Two centuries of Bordeaux vintages — Tastet & Lawton

Vintage charts can be an interesting guide to the general features of each vintage, particularly for those vineyard regions where there is a long series of vintage assessments. In these cases, we can study the long-term patterns of vintage variation, without needing to concern ourselves with differences between individual producers.

I have already blogged about Fifty years of Bordeaux vintages, based on the Wine Cellar Insider Bordeaux Vintage Ratings from 1959 to 2014. In this post I expand the time-frame to 200 years for the same wine-producing region.

These long-term data on the Bordeaux red-wine vintages comes from Tastet & Lawton, the oldest surviving courtier firm in Bordeaux.

Tastet & Lawton (Courtiers Assermentés) was established in 1740 by Abraham Lawton, an Irish immigrant. In the Bordeaux wine trade, the courtiers (brokers) act as intermediaries between the chateaux (wine producers) and the négociants (wine merchants) (see En primeur, negociants, courtiers, the Bordeaux wine system explained). There are c. 100 significant chateaux and c. 300 négociants, along with c. 90 courtiers.

There are two versions of the Tastet & Lawton vintage chart available online, one in French and one in English. I have put my own English-language version online because there are a number of inconsistencies in the originals, which I have tried to correct.

The Tastet & Lawton Bordeaux Vintage Reports, 1795 to 2005

Although vintage assessments are available from the 1795 vintage up to and including 2005, the recording of harvest quality did not start until 1900. The quality is scored on an increasing scale:
Mauvaise (Poor), Médiocre (Mediocre), Moyenne (Average), Assez bonne (Rather good), Bonne (Good), Très bonne (Very good), Exceptionnelle (Exceptional)
The harvest volume is not recorded using any consistent wording through time, with at least 20 different expressions being used. General comments on the vintage are provided in all cases.

Year	Harvest start	Harvest volume	Harvest quality	Comments
1795	24-sept.	Not very abundant		Very good year.
1796	30-sept.	Not very abundant		Mediocre year, thin wines.
1797	02-oct.	Not very abundant		Mediocre year, thin wines.
1798	13-sept.	Passably abundant		Marvelous vintage, still spoken of 20 years later; full, robust silky wines.
1799	05-oct.	Not very abundant		Poor year.
1800	23-sept.	Not very abundant		Poor year.
1801	14-sept.	Not very abundant		Poor year.
1802	23-sept.	Average harvest		Marvelous year, almost rivals 1798.
1803	25-sept.	Average harvest		Less than 1802, nonetheless good.
1804	15-sept.	Average harvest		Mediocre year.
1805	23-sept.	Abundant harvest		Mediocre year.
1806	20-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Poor year.
1807	11-sept.	Small harvest		Good year.
1808	13-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Good year, ordinary wines.
1809	06-oct.	Small harvest		Very poor year.
1810	19-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Passable year.
1811	14-sept.	Rather abundant		The most remarkable wines; known as “The Year of the Comet”.
1812	21-sept.	Very ordinary harvest		Weak, insignificant year.
1813	04-oct.	Ordinary harvest		Mediocre year, lacking character.
1814	29-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Very good.
1815	25-sept.	Very little wine		Marvelous, on a par with the 1798 and 1811.
1816	27-oct.	1/4 volume of an abundant year		Detestable year.
1817	03-oct.	1/5 normal harvest		Very ordinary year.
1818	17-sept.	Half-harvest		Rather good year, although a tad hard and of little reputation.
1819	20-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Perfect, admirable year.
1820	30-sept.	Good half-harvest		Year lacking character, without color.
1821	04-oct.	Smaller harvest than 1819		Insignificant, mediocre year.
1822	27-aug.	Very ordinary harvest		Rather dry but good, robust wines.
1823	07-oct.	Very ordinary harvest		Without color, value or reputation the first year; later a very elegant wine with a well-deserved success.
1824	04-oct.	Very little wine		Disappointing year.
1825	11-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Very robust wines which became quite admirable, but which took a very long time to develop.
1826	20-sept.	Rather abundant		Very mediocre.
1827	20-sept.	Abundant harvest		Without reputation at first, but ending up admirably well.
1828	15-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Marvelous year for wines with elegance, grace, fragrance, delicious taste.
1829	26-sept.	Ordinary harvest		Detestable year.
1830	16-sept.	Very minimal harvest		Mediocre year.
1831	14-sept.	Very minimal harvest		Excellent year, very mellow<./td>
1832	22-sept.	Very minimal harvest		Ordinary year, without charm.
1833	21-sept.	Abundant harvest		Ordinary year.
1834	09-sept.	Very minimal harvest		Excellent year.
1835	23-sept.	Abundant harvest		Light, elegant wines (average quality).
1836	24-sept.	Minimal harvest		Very poor year.
1837	25-sept.	Abundant harvest		Ordinary year.
1838	29-sept.	Very minimal harvest		Very mediocre year.
1839	26-sept.	Average harvest		Ordinary year<./td>
1840	17-sept.	Abundant harvest		Good year.
1841	18-sept.	Very abundant		Excellent year.
1842	20-sept.	Minimal harvest		Ordinary year.
1843	06-oct.	Very minimal harvest		Very poor year.
1844	15-sept.	Abundant harvest		Ordinary year.
1845	10-oct.	Very minimal harvest		Very poor year.
1846	14-sept.	Rather abundant		Good, robust wines.
1847	27-sept.	Very abundant		Exquisite wines, not very robust.
1848	20-sept.	Very abundant		Exquisite, robust wines.
1849	22-sept.	Average harvest		Ordinary year.
1850	29-sept.	Abundant harvest		Very light, ordinary wines.
1851	27-sept.	Average harvest		Good, robust wines.
1852	24-sept.	Average harvest		Very light wines, rather good.
1853	09-oct.	Very minimal harvest		Very poor year.
1854	06-oct.	Not very abundant harvest due to powdery mildew		Very mediocre wines, considered good at first and sold at a high price.
1855	07-oct.	Not very abundant harvest due to powdery mildew		Very mediocre wines, considered good at first and sold at a high price.
1856	01-oct.	Not very abundant harvest due to powdery mildew		Very ordinary wines showing a taste of powdery mildew.
1860	26-sept.	Abundant harvest		Very light, very bad wines.
1861	22-sept.	Very small harvest due to major frost on May 6th		Good wines, elegant and very expensive.
1862	20-sept.	Rather abundant		Average quality.
1863	23-sept.	Not very abundant		Adequate quality but lacking maturity.
1864	17-sept.	Very abundant		Exquisite, extremely mellow, ripe, fragrant and rich (balanced wines).
1865	06-sept.	Very abundant		Wines good and ripe, but hard; took a long time to come together.
1866	21-sept.	Average harvest		Very poor.
1867	18-sept.	Rather abundant		Ordinary.
1868	07-sept.	Rather abundant		Coarse wines, hard, lacking charm, too expensive.
1869	15-sept.	Very abundant		Remarkable and complete wines.
1870	10-sept.	Rather abundant		Wines very good, very ripe, and very full-bodied.
1871	18-sept.	Rather abundant		Wines light but very elegant.
1872	22-sept.	Not very abundant		Ordinary year.
1873	20-sept.	Not very abundant		Ordinary year; terrible frost April 28th.
1874	14-sept.	Very abundant		Very good wines.
1875	24-sept.	Very abundant		Wines very good and elegant.
1876	26-sept.	Not very abundant		Very ordinary year.
1877	20-sept.	Rather abundant		Light year but charming wines.
1878	19-sept.	Rather abundant		Very good year.
1879	09-oct.	Not very abundant		Ordinary year<../td>
1880	21-sept.	Not very abundant		Ordinary year.
1881	12-sept.	Not very abundant		Wines solid, but without charm.
1882	28-sept.	Average harvest		Very light wines, rather elegant; touched by mildew.
1883	27-sept.	Average harvest		Light wines, very ordinary quality.
1884	25-sept.	2/3 normal harvest		Mediocre wines; mildew.
1885	29-sept.	1/2 normal harvest		Very ordinary quality, wines touched by mildew.
1886	25-sept.	2/3 normal harvest		Ordinary quality, wines deeply affected by mildew.
1887	19-sept.	1/2 normal harvest		Full-bodied, healthy wines thanks to treatment against mildew.
1888	02-oct.	Abundant harvest		Good year, elegant wines.
1889	29-sept.	Abundant harvest		Decent year, rather elegant wines.
1890	29-sept.	Average harvest		Full-bodied, deeply-colored wines; rather good.
1891	02-oct.	Average harvest		Mediocre and green wines.
1892	22-sept.	1/2 normal harvest		A blast of hot air August 15th—45°C, wines burnt and lacking color; elegant.
1893	15-aug.	Exceptionally abundant		Wines thought to be excellent became major disappointments.
1894	05-oct.	1/2 normal harvest		Wines of little quality, green and meager.
1895	22-sept.	Average harvest		A year of great heat. Many wines spoiled by acidity. The wines which were spared were remarkable.
1896	20-sept.	Very abundant		Fine and delicate wines.
1897	20-sept.	1/2 normal harvest		Very mediocre wines.
1898	23-sept.	1/2 normal harvest		Wines that were a little hard but came to be appreciated later.
1899	24-sept.	Abundant harvest		Year of very great quality.
1900	24-sept.	Very abundant	Exceptional	Great vintage of the century.
1901	19-sept.	Very abundant	Mediocre	Thin wines which sold for practically nothing. Certain wines turned out to be very pleasant.
1902	11-sept.	Abundant	Poor	Wines without character. Forget them.
1903	23-sept.	Abundant	Poor	Insignificant year.
1904	21-sept.	Abundant	Good	Wines which disappointed with age.
1905	14-sept.	Abundant	Average	Light but very elegant wines.
1906	18-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Good	Wines with exceptionally full body.
1907	10-sept.	Abundant	Average	Light, elegant, resembling the 1905s.
1908	23-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Wines a little hard, lacking charm.
1909	17-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Disappointing wines. Believed to be good at first.
1910	23-sept.	1/4 normal harvest	Poor	Very mediocre vintage.
1911	04-oct.	Average	Rather good	A very hot year.
1912	18-sept.	Abundant	Poor	Wines lacking a lot of structure.
1913	23-sept.	Abundant	Poor	Flat wines.
1914	24-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Wines which were believed to be very good turned out to be great disappointments.
1915	17-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Poor	A year to forget.
1916	20-sept.	Average	Good	Solid and full-bodied wines, lacking a bit of charm.
1917	22-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Light and fragrant wines.
1918	17-sept.	Average	Average	Wines healthy but harsh.
1919	20-sept.	Abundant	Average	Light wines without great quality.
1920	20-sept.	Average	Good	Still several fine bottles.
1921	17-sept.	Average	Very good	Extremely hot year, difficult to age wines. Still several great bottles.
1922	11-sept.	Very abundant	Mediocre	Wines light and flat.
1923	11-sept.	Average	Average	Wines with little color, somewhat burnt.
1924	27-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Certain wines are still exceptional.
1925	16-sept.	Abundant	Mediocre	Green wines lacking maturity.
1926	28-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Very good	Certain wines are still exceptional. Much coulure.
1927	27-sept.	Average	Poor	Very little vintage.
1928	23-sept.	Average	Exceptional	Remarkable wines; some a little hard.
1929	18-sept.	Average	Exceptional	Great vintage of the century.
1930	19-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Poor	A vintage to forget.
1931	30-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Year close to the preceding vintage.
1932	20-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Poor	Comparable to 1930.
1933	10-oct.	Average	Average	Light and fragrant wines.
1934	21-sept.	Abondant	Very good	Several great bottles that are still pleasant to drink.
1935	10-sept.	Abundant	Mediocre	Green wines lacking maturity.
1936	25-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Green wines lacking maturity.
1937	26-sept.	Average	Very good	Still many great wines.
1938	13-sept.	Average	Average	In decline. “Useful” wines without great quality.
1939	21-sept.	Very abundant	Average	In decline. Light and fragrant wines.
1940	24-sept.	Average	Rather good	Rather light wines.
1941	20-sept.	Average	Poor	No successes.
1942	30-sept.	Average	Average	With the 1943s, the best year of this period.
1943	14-sept.	Average	Very good	Several great successes.
1944	09-sept.	Average	Average	Little year.
1945	21-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Exceptional	Disastrous frost on May 2nd. Very concentrated wines, many still surprisingly young.
1946	07-sept.	Average	Average	In decline. Green wines, lacking maturity.
1947	25-sept.	Average	Very good	Several legendary bottles which approach perfection. Wines full of charm.
1948	15-sept.	Average	Good	Several exceptional wines.
1949	22-sept.	Average	Very good	Magnificent wines: can still continue to age. Similar to 1947.
1950	22-sept.	Abundant	Good	Light, pleasant wines. Several great wines.
1951	18-sept.	Average	Mediocre	Very average wines.
1952	02-oct.	Average	Very good	Firm, tannic, long-aging: some great bottles.
1953	11-sept.	Average	Very good	Great classic year: balance, richness, finesse, long-lasting.
1954	22-sept.	Average	Mediocre	In decline. Clean, healthy wines but lacking in maturity.
1955	14-sept.	Average	Very good	Firm, concentrated, long to open up. Several very great bottles.
1956	07-oct.	1/4 normal harvest	Mediocre	Catastrophic frost in February; little or no production.
1957	30-sept.	Not abundant	Average	Alarming degree of coulure. With few exceptions, wines in decline.
1958	06-oct.	1/2 normal harvest	Average	Little vintage.
1959	20-sept.	1/2 normal harvest	Exceptional	Hot and dry year. Difficult vinifications. Very great wines, still improving with age.
1960	15-sept.	Average	Average	Rather average vintage, on the decline.
1961	17-sept.	Very little	Exceptional	Great vintage of the century.
1962	01-oct.	Abundant	Very good	Pleasant, charming wines to taste; reminiscent of the 1924s.
1963	01-oct.	Abundant	Mediocre	Very average year.
1964	21-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Uneven quality; several great wines for long aging.
1965	30-sept.	Abundant	Mediocre	Disappointing year.
1966	20-sept.	Average	Very good	Classic vintage of great elegance. The decade’s best, after 1961.
1967	25-sept.	Average	Rather good	Average vintage in the Médoc.
1968	22-sept.	Average	Mediocre	On the decline compared to the previous vintage.
1969	23-sept.	Little	Average	Average year.
1970	24-sept.	Very abundant	Very good	Tannic and rather hard wines. The best will age into the next century.
1971	27-sept.	Little	Very good	Wines that are elegant and a little tender, the finest are at their best.
1972	09-oct.	Average	Average	Often average wines.
1973	20-sept.	Very abundant	Average	In decline; very few successes.
1974	24-sept.	Abundant	Average	Disappointing year.
1975	22-sept.	Average	Very good	Tannic wines of uneven quality. Some great successes.
1976	13-sept.	Abundant	Good	Quickly evolving.
1977	04-oct.	Little	Average	Frost on March 31st and April 9th. Hard wines without a future.
1978	05-oct.	Average	Very good	Classic wines, elegant, at their best.
1979	01-oct.	Very abundant	Good	The best wines are harmonious and balanced.
1980	10-oct.	Average	Rather good	Supple and fruity. Most are on the decline.
1981	28-sept.	Average	Good	Wines at their maturity.
1982	13-sept.	Very abundant	Exceptional	Magnificent wines, long-lasting, through to the middle of the next century.
1983	26-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Fully expressive wines.
1984	01-oct.	Average	Average	Year of often disappointing wines.
1985	25-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Already remarkable wines.
1986	26-sept.	Very abundant	Very good	Very great year for long-aging wines in the Médoc.
1987	01-oct.	Average	Rather good	Supple wines, fruity and elegant; satisfying to drink while young.
1988	28-sept.	Very abundant	Very good	Classic wines which need to age.
1989	03-sept.	Abundant	Exceptional	Very great year for long-aging wines.
1990	10-sept.	Very abundant	Exceptional	Great, hot year. Wines with great aging potential.
1991	27-sept.	Very little	Rather good	Frost on April 21st. Red wines at their plateau.
1992	24-sept.	Very abundant	Average	Red wines at their plateau.
1993	20-sept.	Very abundant	Rather good	Rather rapidly evolving red wines. Very good.
1994	13-sept.	Abundant	Good	Classic red wines.
1995	13-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Homogeneous year. Great red wines, supple and harmonious.
1996	18-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Great year for long-aging wines in the Médoc.
1997	07-sept.	Abundant	Good	Fruity, supple, charming wines.
1998	23-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Very successful wines, endowed with good potential.
1999	30-aug.	Abundant	Good	Very harmonious vintage which can age well.
2000	18-sept.	Abundant	Exceptional	Greatest vintage of the century, similar to the 1900!
2001	25-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Better structured than 1999. Elegant vintage.
2002	24-sept.	Average	Good	Cabernet very successful. Powerful and structured.
2003	02-sept.	Average	Very good	Heat wave in summer. Much potential to be a great vintage.
2004	16-sept.	Abundant	Very good	Close to 2002, more fruity, more dense.
2005	18-sept.	Average	Exceptional	Historically great vintage. Generally successful.

Analysis of the data

The harvest quality has also been given a rating score (scale: 0-20) by Tastet & Lawton, based on the following equivalence with the words above:

19-20	Exceptional
17-18	Very good
15-16	Good
13-14	Rather good
10-12	Average
3-9	Mediocre
0-2	Poor

These scores are shown as a time series in the first graph. The blue line connects the data points, whereas the pink line is a running average (it shows the average value across groups of 9 consecutive years, thus smoothing out the long-term trends).

Clearly, through time there has been a general increase in score, along with a decrease in between-year variation. That is, vintage quality has both improved and become more consistent. This matches the trend discussed in the post on Fifty years of Bordeaux vintages, and extends it back a further 50 years. Being a Bordeaux vigneron has been a more reliable profession than it was before then.

The worst years for Bordeaux red wines were during the periods 1910-1915 and 1930-1935, while the best years were 1920-1925, 1945-1950, and the time since 1980. Indeed, there has been no vintage score below 10 since 1970.

On a technical matter, we can compare the Tastet & Lawton vintage-scoring system with that of the Wine Cellar Insider (produced by Jeff Leve). This is done in the second graph, where each point represents a vintage scored by both systems.

If the two scoring systems are identical then the points should lie on or near the pink line. However, the Tastet & Lawton score is almost always greater than that of the Wine Cellar Insider (so that the points lie below and to the right of the line). This means that a curved relationship fits better than a linear one, as shown by the blue line (the coefficient of variation = 0.87 for this line, which indicates a good fit between the line and the points). This line indicates that Tastet & Lawton have given higher scores for the poorer vintages compared to the Wine Cellar Inside, but they have been in closer agreement for the better vintages. Perhaps this is related to the fact that the Wine Cellar Insider scores were give retrospectively whereas the Tastet & Lawton scores were produced at the time of the vintage

The Tastet & Lawton data also include the official start date for each vintage. Regarding harvest dates, V. Daux et al. (2012. An open-database of grape harvest dates for climate research: data description and quality assessment. Climate of the Past 8: 1403-1418) note:

Prior to the French revolution, in most areas, wine owners were not free to harvest at their convenience. They had to wait for a public order to harvest (“ban des vendanges”) ... After the revolution, vine-growers were theoretically free to begin the harvest when they wanted to. In practice, most parishes maintained a compulsory minimum date for grape harvest in order to preserve law and order. After 1791, the date was set by the mayor, on vine growers’ advice. When several varieties were grown in the same area, the official date corresponded to the earliest and/or to the most important variety. The law of 9 July 1889 entitled the municipalities to keep or give up the “ban des vendanges” practice, which led to its disappearance in almost all France ... In France, since 1979, the harvest date has been determined by the Prefect’s service on a proposal of the National Institute of Origin and Quality, after the notice of the agency defined for each vineyard, taking into account the planting and the status of vineyards.

The harvest-date information is plotted in the third graph, which shows a count of how many vintages started on each date. These data cover the full 210 years (1795-2005), unlike the vintage scores.

Mostly, vintage has started in the last 2 weeks of September. However, two outlying vintages are shown, one a month earlier (1893) and one a month later (1816) than usual.

There are also intriguing patterns within the general harvest period. For example, 20 September is greatly over-represented compared to either 19 September or 21 September, and no harvest is listed as starting on either 8 September or 8 October. Perhaps these patterns relate to not officially starting work on commemorative dates. For example, 21 September 1792 was during the French Revolution, and on that date the National Convention declared France a republic and abolished the absolute monarchy. Similarly, on 8 October 1453 an agreement was signed whereby the bastille of Bordeaux would be handed over to the French, along with all prisoners in English hands, thus marking the end of English rule of Gascony (where Bordeaux in located).

The starting-date data can also be plotted as a time series, as shown in the final graph. The harvest-start dates have been numbered 1-75, so that 1 = the earliest starting date. Once again, the blue line connects the data points, whereas the pink line is a running average (it shows the average value across 9 years).

There are two patterns worth noting here. First, the data show long-term cycles (ie. peaks and troughs), with peaks every 35 years during the 1800s and peaks every 45 years during the 1900s. This presumably relates to long-term patterns in the weather. Second, the recent harvests (since 1990) have been among the earliest ever. This coincides with the generally higher quality of the vintages during that time. This is a consequence of the generally warmer weather (see the post on Fifty years of Bordeaux vintages), as the grapes ripen faster and therefore need to be picked earlier.

United States wine production: 1880 versus 2015

The first successful commercial vineyard and winery in the USA was established in 1798 in Lexington, Kentucky, by John James Dufour. There had been attempts as early as 1619 in Virginia, but none succeeded. After Dufour, Nicholas Longworth built the Ohio wine industry, and George Husmann founded the Missouri wine industry; and in the 1850s, Ohio was the largest wine-producing state, based on the American catawba grape. Vineyards had been established at Spanish missions in California in the late 1700s, but a commercial industry was not established until the mid 1800s, by people such as Charles Kohler and Andrea Sbarboro. You can read about this history in the book by Thomas Pinney, The Makers of American Wine: A Record of Two Hundred Years (University of California Press, 2012).

From these beginnings, wine production has clearly increased in the USA. There was a serious set-back during Prohibition (1920–1933), but there has also been a dramatic increase since 1970. It therefore could be of interest to make some sort of quantitative comparison of "then" versus now.

The data that I have used are for the years 1880 and 2015, and come respectively from these two sources:

• William McMurtrie. 1881. Report Upon Statistics of Grape Culture and Wine Production in the United States for 1880. Department of Agriculture Special Report No. 36.
• Department of the Treasury — Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. 2016. Statistical Report — Wine; January-December 2015.

In both publications, annual wine production data are provided in gallons for each state of the USA for which there was significant wine volume at the time.

These data are shown in the graph (click to enlarge). In the scatterplot, each point represents a single state, located according to its volume of wine production during 1880 (horizontally) and 2015 (vertically). Note the logarithmic scale for both axes. Also, note that the states labeled in red actually had less wine production than is shown by their position on the graph — they have been placed directly on the graph axes for convenience.

The pink line on the graph shows equivalence. That is, any state on (or near) the line had the same volume of wine production in 2015 as it did in 1880; any state above the line had a greater production in 2015 than in 1880; and any state below the line had greater production in 1880 than in 2015.

Clearly, most states increased their wine production from 1880 to 2015. This includes five states that now produce considerable amounts of wine but which were not listed as wine-producing states in 1880 — these are labeled in red at the left of the graph.

There are also five states that have increased their production by more than two orders of magnitude: Oregon (800 times), Florida (165), Pennsylvania (135), Minnesota (130) and Massachusetts (110); along with Wisconsin (90 times).

California has always been the biggest wine-producing state in the USA, and it now produces 50 times as much wine as it did in 1880. Washington, New York and Pennsylvania all now (2015) produce more wine than California did back in 1880, with Oregon producing about the same amount.

Interestingly, there are two states (labeled in blue on the graph) that have hardly changed their wine production at all — Iowa and New Mexico. This does not necessarily mean that their production has never changed through time. In fact, it probably decreased during Prohibition, and has now returned to former levels but no higher.

Finally, there are eight states whose wine production is now considerably less than it was 135 years ago. Indeed, two of these states (labeled in red at the bottom of the graph) are not now recognized as producing much wine at all, even though they were ranked 14th and 15th back in 1880. Other states are making a comeback, after having their wine volume drop to a low level. Missouri, in particular, was the second-biggest producer of wine in 1880, and it is now slowly making a comeback, with the establishment of new vineyards.

This post was inspired by an earlier one from the Hogshead blog: The top ten wine producing states in 1880 as compared to 2012.

Quantifying value-for-money wines - part 4

This is the fourth of a four-part set of blog posts looking at how we might identify value-for-money wines. The topic is not as simple as we might like.

Quantifying value-for-money wines - part 1
   — issues with quantifying value for money
Quantifying value-for-money wines - part 2
   — empirically comparing wines within a specified wine group
Quantifying value-for-money wines - part 3
   — formulae for assessing individual wines against a baseline wine
Quantifying value-for-money wines - part 4
   — empirically comparing wines across wine groups

Empirically comparing wines across wine groups

In a previous post (Part 2) I considered empirical methods for trying to quantify value for money as related to wine, which is usually expressed as a quality to price ratio (QPR). The QPR method that I presented involved fitting the exponential (log-linear) model to the price and quality data for a set of comparable wines.

In this post I discuss a more sophisticated version of this approach. It is still based on the exponential model (and thus assumes a non-linear relationship between wine price and quality; see the post The relationship of wine quality to price), but it incorporates many more of the factors that might influence wine price. It estimates the QPR value for an "average" wine, which then allows the QPR value to be calculated for any other wines, of any type.

Hedonic Pricing

Hedonic Pricing is a method to estimate the "expected" price of the goods within a specified market, based on the principle that the goods are affected by certain factors that can raise or lower the "base" price. The factors can be intrinsic to the goods, or part of the external environment, or solely in the mind of the purchaser.

For wine, the obvious factors that could potentially affect the price include: grape type, vineyard location, winery reputation, vintage year, wine quality rating, cellaring potential of the wine, and current market demand. However, we can include as many factors as we like.

Based on this economic model, we can estimate the "expected" market price for wines by using the mathematical technique of multiple regression (called a hedonic regression). We collect a large dataset of wines, along with a record of all of their required characteristics, and we then perform the mathematical analysis. This yields a single equation that summarizes the model.

In practice, we use the model by entering into the pre-calculated equation the data for any specified wine, and this will produce the expected average price for that wine. If the wine costs less than this expected average then it is good value for money (a high QPR).

Evaluation

This is quite a popular approach to estimating expected prices, not just for wine but for many things, notably house prices. There is a list of many of the applications of Hedonic Pricing to wine in the post on The relationship of wine quality to price. In particular, the References listed below have explicitly applied hedonic regressions in order to identify value-for-money wines.

Unfortunately, I cannot draw a simple graph to illustrate Hedonic Pricing, the way I could in the previous Parts of this series of blog posts — the model forms a complex multi-dimensional pattern (one dimension for each factor included in the analysis). (The best way to illustrate the hedonic pricing model as applied to finding value-for-money wines would be to plot the wine value as predicted by the model against the actual wine price.) However, the principle is similar to that used in Part 2 of these blog posts. In particular, the model used is usually log-linear / exponential.

Importantly, the method is more comprehensive than that used in Part 2, because more influences on price are included, not just wine quality. Moreover, we do not need separate data analyses for different grape types, but instead they are all included in one giant analysis.

Also, the method is potentially easy to use in practice, because we have a single equation that we can use to estimate whether any given wine is good value for money. This is similar to the methods discussed in Part 3.

However, because everything is "built in", the model cannot be adjusted by the user for a new dataset. In particular, if vintage year is included as a factor in the model, then the equation needs to be recalculated after each new vintage.

References

Jon R. Miller, Robert W. Stone, Eric T. Stuen (2015) When is a wine a bargain? A comparison of popular and regression-based approaches. Journal of Wine Research 26:153-168.

Eddie Oczkowski (1994) A hedonic price function for Australian premium table wine. Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 28:93-110.

Edward Oczkowski (2001) Hedonic wine price functions and measurement error. Economic Record 77:374-382.

Edward Oczkowski (2010) Hedonic wine price predictions and nonnormal errors. Agribusiness 26:519-535.

David A. Priilaid, Paul Van Rensburg (2006) Non-linearity in the hedonic pricing of South African red wines. International Journal of Wine Marketing 18:166-182.

David A. Priilaid, Paul Van Rensburg (2012) Nonlinear hedonic pricing: a confirmatory study of South African wines. International Journal of Wine Research 4:1-13.

Paul Van Rensburg, David A. Priilaid (2004) An econometric model for identifying value in South African red wine. International Journal of Wine Marketing 16:53-75.

Australian Wine Price Calculator

The first application of Hedonic Pricing to wine was by Eddie Oczkowski in 1994 (see the References). In 2002, he provided a web page for applying his pre-calculated Hedonic Pricing model for Australian wine, which is available at the Australian Wine Price Calculator. This appears to be the only available online calculator for wine that uses Hedonic Pricing.

This model includes five factors, as shown in the picture. It is currently based on a sample of 8,774 Australian premium wines (average price AU$34). The data cover the vintages 2004-2014 (as well as non-vintage wines), with cellaring potential until 2060. There are 82 grape varieties and blends included (with Shiraz as the most commonly occurring one in the dataset), along with 80 named grape-growing regions (McLaren Vale is the most common).

Where to from here?

The empirical QPR approach (see Part 2) should work best for identifying those wines with a good quality : price ratio, because it provides the best fit to the data for each wine category. However, this is rather impractical for assessing individual wines.

The wwpQPR approach (see Part 3) is much more practical for on-the-spot decisions when purchasing wine, because it uses a simple formula to evaluate any given wine. You do need to access the Wellesley Wine Press web page to do the calculations.

The Hedonic Pricing model (as discussed above) tries to combine the best aspects of these two approaches. It provides a good fit to the data across wine categories, as well as providing a simple formula to evaluate any given wine. However, there is currently only one web page available (for Australian wine only), which needs to be kept up to date after each vintage.

Fifty years of Bordeaux vintages

Vintage charts are intended to show us how the harvest quality has varied from vintage to vintage. They are often disparaged, because they simplify the complexities of each harvest (where there can be considerable spatial variation) down into a single number. They also make little sense if they are applied to a very large area, which they too often are in practice.

Nevertheless, they can be an interesting and informative guide to the general features of each vintage within a restricted area, even if they tell us nothing about each wine producer within that area, and how each producer dealt with the vagaries of harvest time.

This particularly applies to those vineyard regions where there is a long series of vintage assessments. In these cases, we can study the long-term patterns of vintage variation, without needing to concern ourselves with differences between individual producers, within or between vintages.

There are several regions where the written vintage records go back at least a century, and I will be covering these over the next few weeks. For example, there are several series for both Bordeaux and Piemonte, as well as a very long one for the Rhine valley.

Here, I will start with a somewhat shorter series, covering only a half-century, but which I will analyze in some detail.

The Wine Cellar Insider Bordeaux Vintage Ratings, 1959 to Today

Jeff Leve, at The Wine Cellar Insider, has provided vintage rankings for the red wines of the Bordeaux region of France, for every year from the famous 1959 vintage up to and including 2014 (ie. 56 vintages). This assessment is based on the standard 100-point quality scale (ie. ranging from 50–100). The data are shown as a time series in the first graph.

This graph shows several interesting features.

First, there is no score between 50 and 60, and also no score between 70 and 80. This means that three distinct types of vintages can be recognized: 1 disastrous vintage (score 50), 11 mediocre vintages (score 60-70), and 44 good vintages (score 80–100). This is a pretty impressive record for the vignerons.

Second, there is no score of 94, and so we can conveniently score "great" vintages as being ≥ 95 points (this is the pink line on the graph). This gives us 9 such vintages, out of the 44 "good" ones, which is also pretty good for the wine-makers. Oddly, there are no scores of either 98 or 99, but there are two scores of 100 points.

Third, there have been no mediocre vintages since 1992, and only two mediocre vintages after 1980. Before that, there were 10 mediocre vintages and 12 good ones. Indeed, before 1993 there were 5 great years, 17 good years, 11 mediocre years and 1 very poor year (in 34 years), while since then there have been 4 great years and 18 good years (in 22 years). This is quite a dramatic change in fortune during the latter part of the series.

This change has often been attributed to improved vineyard management since the 1990s. In particular, nowadays there is usually much more rigorous selection of grapes at harvest, so that poor grapes are simply not included in the best wine. In this sense, it has been claimed that there are no longer "good" years and "poor" years for vintages, but instead there are years with a larger or smaller amount of good wine.

There are also what are called "green harvests", which refers to the taking of unripe (ie. green) bunches of grapes off the vines a few weeks before harvest. This results in uniformly riper grapes, which ensures softer tannins in the ensuing wine, as well as reducing the yield, and thus concentrating the flavor in the remaining grapes. There has also been a recent trend towards late picking of ultra-ripe grapes, which makes the wine more fruity (and more alcoholic). This all makes today’s wines drinkable earlier than those of 20 years ago.

However, Orley Ashenfelter (see the references listed below) has suggested, instead, that the recent improvements in harvest quality may actually be due to increased summer temperatures. That is, higher temperatures during the vines' growing seasons have mitigated the need for fancy vineyard management. The relationship between the daily-average summer temperature and the vintage quality score is shown in the second graph, for the period 1959–2009 (the temperature data come from Ashenfelter and Pablo Almaraz). Each point represents one Bordeaux vintage, mapped by its average temperature (horizontally) and its quality score (vertically).

These data show that, mathematically, 37% of the variation in the vintage quality scores during the past half-century is related solely to variation in the summer temperature. Clearly, summer warmth has a large influence on improving harvest quality.

Moreover, the distribution of the summer temperatures in Bordeaux over time from 1952–2009 is shown in the third graph. The pink points indicate the years from 1989 onwards (as they also do in the previous graph), showing that there has been a significant increase in daily-average summer temperature since that time. Indeed, there has been a steady increase in temperature since the low of 1977. European vignerons are in no doubt about the existence of global warming!

Ashenfelter backed up his original assessment of the relationship between vintage quality and summer temperature with some forecasts (inaccurately called "predictions"). These appeared in the New York Times in 1990: Wine equation puts some noses out of joint.

The first forecast was for the 1989 vintage:

Perhaps the most dramatic Ashenfelter prediction is for the 1989 vintage. By Professor Ashenfelter's calculations, the hottest growing season in memory, combined with a very dry harvest, all but guarantee that the 1989 Bordeaux will be stunningly good.

Jeff Leve's assessment in 2015 (15 years later) was a score of 95 for the 1989 vintage. So, this forecast turned out to be spot on.

The second forecast was for the 1986 vintage:

According to the Ashenfelter system, below-average growing season temperatures and above-average harvest rainfall doom the 1986 Bordeaux to mediocrity. When the dust settles, he predicts, it will be judged the worst vintage of the 1980s, and no better than the unmemorable 1974s or 1969s.

Jeff Leve's 2015 assessment was: 1969 vintage = 60 points, 1974 = 65 points, and 1986 = 88 points. Furthermore, there were five worse vintages than 1986 during the 1980s, and four better ones. Indeed, the worst vintage of the 1980s was 1980, with 70 points. So, this forecast was pretty far off.

Literature references

Pablo Almaraz (2015) Bordeaux wine quality and climate fluctuations during the last century: changing temperatures and changing industry. Climate Research 64:187-199.

Orley Ashenfelter, David Ashmore, Robert Lalonde (1995) Bordeaux wine vintage quality and the weather. Chance 8(4):7-14.

Orley Ashenfelter (2008) Predicting the quality and prices of Bordeaux wine. Economic Journal 118:F174–F184.

Orley Ashenfelter (2010) Predicting the quality and prices of Bordeaux wine. Journal of Wine Economics 5:40-52. [a reprint of the previous paper]

European wine imports

In a recent blog post (Global wine exports) I chastised the Australian wine industry for principally exporting large amounts of cheap wine, rather than exporting high-quality wine, which they do actually make as well. The latter pays better in the long run, as shown by the leading export countries, such as France and New Zealand. In this post, I look at this same phenomenon at a smaller scale: the European Union.

The data cover the years 2012–2014, and come from:
EU-27: Wine Annual Report and Statistics 2015. United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. Global Agricultural Information Network Report No. IT1512.

The graphs show the average cost per litre of wine imported from various countries. The first graph refers to imports into the European Union as a whole.

This shows 10 of the top 11 sources of imported wine, excluding Switzerland. Both Israel and Switzerland export very little wine to the European Union, but they make considerably more money per litre out of it than does anyone else (for Switzerland it is $55–85 per litre!).

The big sources of wine for the European Union are, in decreasing order of volume, Chile, Australia, South Africa and the United States. As shown in the graph, these countries make considerably less money per litre out of their exports than do some of the other countries, notably New Zealand, Georgia and Argentina. In other words, they are purveyors principally of cheap wine.

We can look at somewhat finer detail by considering individual countries within the European Union. Two of the biggest destinations for the imported wine are Germany and the United Kingdom. Indeed, these are the two biggest wine importers by volume in the world (see the post Global wine imports).

The graph for Germany shows that the countries making most money per litre for their wine exports are from the European Union itself (France, Austria and Italy). Of the outsiders, the USA makes considerably more money per litre than does Australia, which makes no more money than does Chile.

The New Zealanders do not appear in the Germany graph because most of their wine goes to the United Kingdom. Indeed, as shown in the next graph, they also make much more money per litre from this wine than does anyone except the French. Australia and Italy are the two biggest suppliers by volume to the UK, and yet they are principally supplying cheap wine, unlike France and New Zealand. [The 2015 data come from GAIN report United Kingdom Wine Market Report 2016.]

These figures do not shine a healthy light on the Australian wine industry, as I noted previously. There is money to be made by exporting wine, and yet the Australians are not making much of it, in spite of being globally the fifth biggest exporter (with the UK, USA and China as the biggest markets). Exporting cheap wine, rather than better-paying wines, is not a route to financial advancement.

As Max Allen (Australia at the crossroads?) has noted:

The volume of annual wine exports is roughly the same, 670 million litres, as it was a decade ago (after reaching a high of 768 million in 2007) but the value of those exports has dropped by a staggering A$1 billion, fostering a persistent image overseas of Australia as a commodity producer of cheap plonk.

Part of this issue, of course, is the matter of bulk wine, which is bottled in the destination country rather than at the source — this reduces the added value in the country of origin. As Jancis Robinson has pointed out (How wine travels nowadays – in bulk):

In 2008 fewer than three in every 10 bottles of Australian wine on British shelves contained wine that had been shipped from Australia in bulk rather than in bottle. Four years later that figure was eight in every 10, and the total amount of wine shipped out of Australia in bulk overtook the volume exported in bottle.

The Australian wine industry is frequently reported to be in a state of crisis (see, for example Anatomy of wine profit and (mainly) loss: South Africa versus Australia). This is principally due to an over-supply of grapes of mediocre quality (principally from the irrigated vineyards of the Murray-Darling basin), along with a very centralized production and distribution system (focused on two supermarket chains) that is interested in quantity rather than quality. Indeed, in 2013 John Angove noted that Australia is well overpopulated with wineries, as it has one winery for every 8,800 population, compared to the USA figure of one winery for every 55,000 population.

Viv Thomson noted earlier this year:

It was the mid-90s when the Winemakers Federation of Australia put out a forecast for the next 30 years. By 2010 we were well ahead on plantings, but we weren’t ahead on infrastructure, we weren’t ahead on marketing and that brought about the current glut and disaster. Then the high Australian dollar really put the crunch on things ... it got out of hand, the investors got involved, grape prices were sky high ... it was just not sustainable.

Australia has an abundance of high-quality wines, but they currently seem uninterested in letting the world see many of them. They might solve a few of the reported problems if they tried to earn more export dollars per litre than they currently do.