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JWE Volume 4 | 2009 | No. 1

Journal of Wine Economics Volume 4 | 2009 | No. 1

An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competition

Robert T. Hodgson
Pages: 1-9
Full Text PDF
Abstract

An analysis of over 4000 wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions shows little concordance among the venues in awarding Gold medals. Of the 2,440 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47 percent received Gold medals, but 84 percent of these same wines also received no award in another competition. Thus, many wines that are viewed as extraordinarily good at some competitions are viewed as below average at others. An analysis of the number of Gold medals received in multiple competitions indicates that the probability of winning a Gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a Gold at another competition, indicating that winning a Gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone.

Consumer-Level Determinants of Wine Purchases in Canadian Restaurants

Leigh J. Maynard & Kelly Davidson
Pages: 10-24
Abstract

Logistic regressions identified determinants of red and white wine purchases in formal and casual restaurants, using a detailed dataset of over 26,000 consumer-level food away-from-home pur- chases in two Canadian provinces during 2000–2005. Meal context regressors, and prior behavior associated mainly with unobserved heterogeneity, contributed most of the explanatory power, with observable demographic regressors playing a modest role. The main strategic recommendation is thus to focus wine marketing resources on the restaurant environment, with less emphasis on targeting specific audiences.

Guest Editor Jill J. McCluskey Symposium“Economic Forces Affecting International Wine Markets” Guest Editor’s Introduction to Symposium

Jill J. McCluskey
Pages: 25-26
Full Text PDF
Abstract

The articles in this symposium analyze the economics of evolving international wine mar- kets, including issues associated with taxes, measures of quality, reputation, consumer preferences, globalization, and emerging markets in China. This special symposium con- sists of peer-reviewed papers presented at the “Competitive Forces Affecting the Wine and Winegrape Industries: An International Conference on World Wine Markets,” sponsored by the Washington State University Impact Center, the Center for Wine Economics and Business of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Sciences and the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, University of California, in Davis, California, August 8-10, 2007, and the American Association of Wine Economists in Portland, Oregon, August 14-16, 2008.

Wine Taxes, Production, Aging and Quality

Rachael E. Goodhue, Jeffrey T. LaFrance & Leo K. Simon
Pages: 27-45
Abstract

We consider the impact of taxes on the quantity and quality produced by a competitive firm of goods, such as wine, for which market value accrues with age. Our analysis found the following: an increase in the volumetric retail tax collected at sale increases quality, so that the basic Alchian- Allen effect holds. However, an increase in the volumetric storage tax collected each period decreases quality, as does an increase in the ad valorem storage tax. The effect of an increase in the ad valorem retail tax on quality is indeterminate. Increases in any of the four taxes reduce the quantity of wine produced. Any two-tax system that includes a volumetric sales tax spans the full range of feasible tax revenues with positive tax rates. For any tax system that reduces quality rela- tive to the firm’s no-tax equilibrium, there is another tax system that increases tax revenues, elim- inates the quality distortion, and does not increase the quantity distortion. Many wine industry observers believe that most, if not all, existing tax systems tend to result in the suboptimal provi- sion of quality. Our results suggest that the wide variety of wine tax systems is not prima facie evidence that these systems, or most of them, are inefficient. Provided the system includes a volu- metric sales tax it may be efficient, regardless of which of the other instruments, or how many of them, are used. Assertions regarding inefficiency must be evaluated on an empirical case-by-case basis. Our analysis provides a theoretical framework for such research.

Globalization, Superstars, and Reputation: Theory & Evidence from the Wine Industry

Michael Gibbs, Mikel Tapia & Frederic Warzynski
Pages: 46-61
Abstract

We develop a simple model of the effects of reputation on prices. An increasing fraction of con- sumers who are “naive” (less informed about quality) results in a stronger sensitivity of prices to ratings of quality. We then argue that this may be a factor in price dynamics for goods that become more widely traded as a result of globalization. We then provide some empirical analysis of these ideas using data on prices and Robert Parker’s ratings of wines. Wine prices are strongly related to ratings, and even more so for higher quality wine categories. In addition, changes in Parker ratings for the same wine result in large price changes. Price elasticities with respect to ratings have risen dramatically since 1993. One plausible explanation for this is the growing globalization of the fine wine market, which increases the prevalence of naive wine consumers.

Dynamic Analysis of Brand and Regional Reputation: The Case of Wine

Günter Schamel
Pages: 62-80
Abstract

Globalization has created an international wine market and global brands. However, consumers continue to regard regional origin as a dominant criterion in their wine buying decisions. Indicators of collective regional reputation as well as individual producer (or brand) reputation guide consumers in their buying decisions. We measure regional and brand reputation indicators for 27 growing regions around the world. Regional reputation is based on a region’s overall quality performance through time. Positive and negative brand reputation based on relative regional peer performance is a distinct feature of this empirical application. Noting competing as well as common interest among regional producers, we hypothesize that wines from producers with a high quality reputation rely more on their own strengths and will depend less on their region’s reputation and vice versa. We also test whether this assertion is valid over time covering six recent vintages. We apply a hedonic model to measure the significance of these regional and brand reputation indicators in determining wine prices. Our model largely confirms our hypothesis, but it also sug- gests that for some regions (Germany and New Zealand), high quality brands rely heavily on overall regional reputation. In other regions (including Napa and Sonoma Valley), high reputation brands seem to lose their strength and start to rely on regional reputation. Regions holding on to their strong individual brand reputations include the Rhone Valley, Spain, and Bordeaux. The analysis sheds light on how regional and producer brands are performing as wine markets mature in terms of global branding and consumers becoming more knowledgeable about wine regions, quality, and reputation.

Willingness to Pay for Sensory Properties in Washington State Red Wines

Nan Yang, Jill J. McCluskey & Carolyn Ross
Pages: 81-93
Abstract

In this article, we evaluate how sensory qualities of wine, such as astringency, bitterness, aroma, and flavor, affect consumers’ willingness to pay for wine. In order to accomplish this objective, we utilize data collected from untrained consumers, a trained panel, and laboratory measurements of tannin intensity. From this data, a consumer-preference model, a consumer-intensity model, a trained-panel model, and an instrumental-measurement model are estimated and compared. Overall, the consumer-preference model is the most accurate in predicting consumers’ willingness to pay. As expected, the closer a wine is to a consumer’s ideal, the more they are willing to pay. Astringency has a mostly positive effect, and bitterness has a negative effect. Comparing the accu- racy of the other models, the instrumental-measurement model is the next best, followed by trained-panel model, and the consumer-intensity model. This suggests that the instrumental mea- surements can be used as an effective alternative to trained panels. This is important because trained panels may be less practical to use on an ongoing basis.

Wine Markets in China: Assessing the Potential with Supermarket Survey Data

Hyunok Lee, Jikun Huang, Scott Rozelle & Daniel Sumner
Pages: 94-113
Abstract

The emergence of grape wine as a mainstream alcoholic beverage in China is relatively new. However, rapidly increasing wine consumption in China provides a significant trade potential for the United States and other wine exporting countries. This paper investigates the Chinese wine market using retailer data with a focus on imported wines. Supermarkets are identified as major retail outlets for foreign wines, and this paper uses data from a recent supermarket wine survey in China. Our data indicate that about half of our sample stock foreign wines. On average, 21 percent of total wine shelf space is allocated to foreign wines and larger stores are associated with larger shares of shelf space for foreign wines. Among foreign wines, French wine dominates. Of 31 supermarkets that sell foreign wines, 26 stores carry French wine, and in all but two of these stores more than half of the foreign wine shelf space is devoted to French wine. Australia, Chile, Italy and the United States follow in terms of number of stores carrying wines. Supermarkets in our sample allocate most of their shelf space to red wine for both domestic (93%) and foreign (82%) wines. The average median price for foreign wines (94 yuans per bottle) was more than double the equivalent price for domestic wines (42 yuans).

Book & Film Reviews

Dashi and Umami: The Heart of Japanese Cuisine

By: Cross Media
Reviewer: Peter Musolf
Pages: 114-118
Full Text PDF
Book Review

Translating from its native Japanese as “deliciousness,” umami is a fundamental flavor our tongues pick up along with salt, sweet, bitter, and sour, the other basic tastes. A coffeetable showpiece, Cross Media’s unexpectedly detailed volume brings much precision to this delightful word surfacing often in recent talk on food and wine. It does this by first dissecting dashi, the broths at the center of authentic Japanese cooking. Drawn from seaweed, fish, or mushrooms, these extracts are naturally loaded with umami’s chemical constituents. Apart from an intriguing passage on sake, the book says nothing about wine. Umami, nevertheless, appears to occupy a significant part of the wine flavor spectrum, and wine thinkers on to this are giving a revolutionary twist to pairing wine and food (see Tim Hanni’s, MW, interview at umamiinfo.com). Dashi and Umami would be helpful to anyone trying to grasp these slippery notions and explore them in kitchen and cellar. And it might improve your health.

Dashi comes in four basic types according to ingredients. There is dashi made from kombu (kelp), dashi made from katsuobushi (bonito shavings), dashi from niboshi (tiny dried sardines), and dashi from dried shiitake mushrooms. We can be grateful we’re not required to make dashi from scratch. Processing bonito for katsuobushi, for instance, involves special fishing techniques, exact filleting, simmering on form-preserving racks, more knife work, a minimum ten days alternating oak smoke and cooling, repeated inoculation with mold, then fermentation and sun-drying. The result is a short, hard bar of skinless fish flesh resembling wood more persuasively than quartered skipjack. The bar is then worked with a special plane to produce rosy, curled shavings. Harvesting and preparing kelp, sardines, and shiitake is similarly baroque, well-left in the hands of professionals, whose techniques are themselves a kind of dashi, the distillate of age-old culinary practice.

Purists like to plane the dried bonito themselves, but most prefer buying shavings readymade. Cooking the fragrant, faintly smoky katsuobushi dashi, therefore, is simple, requiring only boiling water, a handful of the shavings, a square of dried kelp, and (in contrast to long-simmered Western stocks) very little time. Likewise the fishier niboshi, the elegant and marine kombu dashi (in some cases this one doesn’t even need heat), or the potent shojin dashi, calling for nothing but dried shiitake, kombu, water, and, like all these recipes, so few tools you will sack your Vita-Mix in embarrassed disgust.

We really shouldn’t have to ask how umami tastes, because not just Japanese food, or Chinese, contains it. Every cuisine does, and with surprising prevalence. It’s found in cheese. It’s in beef and pork, especially when cured or reduced in bouillon. It’s in sauerkraut. Africans eat it in beans. Bovril. Vegemite. Tomatoes. Ketchup. Truffles. Southeast Asians love it in fish sauce. The ancients adored it as garum. Incredibly, it’s in the amniotic broth we swim in before birth, and it provides much of the flavor giving mother’s milk its appeal. Think of chicken stock before you add the salt. That, to a significant degree, is umami, admittedly something of an under-the-radar presence, operating on the senses in stealthy contrast to the unmistakeable salvos of its better-known mates. Yet what would your broth be without it?

Serious J-chefs are in imperturbable agreement that virtually everything in their cuisine benefits from dashi in one form or another, and they rarely cook without it. The broths seem to sharpen the flavors of a dish’s individual ingredients, they feel, balancing them without melting them into one another, and adding richness. Even where dashi isn’t used (plain rice, sushi), fresh versions of its components or other umami-abundant fare (pickled plums, miso, soy sauce) are served, giving a meal its proper gustatory force.

So what is umami chemically, to go on in the vernacular of our time. How do we experience it physiologically? Why do we crave it? The scientist establishing umami as the flavor of glutamate was Kikunae Ikeda in 1908. Ikeda was a Japanese chemist, and though he studied under Ostwald in Germany his breakthrough clearly had to do with the gargantuan quantity of kelp consumed at home in Japan. Kombu is the most generous source of umami yet discovered, every hundred grams carrying 2240 mg of glutamate (see Table 1). Ikeda’s student Shintaro Kodama, building on von Liebig’s beef broth studies, went on to identify the inosinate suffusing katsuobushi as a second key umami trigger (shaving the fish enables a fast, nearly 100 percent extraction). Later, in 1957, Akira Kuninaka unearthed the third great source of umami, guanylate, on hand in cornucopian amounts in dried shiitake mushrooms.

Glutamate, we learn, is an amino acid, and a key metabolic player. Plentiful in protein, we can also build protein from it, building ourselves in the process. Inosinate (IMP) and guanylate (GMP) are nucleotides and likewise mandatory to the human chemistry set: sources of muscle energy, vehicles of cellular signaling. Deep dietetics turns out to be a charming subject, and I would have welcomed a fuller account of these matters in the book.

Umami Substances in Food (mg/100 g)

:: Glutamate:: Inosinate
Kombu2240Bonito Katsuobushi474
Parmegiano Reggiano1680Tuna286
Nori1378Chicken283
Cured Ham337Pork260
Emmental Cheese308Beef90
Tomato246Nori9
Cheddar182Snow Crab5
Scallop140Sea Urchin2
Green Asparagus106
Green Pea106:: Guanylate
Onion51Shiitake Mushroom150
Spinach48Morel (dried)40
Green Tea Extract32Nori13
Chicken22Fungi Porcini (dried)10
Snow Crab19Oyster Mushroom (dried)10
Beef10Chicken5
Potato10Beef4
Pork9Snow Crab4
Pork2

Source: Dashi and Umami: The Heart of Japanese Cuisine,
Eat-Japan/Cross Media, 2009

Still, it emerges clearly enough why the flavor of such molecules should please us. Umami tastes good because our body wants us to eat things tasting that way.

The Japanese researchers were occupied with finding umami’s chemical origins. More recent science elsewhere has cleared up the other end of the business, the lingual-neural mechanism by which we sense these chemicals and, in the case of glutamate, tell the stomach to get ready to break down protein. Work published by Nirupa Chaudhari in Nature Neuroscience (February 2000) and by Greg Nelson in Nature (14 March 2002) has determined our taste buds possess dedicated glutamate and, more broadly, amino acid molecular receptors. These results have led to a wide acceptance of umami as an official member of the fundamental flavor club, a list many assumed would not expand beyond the big four. Readers eager for more detail on this topic in lay terms will want to take up Hervé This’s microscopically focused Casseroles et éprouvettes (2002) (the English translation is called Molecular Gastronomy).

BalancingtheflavorofDashiandUmami’stechnicalsectionsisarichlyphotographed chapter of seasonal menus by Japanese star chefs Takashi Tamura, Eiichi Takahashi (with son Yoshihiro), Kunio Tokuoka, and Yoshihiro Murata. Recipes are given for exquisite dishes like hamo nimonowan (pike eel soup with summer vegetables) or kintsuba ise ebi (golden spiny lobster bisque). Should your market happen to sell daggertooth pike conger or golden spiny lobsters and you swish a hocho accurately enough to present them in any meaningful way, you inhabit a strange pocket of the English-speaking world indeed and have probably archived too much Iron Chef. Another chapter, though, includes everyday cooking. Here the recipes are straightforward by comparison, their ingredients ready to hand for most urbanites and Internet shoppers. Skill expectations seem realistic, too. So not only does the book give you what you need to know about dashi and umami, it shows you some practical ways of increasing their place in your diet and enjoying their taste and physical benefits.

These benefits go some ways beyond the molecular necessities sketched above. Umami foods, for instance, can suppress your appetite, inducing you to eat fewer calories by convincing the stomach it’s had enough protein and, as Hervé this explains, prompting heat production the way eating steak does. Vegetables simmered in dashi, a J-cuisine winter standard, are as satisfying as stew, great news for people trying to lose weight or lower their meat intake. By rounding out flavors and deepening them, moveover, umami keeps us from adding salt or fat to food. Drinking dashi isn’t compulsory, of course. The body can manufacture glutamate and the nucleotides in other ways. Yet the infrequency of obesity in Japan and the long lives of its residents (particularly Okinawans, who are human sequoias and astonishing kelp consumers) make a good argument for learning how to shave bonito.

Umami and wine is a connection alluring to oenophilist gourmets. Experts say amino acids of several kinds are on hand in fermented grapes, the decay of yeast proteins after fermentation also contributing aminos to the finished product. Still, many tasters have a hard time picking out the subtle umami swirling within their Musigny and Krug. Not so the Japanese, in my view, whose diet gives them a rigorous umami sensitivity training and can easily differentiate not just between dashi types but also, mindbogglingly, between the grades of bonito or shiitake used or the source of the kombu. A Japanese chef, for instance, will tell you what sets apart his clear soup is that he only uses the rishiri kelp variety and only that taken from the bed off Rebun Island’s Funadomari beach, the kombu equivalent of a grand cru vineyard in the Côtes de Nuits. Japanese wine tasters, consequently, use the relative amount of umami they sense as a handy means of categorizing. Dashi-kei wines (“dashi family”) are those with much umami, ones an American taster might say, a little vaguely, have “minerality,” or as a French tasting friend of mine will flare his nostrils and remark: “mushroom!” Dashi-kei zya nai wines (“not dashi family”), on the other hand, are wines a Westerner might praise for “well-extracted fruit.” In Japan, this last category is also known as “Parker type.”

Within the dashi broth palate in Japan there is a division between “light taste” and “dark.” The first of these, a complimentary term, is used to describe the tendency in Kyoto cuisine and that of the surrounding region to season less with salt and oil (and never with sugar), relying mainly on the umami of highly concentrated dashi. Dark taste is typical of Tokyo and northern Japan, where the same dish would include more salt and soy sauce, oil (for example, pork fat), sugar, and a weaker dashi than the Kyoto version. This division parallels the “dashi family”—“not dashi family” dichotomy in wine. Hence wines like fine champagne, with which Japan is fairly obsessed, and first-rate Riesling are felt to pair best with light taste cooking. “Parker type” wines go better with Tokyo seasoning. At the same time, a wine like an Henri Bonneau Châteauneuf-du-Pape stands with a foot in both camps, and it would be wrong to suggest all Japanese tasters think of their wines in black and white, or to imply that Robert Parker can’t see the dashi for the fruit.

Parker’s biography, nevertheless, reports the maître’s fondness for Chinese food and his habit of drinking wine with it. (There’s a picture of this in the Emperor of Wine.) It’s interesting to wonder whether Parker’s potstickers contain monosodium glutamate. MSG, originally patented by umami researcher Ikeda, is produced not from kombu but wheat gluten. Now largely vindicated as a health hazard, it is widely used as a flavor enhancer in Chinese cooking, not to mention in tortilla chips, barbecue sauce, and salad dressing. Getting too much of the crude knockoff spoils your taste for real umami, many Japanese tasters think, and robs you of the ability to distinguish the various kinds of broth. Is this conceiveably why Parker takes less pleasure in wines of cooler vintages, especially burgundies, while Japanese drinkers often find a way to appreciate them?

In main a book of chemistry, recipes, and photographs, the volume also contains short tributes from famous chefs like Pascal Barbot and Heston Blumenthal. These aren’t just fluff but, rather, signs that Western cooks are understanding umami better and better, including its synergistic effect, how combining different dashi broths, that is, amplifies their flavor (and that of other ingredients) to a power greater than the sum of its parts. Blumenthal, who adds pulverized kombu to some of his creations, is following his interest beyond umami into theoretical proposals that carbon dioxide and fat are fundamental tastes, and into sherry’s capacity to boost the flavor of umami bombs like cured pork and anchovies – the chemistry behind the addictive delights of a tapas bar.

So is dashi a kind of Ewigkeitssuppe, as Thomas Mann called the time-slowing “broth of eternity” ladled out on the snow-swept magic mountain? Perhaps so, but with a singular advantage. For it appears if we swallow enough of it we can savor the sanitorium’s satisfactions right here in the warm valley of the everyday, and without the soul freeze Mann’s characters undergo. Having our dashi and eating it too, we can relish our food, our wine, our lives a little longer, a little more intensely.

References

This, H. (2002). Casseroles et Éprouvettes. Paris: Belin.
This, H. (2006). Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor. New York: Columbia University Press

Mondovino

By: Jonathan Nossiter
Reviewer: Tony Lima & Norma Schroder
Pages: 119-121
Full Text PDF
Film Review

Mondovino is billed as, “A documentary on the impact of globalization on the world’s different wine regions” (Internet Movie Database, 2009). The film’s cinema verité style intersperses clips from interviews with 39 wine professionals. Featured winemakers include California’s Mondavi family (Robert, Margrit, Michael and Tim), and Burgundy’s de Montilles (Alix, Etienne, and Hubert). Naturally there are wine writers such as prolific wine critic Robert Parker; the old lion of British wine auctions, Michael Broadbent; and the French winemaking business consultant, Michel Rolland.

Unfortunately the film just doesn’t work. It lacks focus, wandering aimlessly through short clips of vineyards, of M. Rolland as he visits various wineries, and of interviews with Mr. Parker and Mr. Broadbent. Frankly, Mondovino is a mess.

Despite the disjointed mis-en-scène, the viewer will readily notice that writer-director Jonathan Nossiter has an axe to grind. He believes that globalization together with the combined influences of Mr. Parker and M. Rolland have homogenized wine aromas and flavors around the world, reducing diversity and encouraging production technologies that mask “terroir.” Rolland and Parker hold the opposite view which was expressed in a 2006 article in The New York Times (Asimov, 2006). They believe that the wine market has more variety today than it ever has in the past and wine quality has improved steadily. Others have noted that it is actually quite difficult to make a bad wine with the technology and expertise available today (Buechsenstein, 2009). In the film Rolland’s winemaking savvy is portrayed as quite shallow. He is presented as dealing with all winemaking ills with the same recommendation: “micro-oxygenation.” The film implies that, by hiring M. Rolland, a winery will begin to produce “his favored style of ripe, voluptuous fruit flavors and supple textures … making wines taste the same from Pomerol to Napa to Argentina” (Asimov, 2006).

To make the case that wine globalization is evil, Mondovino relies heavily on the opinions of British wine writer and auctioneer Michael Broadbent. Consider the situation of Château Kirwin. According to Mr. Broadbent, Ch. Kirwin once produced an average quality Margaux that expressed the terroir. The winery hired M. Rolland as a consultant. According to Mr. Broadbent, Ch. Kirwin’s wines now taste like a Pomerol. (M. Rolland was born in Pomerol.) Mr. Broadbent concludes, “I’d rather have an individual wine not up to scratch than a global wine that’s innocuous” (Asimov, 2006).

But what would an economist think? It’s clear that M. Rolland is simply helping wineries make wine that will sell with less aging and at a higher price.1 If helping a winery match its output to the public’s taste is bad for the wine industry, what in the world would be considered a healthy development? More wineries operating on the edge of bankruptcy? As for changing the wine’s flavor and the homogenization issue, M. Rolland says, “A winemaker never, never changes the character of a wine. The character comes from the grapes.” (Asimov, 2006).

The importance of the grapes has not changed over the years. However, as M. Rolland explains, today people want to drink wine a few years after it’s bottled. Born in Pomerol in 1947, he grew up in the vineyards of his family’s winery, Château Le Bon-Pasteur. His father managed the winery, but his grandfather selected the wines the family drank. Those wines were never younger than 12 years old (Asimov, 2006). Today Rolland helps make wines that are good and can be sold in one-fourth that time. Turn the inventory, get the cash, and financing a huge cellaring operation becomes irrelevant.

By contrast, Mr. Broadbent’s economic interests are never explored in the film at all. Mr. Broadbent is a wine critic, but he is also a wine auctioneer. In the auction market, older wines usually command a higher price – and a higher auction fee. The trend of making wines that can be drunk within a few years of bottling means less wine that must be held for a dozen or more years before it’s drinkable, and less wine going to auction.2

So what do we make of Mondovino? On the one hand we have a number of winemakers extolling the virtues of the small, family-run vineyard, traditional winemaking methods, ending with wines that may require a long aging period before they are approachable. On the other hand we have those who favor modern interventionist winemaking techniques, producing wines that are drinkable after a year or two of winery aging and perhaps another couple of years in the consumer’s cellar. For the winery, shorter aging means improved cash flow. The consumer is not required to have a large cellar with several hundred carefully cataloged cases. In the market, it is clear that the modernists are winning. And why not? As noted earlier, one successful American winemaking consultant believes the only way to make a bad wine today is to make a serious error during the process (Buechsenstein, 2009). This is best accomplished by refusing to use modern technology; that appears to be what Mondovino and Mr. Broadbent are advocating. Refusing to use modern viticulture and winemaking techniques is analogous to a parent refusing to take a dentally-challenged child to the orthodontist. The parent prefers the child have a bite that displays the family unique dental characteristics – uneven spacing here, a few crooked teeth there – rather than that perfect movie star smile.

1) The 21st century wine market is considerably more complicated. In reality, what M. Rolland must do is determine the goals of the winery owner and help them match their wine to the taste of a market segment large and wealthy enough to allow the winery to stay in business. For more details, see Lima and Schroder (2008).

2) For more information about Michael and Bartholomew Broadbent see Broadbent Selections (2009).

References

Asimov, E. (2006). Satan or Savior: Setting the Grape Standard. New York Times, October 11, 2006. Available at www.nytimes.com
Accessed June 4, 2009.
Broadbent Selections (2009). www.broadbent-wines.com
Accessed June 4, 2009.

Buechsenstein, John (2009). Personal communication at wine seminar, University of California, Davis, April 25–26, 2009.

Internet Movie Database (2004) http://www.imdb.com. Accessed June 4, 2009

Lima, T. and Schroder, N. (2008). The new structure of the California wine industry: further evidence and additional theory. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Economic Association International, Honolulu, Hawai’i, June 29–July 3, 2008. Available by request from the authors.

Obituary

Dale Martin Heien

By: Julian Alston
Pages: 122-123
Full Text PDF
Full Text

Obituary

Dale Martin Heien (August 20, 1936 – June 19, 2009)

Dale Heien lived a full and diverse life as an applied economist, family man, and wine grape grower. His career as an economist had three main phases. After completing his PhD at George Washington University in 1967, Dale worked for a few years at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington D.C. before spending almost 10 years as a private economic consultant, and then 24 years as an academic. Dale taught in the Department of Economics at San Jose State University (1979–80), before taking up professorial positions in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Pennsylvania State University (1980–1982), and the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis (1982–2003).

Throughout his career in government service, in the private sector, and in university teaching and research, Dale published articles in top-ranked economics and statistics journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Political Economy, as well as a long list of articles in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He also contributed to the Journal of Wine Economics. Dale’s body of published work is acclaimed for its hallmark of high-quality applied econometrics with a focus on consumer behavior. His early work emphasized modeling complete systems of demand equations, and he made a number of contributions to the literature in this area as well as to the broader subject of demand analysis. He also contributed more generally to the academic literature across topics including cost of living indexes; productivity measurement; consumer welfare measurement; competition and price determination in the food industry; and a large number of studies of markets and policies for particular commodities.

In parallel with his career in teaching and research at Davis, Dale was a commercial wine grape grower in the Napa Valley. His interest in wine as a producer and consumer was eventually matched with a shift in the focus of his academic work. In the years before he retired from the university in 2003, Dale conducted economic studies of the markets for wine and wine grapes, the economic and health consequences of alcohol consumption, and the regulation of markets for alcoholic beverages.

Dale was born August 20, 1936 in Danville, Illinois and he died at age 72 on June 19, 2009. He is survived by his wife Kathryn and his children, Eric Heien of Osaka, Japan, Alex Heien of San Rafael, California, and Elisabeth Heien of Irvine, California. Memorial donations may be made to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice at http://www. friedmanfoundation.org/Welcome.do or the Alzheimer’s Association at http://www.alz. org/join_the_cause_donate.asp

Julian Alston
University of California, Davis

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