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Do Organic and Biodynamic Wines Get Higher Scores? That Isn’t What the Evidence Says.
Updated: Mar 1
In issue 183 (2021) of
Ecological Economics Magali A. Delmas and Oliver Gergaud purport to
present results that show that externally certified organic and biodynamic wines score 6.2 and 5.6 percentage points respectively higher in blind tastings by expert wine reviewers than wines without these certifications.
In fact, their paper does not show this. Rather, it shows, if anything, that more expensive wines get higher scores, an intuitive result that is already well established.
THE TERMINOLOGY AND HYPOTHESES
Delmas and Gergaud (henceforth, D&G) divide wine into flour categories by whether and what type of ‘eco-label’ they carry: externally certified organic, externally certified biodynamic, self-certified sustainable (including organic and biodynamic), and conventional agriculture.
Consumers have shown that they are willing to pay extra for organic produce grown without pesticides, even if it doesn’t taste better.
That has not been the case for organic wine. Organic-labeled wines generally sell at prices similar to those of non-organic wines. And that’s despite growing evidence that they actually do taste better.
A new study by Magali Delmas, an environmental economist at UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Olivier Gergaud, an economist at the Kedge Business School in Bordeaux, France, found that organic wines are judged to be higher quality by experts but that the difference is not just a matter of whether the wines came from organic or conventionally grown grapes.