The unpredictable weather caused by climate change can be stressful for many vineyard managers and winemakers. A recent study from Washington State University’s School of Economic Sciences (SES) shows that the “cult wine” subset of the industry may be able to literally weather the storm.
A rare and ultra-premium product, cult wines are only available to those who join a winery’s allocation list or purchase the bottles on the secondary market. The WSU study, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, investigated how differences in temperature and rainfall affect the price and quality (based on wine score values) of cult and high-quality non-cult wines.
“Cult winemakers are striving for perfection,” said study co-author Jill McCluskey, WSU Regents Professor and SES director. “Each vintage is evaluated more closely, and there is an expectation of consistent high quality. Therefore, one might expect for weather variations to affect cult wines more than non-cult wines.”
However, after analyzing data for red and white wines produced in the Napa and Sonoma regions of California and the Walla Walla region of Washington state, the researchers realized that the opposite is true.
“We were expecting to find larger weather impacts on cult wines’ price and quality,” said Ron Mittelhammer, SES Regents Professor and study co-author. “The fact that they were more insulated from the effects of weather variability was a very interesting discovery. The effects on non-cult wines were more consistent with our initial expectation, in terms of magnitude and statistical significance.”
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