Consumers, Critics & Chromatography: An Analysis of 100-Point Wines

The world of wine spans over 20 major wine producing countries, hundreds of wine producers thousands of grape varieties, and a plethora of options for winemakers to choose from when deciding how to process the grapes into wine. The sheer amount of wines to choose from, and the nuances present in wines even from the same varietal and region can create unease in even the most knowledgeable wine professionals. The role of the wine critic developed to allow consumers to be better informed when choosing wines, and to provide a system of conveying which wines are most worth consumers’ time and money. Based on the theoretical foundations of social influence theory, this dissertation used three different research components to examine the effect of wine critic reviews on consumer taste preferences. The first component of this research involved chemical analyses of both 100-point and everyday wines in order to provide a chemical profile of each wine. The second component of this research subjected those same five wines to a consumer tasting panel. The third component of this research was a qualitative domain/taxonomy and componential analysis of 100-point wine critic reviews for the vintages and varietal utilized in the first two components of this study. The results of this research show the different chemical structures of wines preferred by both critics and consumers and provide insight into how critics portray fine wines through tasting notes/reviews