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On the Information Content of Wine Notes: Some New Algorithms?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2013

Martin Klimmek
Martin Klimmek*
Affiliation:
Wadham College, Parks Road, Oxford. OX1 3PN, UK. email: martin.klimmek@wadh.ox.ac.uk.
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Abstract

We present a framework for measuring the information content or, more subjectively, the meaningfulness of wine tasting notes. Our analysis is based on developing a summary statistic related to Theil's uncertainty coefficient. The methods we develop can be used for the comparative analysis of tasting notes against a benchmark tasting system. An analysis of the examples of real and “fake” tasting notes in Quandt (2007) illustrates the method. We argue that the categorization of wine jargon leads to informative tasting notes. (JEL Classification: A12, C65, C83, D83)

Keywords

Frankfurt's theory of “bullshit”information theoryTheil's uncertainty coefficientwine-writing
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Wine Economics , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , December 2013 , pp. 318 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I thank an anonymous referee and Karl Storchmann for very helpful suggestions. I am indebted to Yang Yuxin for comments.

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