Does good wine need any bush? Wine education in student tasting

Recently, studies on wine tasting have raised several issues. Relationships between quality and extrinsic aspects (vine variety, price, brand, winery reputation) as well as consumers expectations have been discussed from different perspectives (Goldstein et al., 2008; Hadj et al., 2005; Weil, 2007). Accordingly, results often argue that consumers can hardly capture the wine quality through wine tasting. Indeed, wine expert judges are often different from consumers preferences which are often biased by extrinsic factors (Goldstein et al., 2008). Yet, the educational background as well as socio-cultural aspects tailored to area of living may play an important role in giving to consumers some hints in recognizing wine quality. In Italy, there is a growing interest from people having different living styles and cultures as well as education on wine. Training courses on wine tasting and reviews scoring wines have been still increasing across Italy. University courses and degrees on wine and oenology have also started according to an increasing educational demand. Nevertheless, the ability of the Italian average wine consumer to appreciate quality is still on debate (Quandt, 2007; Weil 2007; Malorgio et al., 2008). In this paper we are going to shift attention from extrinsic determinants (price, brand, vintage, etc.) to the education of tasters. Actually, we intend to evaluate the effect of education on taster’s ability in evaluating the wine quality, i.e., how consumers having an educational background on wine tasting and/or oenology evaluate the quality of wine. To do this, we carried out a wine tasting experiment over a sample of students enrolled at the University of Padova, Agricultural Faculty. In this way we were able to isolate two samples of students according to their educational background. The experimental design as well as methodology follow the approach proposed by Goldstein et al (2008). The sample has involved 247 students while the blind test will evaluate a flight of red wines having different wine quality and price. We suppose that the appreciation of wine quality increases as we go from students not having specific knowledge on wine or oenology to the ones who have a better knowledge not only about wine tasting but also on their components and origin as well as processing or vintage processes. In the experiment, data about socio-economic aspects and opinions expressed by tasters as well as other technical and economic elements about wine will be also analyzed in order to measure the differential among samples and then to isolate the effect or impact of skills acquired during the academic carrier. Results are expected to estimate the impact of education while excluding factors coming from the experience (e.g. tasters that already work in wineries) or other fixed effects such as price, brand, winery reputation or area of origin.