A rare and ultra-premium product, cult wines are only available to those who join a winery’s allocation list or purchase the bottles on the secondary market. The WSU study, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, investigated how differences in temperature and rainfall affect the price and quality (based on wine score values) of cult and high-quality non-cult wines.
“Cult winemakers are striving for perfection,” said study co-author Jill McCluskey, WSU Regents Professor and SES director. “Each vintage is evaluated more closely, and there is an expectation of consistent high quality. Therefore, one might expect for weather variations to affect cult wines more than non-cult wines.”
However, after analyzing data for red and white wines produced in the Napa and Sonoma regions of California and the Walla Walla region of Washington state, the researchers realized that the opposite is true.
“We were expecting to find larger weather impacts on cult wines’ price and quality,” said Ron Mittelhammer, SES Regents Professor and study co-author. “The fact that they were more insulated from the effects of weather variability was a very interesting discovery. The effects on non-cult wines were more consistent with our initial expectation, in terms of magnitude and statistical significance.”
The study showed that non-cult wine scores were more impacted by weather fluctuations, especially when it came to early growing season temperatures and harvest season rains. The data also showed that weather had no definitive impact on the number of cult wine cases produced, while case quantity for non-cult wines was somewhat more affected.
Non-cult wine scores were more impacted by weather fluctuations, especially when it came to early growing season temperatures and harvest season rains.
As for pricing, the economists found that prices of non-cult wines were often negatively associated with late growing season temperatures and harvest season rains. However, the results were a little more nuanced for cult wines.
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Many cult wines are frequently resold on the secondary market for more than their release price. The research indicated that weather impacted the secondary market price and release price of cult wines differently. For some cult wine vintages, the weather affected the price gap — the difference between a wine’s release price and the amount it sells for on the secondary market — more than the price itself.
“The release price was not very sensitive to the weather, but the secondary market price was,” McCluskey said. “That’s an interesting finding, and it’s consistent with our other research, which showed that the secondary market price reflects the ‘true value’ of cult wines.”
Physical location is one possible reason why cult wines are more immune to weather fluctuations. Cult winemakers may have been more intentional and strategic than non-cult winemakers when choosing a geographical region to grow grapes. This ensures that they are ideally located for consistent quality.
“It appears that many cult wine producers located their vineyards and wineries more advantageously in locations conducive to good weather and/or less weather variability,” Mittelhammer said. “This leads to less variation in weather-induced quality effects, resulting in higher average quality wine with less variation in that quality.”
The researchers emphasized that non-cult wineries can still be strategic when it comes to weather fluctuations. The message is one of flexibility, McCluskey said. That means that winemakers may need to adjust their approach by emphasizing certain vintages and potentially discounting others from years when weather conditions were less favorable.
“These findings are most relevant for non-cult wineries,” added Mittelhammer. “It could be beneficial for non-cult wineries to promote their wines more vigorously, underscoring the quality benefits resulting from a ‘good weather year’ relating to a given vintage. Such a marketing effort would likely have less impact for cult wines, given that they exhibit more homogeneous high quality from year to year.”
Looking ahead, McCluskey and Mittelhammer are considering ways to expand their research. One option is looking at how climate change may impact cult wineries’ reputations over time. Another potential area of focus is seeing how weather might affect wineries outside of the cult wine and high-quality non-cult wine space.
McCluskey is also interested in determining if this study’s findings hold true for cult and high-quality non-cult wines produced in other geographies.
“I’d like to compare the impacts of weather for wines across different regions of Europe,” she said. “The temperature and rainfall variations are likely larger throughout the continent than they are between California and Washington state. A study in that area could produce different results.”
