  Consumers have a wide choice regarding the purchase of wine. Wines vary
across varieties, regions, years of vintage, alcohol content, price and expert
ratings. In this study we explored the relationship between those variables and
whether a combination of explanatory variables can predict outcome variables
using data on selected 2710 Australian wines rates by the latest book of James
Halliday1. We analysed two dependent (outcome) variables, namely the rating and
the price, and their (non-linear) relationship between explanatory variables
and each other. We observe that the rating scale is not linear, as consumers
may believe, and that a narrow range of rating scores is used for the
ascertained wines. Across all wines, approximately 20% of variation in
log(Price) can be explained by the explanatory factors state, variety, vintage
and alcohol percentage. If the residuals from the model for rating is also
taken as an explanatory variable for price, then a total of 53% of variation in
log(Price) is explained by the model. For those wines ascertained to be in
Halliday1, there is more variability between white wines than between red wines
that is explained by explanatory variables such as State and variety. In
comparison with hedonic pricing analyses in previous studies on French and
Australian wines, a smaller proportion of variation in price and rating was
explained in Australian wines that were in the 2014 edition of Halliday.
