Do Top 100 wine lists provide consumers with better information?

This paper shows that the Wine Spectator Top 100 list mixes objective and subjective information while resembling a bargain wines list, in which the ranking is better when the price (score) is lower (higher). Indeed, there is a weak but positive and significant correlation between the WS ranking and the hedonic bargain wines rank calculated in this analysis. However, significant geographic bias, wineries bias, and the large part of unexplained variance of the WS ranking reveal that some subjective information also determines the WS Top 100 ranking. This blend of objective and subjective determinants, added to the formal aspect of the list, hierarchized from 1 to 100, might mislead the consumer into considering this ranking as a “best (top 100) bargain wine list”. Therefore, this impossibility to disentangle objective from subjective information could be seen as a source of inefficiency on the wine market. Splitting the WS Top 100 list into a hedonic bargain wine list (based on objective components) and a non-hierarchized “crush” wine list could be a solution for reinforcing the quality of the information on the wine market.