and the effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Russian wine imports. The paper closes with an outlook on how underlying long-term trends might affect the strategies that successful wine business can employ in the future and suggests future areas of research in the wine business and economics.

Market Making and the Contested Performation of Value in the Global (Bulk) Wine Industry

Recent economic geography scholarship has emphasized (1) the performative work of market making (i.e., the geographies of marketization perspective) and (2) value-creation practices in markets (particularly the geographies of association and dissociation perspectives). In this article, we propose making stronger connections between these bodies of literature to gain a better understanding of how the performative constitution of markets and of brand and commodity value in markets are connected. More precisely, we argue that not only the b/ordering of the market and market outside (i.e., the world outside the market) but, equally, b/ordering processes within markets are essential components of performative market making and key to the contested attribution of value to commodities and brands. We flesh out this conceptual argument by empirically investigating the global wine market, which is characterized by high significance of brand building and of symbolic qualities—particularly geographic origin. In recent decades, the global wine market has been marked by a massive globalization process, strongly linked to the trading of wine in bulk form and outsourced bulk wine assembly for retailers’ private labels. Building on ethnographical research, we analyze the associative and dissociative b/ordering of the bulk wine market vis-à-vis the (premium) wine market, arguing that this performation struggle is key to the attribution of value to wine. Bearing in mind that we are witnessing an increasing aestheticization of consumer goods in the global economy, resulting in a dramatic rise in branding activities, contested b/ordering processes within markets, we argue, will grow in importance in the future.

Examining motivations and challenges of black wine entrepreneurs using the push–pull theory of entrepreneurship

PurposeThe two major entrepreneurial motivations of being “pushed” or “pulled” to start a business have been frequently explored in the entrepreneurship literature. In the global wine industry, thousands of small entrepreneurial wine businesses are flourishing, but few have been started by Black entrepreneurs. What is missing from the research is an exploration of the motivations of these entrepreneurs and what the industry can do to encourage the entrance of more minority entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to apply push–pull theory to better understand the motivations and challenges of what prompts Black entrepreneurs to start and succeed in the wine industry.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study uses a qualitative methodology of 42 in-depth interviews with US Black winemakers, retailers, and other wine business owners conducted over Zoom. The data were analyzed using Otter software and a thematic coding process for 2,120 pages of rich text.FindingsFindings included 12 motivation themes and 12 challenges for Black wine entrepreneurs, with more emphasis on “push” versus “pull” motivation factors. Many of these entrepreneurs were “pushed” to participate in the industry to create a more inclusive space for Black wine consumers and to create opportunities for other Black professionals and minorities in the industry. Managerial implications include solutions for more inclusive marketing and workplace culture.Originality/valueThis study contributes to push–pull theory by offering a unique perspective on the motivations of Black wine entrepreneurs, as well as being the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to focus on this issue.

Identification of Oak-Barrel and Stainless Steel Tanks with Oak Chips Aged Wines in Ningxia Based on Three-Dimensional Fluorescence Spectroscopy Combined with Chemometrics.

With the increased incidence of wine fraud, a fast and reliable method for wine certification has become a necessary prerequisite for the vigorous development of the global wine industry. In this study, a classification strategy based on three-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy combined with chemometrics was proposed for oak-barrel and stainless steel tanks with oak chips aged wines. Principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares analysis (PLS-DA), and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) were used to distinguish and evaluate the data matrix of the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of wines. The results showed that FDA was superior to PCA and PLS-DA in classifying oak-barrel and stainless steel tanks with oak chips aged wines. As a general conclusion, three-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy can provide valuable fingerprint information for the identification of oak-barrel and stainless steel tanks with oak chips aged wines, while the study will provide some theoretical references and standards for the quality control and quality assessment of oak-barrel aged wines.

Weather and wine quality in Chile’s Casablanca Valley

ABSTRACT The Casablanca Valley, which is located in Chile’s central region and is one of the eleven Wine Capitals of the World, presents a most unusual climate among the global wine regions: cold summers (Csc according to the Koppen classification). In this study we explore the relationship between weather and wine quality in Casablanca and we conclude that this relationship is quite different from what has been reported in reference to other wine regions. Specifically, we find that: (a) the weather affects the quality of red wines much more than that of white wines; (b) both, winter season and growing season weather variables play an important role in determining wine quality; (c) humidity and solar radiation also matter; and (d) absolute maximum and minimum temperatures during the grapevine cycle are also important explanatory variables. This is in stark contrast with several previous studies where the average temperature during the growing season and rainfall before the harvest season were found to be the most relevant weather variables to account for wine quality.

Problems and Opportunities within the Wine Industry in Terms of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected and still affects various sectors, including the agricultural sector. A specific industry deriving from agriculture is the wine industry. The purpose of this article is to find out and analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the wine sector, especially regarding the Slovakia wine sector. To achieve this, a wide literary research study was conducted through which an overview of the global wine industry situation was obtained. Subsequently, the impact of COVID-19 on a selected wine business in the Slovak Republic was determined via interviewing. The findings were further analysed and compared with the situations of other Slovak and foreign wineries. It follows from the observations that both risk diversification within supplying and purchasing relations and the business’s essential need to adapt to new circumstances under adverse conditions are very important factors. The article’s contribution lies in a summarization of the problems and opportunities within the wineries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a wide literary research review and interviews with an employee of the large wine company, and the conclusions can also be applied to other agricultural industries.

Metabolic composition of healthy and infected Grüner Veltliner grapes and wine assessed by high resolution mass spectrometry

Grapevines are susceptible to a wide range of fungal diseases that result in significant annual economic losses in the global wine industry. The present study uses a non-targeted mass spectrometry approach to explore metabolic profiles of healthy and infected Austrian Grüner Veltliner grapes and wine. The samples were analysed by liquid chromatography coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry and ion mobility-mass spectrometry combined with multivariate statistical data analysis. Clear differences between healthy and infected samples were observed using multivariate analysis, allowing sample classification according to infection. In total, 111 grape and wine markers were identified as a result of infection, of which 68 were identified with confidence levels 1 or 2. The statistical analysis results outlined metabolites such as (-)-epicatechin, (+)-catechin, astilbin, quercetin 3-O-glucuronide, gluconic acid, alpha-lipoic acid, caftaric acid, galactaric acid, fumaric acid, 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, indole-3-lactic acid, dipeptides and tripeptides, to be discriminant in detection of grapes and wine infection.

Pourquoi terroir? Reflections on French influences on Australian winemakers’ senses of place

Terroir is an untranslatable, unstable, and often undefinable French term frequently used in the global wine industry. This article focuses on the transnational potentialities and cultural transferability of terroir in reflecting on French influences on Australian winemakers’ senses of place. After outlining the evolution of terroir in France to demonstrate how and why it appears to have become a floating signifier, I examine the use of terroir in the Australian winemaking context. I thereby provide an example of how this French concept has travelled and been translated by Australian proponents of the term at the other end of the New World of wine. Finally, I present conclusions drawn from the particular case of French-Australian cultural transfers to demonstrate key features of the current state of terroir's globalisation.

Innovation Through Tradition: The Role of Past Knowledge for Successful Innovations in Family and Non-family Firms

Innovation literature increasingly considers the importance of the temporal dimension of knowledge search. In particular, several qualitative studies demonstrate how family firms successfully search for and recombine mature knowledge into innovations. This paper extends this line of research by quantitatively examining knowledge search in family versus non-family firms in a unique dataset in global wine technology between 1956 and 2013. Our data show that family firms use mature knowledge in their innovation processes to a greater extent than non-family firms. Furthermore, family firms seem to draw higher value from mature knowledge than non-family firms.

Long-Term Trends of Global Wine Market

The major factors of wine trade have been showing distinct patterns of temporal trends worldwide in past decades. Wine consumption, production, imports, and exports differ according to their location and classification to Old World and New World wine markets. Using datasets from various sources, this work focused on quantifying long-term trends (1995–2021) of these wine industry factors for each country, including long-term means and temporal trends, using the Mann-Kendall trend test, and resulting in Z-scores. The temporal relationships between these global factors were quantified by applying Pearson correlation to the original values, as well as by correlating the Z-scores. Our findings show that Old World wine consumers and producers (e.g., Spain, France, and Italy) have been experiencing gradual decreasing trends of wine consumption and production. In New World countries, some of the largest wine-consuming countries were found to have strong, significant increases in wine consumption and new wine production markets show rapid growth trends. About 80% of the countries demonstrated increasing trends of wine imports, signifying the impact of globalization on the wine market and the growing demand for foreign wine. Globally, consumption per capita was found to have significantly decreased. Wine production showed a strong, significant, and lagged dependence on wine consumption, which was also related to the temporal trends of wine imports and exports. The major forces driving the wine market are possibly economic growth and wider competition, with climate change acting as a disruptive force.

Viticulture and wine terroir:a bibliometric analyze

The concept of "terroir," which refers to the natural and human factors that shape the characteristics of a particular wine region or vineyard, is the subject of this text. The text presents an analysis of existing research on terroir, including a keyword search using the Web of Science and the creation of a co-occurrence map of keywords using VOSviewer. The analysis shows that terroir research has been steadily increasing in recent years, with the highest number of articles published in 2021 and 2022. The map also shows the relationships between keywords in the existing research on terroir. The results suggest that the concept of terroir is widely recognized and studied around the world, with varying degrees of emphasis and focus in different regions. The text concludes with a discussion of the prominence and popularity of the concept of terroir in different countries, with France having the highest frequency of terroir mentions. The text suggests that the concept of terroir is not limited to traditional European wine regions and is becoming increasingly relevant in the context of global wine production.

Review: Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World, by Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre

Review: <i>Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World</i>, by Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre

Explaining bilateral patterns of global wine trade, 1962–2019

AbstractThis study uses gravity models to explain bilateral patterns of global wine trade since 1962. This is, to our knowledge, the first study on global wine trade covering the second wave of globalization as a whole. The results suggest that the impact of distance, common language, and common colonizer post-1945 on wine trade was lower in the 1991–2019 period than in the 1962–1990 period. We also use gravity models to explain the impact on bilateral wine trade patterns of similarities across countries in the mix of winegrape varieties in their vineyards. Although our models do not allow us to identify causality, the results suggest that countries trade more wine with each other the closer their mix of winegrape varieties.

Fusion of 2DGC-MS, HPLC-MS and Sensory Data to Assist Decision-Making in the Marketing of International Monovarietal Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc Wines

Monovarietal wines produced in different wine-growing areas may have completely different sensory profiles. As a result, they may be suitable for sale in different regions, depending on local preferences. Better insight into the sensory and chemical profiles of these wines can be helpful in further optimizing commercial strategies and matching supply and demand, which is the main challenge for global wine traders. The training of dedicated sensory panels, together with the correlation of the evaluated attributes with chemical parameters, followed by validation of the obtained models, may yield an improved picture of the overall features associated with products from a specific region. Eighteen samples of international Chardonnay and eighteen samples of international Sauvignon Blanc wines were collected from nine world origins (Northern Italy, Southern Italy, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa). The overall quality judgement (OQJ) and the sensory attributes were evaluated by a panel trained with a MRATA (Modified Rate-All-That-Apply) method. Moreover, volatile compounds were analysed by HS-SPME-GC × GC-ToF/MS and the phenolic composition, including proanthocyanidins, was determined using HPLC-QqQ/MS. The processing of the data using different multivariate analysis methods, such as multiple factor analysis (MFA), was essential to gain insight into the quality of the samples. The profile of cyclic and non-cyclic oligomeric proanthocyanidins was found to be substantially dependent on the grape variety used in the wines (varietal markers), despite the country of origin of the wine influencing it to a limited extent. The results from the same samples analysed by a sensory panel from Germany and ours were qualitatively compared, highlighting the presence of potential factors inherent to the panels themselves that could influence the different judgments and quality classification of the wines. Consequently, the combination of sensory and chemical analysis, by means of the application of multivariate statistical methods presented in this study proves to be a powerful tool for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the quality of the wines under investigation. Overall quality was described as a combination of the sensory attributes, according to the perception process. The attributes were in turn described based on the chemical profiles, which were determined independently by analytical techniques. Eventually, this approach can be very useful not only for basic research on wine quality but also as a tool to aid business-related decision-making activities of wineries and wine traders and to create models that can aid the refinement of marketing strategies.

A Field Collection of Indigenous Grapevines as a Valuable Repository for Applied Research.

The grapevine is an economically important plant, with a historical connection to the development of human culture. Currently, over 6000 accessions are known as individual grapevine varieties, some of which are important to national heritage, valuable for current viticultural practices, and as genetic resources to maintain plasticity under changing climatic conditions, environmental sustainability, and market demands. Recently, the diversity of cultivated grapevines has declined significantly, due to the increased focus of global wine industries on a few major cultivars. Moreover, due to biotic and abiotic stresses, the wild V. vinifera germplasm’s genetic diversity has declined, with some varieties on the verge of extinction. Vitis germplasm conservation can be achieved via either in situ (e.g., protected areas) or Ex situ (e.g., field collections, seed banks, and tissue culture collections) methods. This study aims to highlight the importance of Vitis field bank collections. We demonstrate the research done in the Israeli indigenous Vitis vinifera collection. The multi-layer analysis of the varieties enabled the identification of drought stress-resistant varieties, and suggested a mechanism for this resistance through noting the dramatic phenological differences in foliage development between resistant and sensitive varieties. In addition, we show a general characterization of the varieties via major grape characteristics, including bunch and berry shape, as well as their possible utilization based on their aromatic and phenolic profiles.

Paninvasion severity assessment of a U.S. grape pest to disrupt the global wine market

Economic impacts from plant pests are often felt at the regional scale, yet some impacts expand to the global scale through the alignment of a pest’s invasion potentials. Such globally invasive species (i.e., paninvasives) are like the human pathogens that cause pandemics. Like pandemics, assessing paninvasion risk for an emerging regional pest is key for stakeholders to take early actions that avoid market disruption. Here, we develop the paninvasion severity assessment framework and use it to assess a rapidly spreading regional U.S. grape pest, the spotted lanternfly planthopper (Lycorma delicatula; SLF), to spread and disrupt the global wine market. We found that SLF invasion potentials are aligned globally because important viticultural regions with suitable environments for SLF establishment also heavily trade with invaded U.S. states. If the U.S. acts as an invasive bridgehead, Italy, France, Spain, and other important wine exporters are likely to experience the next SLF introductions. Risk to the global wine market is high unless stakeholders work to reduce SLF invasion potentials in the U.S. and globally.

World Economy of Winemaking

Old traditional winemaking countries are now ahead of new winemaking countries. In addition to countries with European and Middle Eastern viticultural traditions, wine production has begun on a large scale in Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the Americas. The top wine exporters in 2019 are dominated by international wine trade in Italy, Spain and France - the total of 57.1 million hectoliters, which is 54% of the global market. Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States were the largest importers - a total of 40.4 million hectoliters, accounting for 38% of the global market. These three countries account for 39% of the total value of world wine imports, amounting to 11.9 billion euros. The US is the largest consumer of wine in the world, with a record level of 33.0 million hectoliters in 2019. Georgia has a serious potential to establish itself in the world markets with its uniqueness, with the introduction of innovative digital technologies. Keywords: Old World wines, New World wines, Wine Export-Import, Global Wine Market, Wine Economy, Viticulture, Harmonized customs system.

Wine: The punching bag in trade retaliation

Wine is an extensively traded product that is a common target for retaliation in trade disputes. We analyze the impact of tariffs and tariff retaliation by estimating a structural gravity model of global wine trade. We then simulate the effects of tariffs and tariff retaliation, as well as the effects of trade liberalization, on trade and welfare in the international market for wine. We show that recent trade disputes threaten to reduce wine trade by nearly $340 million annually and significantly reduce consumer welfare, while complete trade liberalization would expand trade by roughly $76 million.