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How Expert are “Expert” Wine Judges?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2012

Robert T. Hodgson
Robert T. Hodgson
Affiliation:
Professor emeritus, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. Owner/winemaker, Fieldbrook Winery. Email: bob@fieldbrookwinery.com.
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Abstract

Recent papers by Hodgson (2008) and Gawel and Godden (2008) have questioned the consistency of expert wine judges in a wine competition setting. In the latter paper, a methodology introduced in psychometric research to measure judge reliability corrected for chance was used to quantify judge consistency (Cohen, 1968). This paper extends that notion, suggesting a value of 0.7 for Cohen's weighted kappa might be used to define an expert wine judge. With that criterion, less than 30% of judges who participated in either of the two studies would be considered “expert.” (JEL Classification: C1, L15)

Type
Shorter Papers
Information
Journal of Wine Economics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Winter 2009 , pp. 233 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2009

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References

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