Wine Insights Uncorked — Learning French Wines with Vivino
As a wine novice, my goal in exploring the Vivino wine data is to recognize wine regions and make informed decisions. In this article, I will share the insights after analyzing 1675 wines, 250,000 reviews, their prices and ratings on Vivino.com. Given the enormous database Vivino has, I set some parameters for the data:
- Country: France
- Currency: Euros
- Price range: below €100
- Grape type: Varietal
- Rating: from 1 (min) to 5 (max)
Vivino is one of the largest global online wine marketplaces and it is offers wine enthusiasts a platform to share their drinking experiences with ratings and uploading scanned wine labels. With a community of over 60 millions users, Vivino has a vast database of 18 million wines and 103 million reviews on the website.
Whether you are a beginner like me, or an avid wine drinker, I believe you will have some takeaways from the visualizations.
Have fun and enjoy! 🍷
Table of contents
Feel free to scroll down to the part that interests you:
- Price & Rating:
There’s 40% of chances that paying more can improve your drinking experience. - Recommendations by Popularity
Champagne has outstanding popularities, followed by Bordeaux sub-regions. - Recommendations by Value For Money
Good value wines are not confined to well-known regions.
Related websites for this project
👉 My Tableau Public: Using interactive dashboards to check out general information of my dataset!
👉 < Hands-On Project > Analyzing French Wine Data: My journey building this data analytics project
1. Price & Rating
Paying more can improve your drinking experience (but not always). I grouped the prices into 3 brackets: under €15, €15 to €60, and €60 to €100. On average, ratings tends to increase when the prices go up, with a 0.2 point rise in the ratings between each price bracket. Moreover, whether a wine bottle is labeled as Cru region can help you identify good wines if you are working with a budget under €60. Wines from Cru regions typically receive higher average ratings, at 4.10, compared to 3.97 for non-cru wines, with a price difference of around €10. The good news is, if your budget is under €60, spending an additional €5 could allow you to buy quality wines from cru regions.
Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean you need to go for only cru wines if you have more budgets. The wines from the best vineyards in France (those labeled as ‘Grand Cru’, ‘Grand Premier Cru’, and ‘Premier Cru’, etc.) are priced higher, starting at around €40, while the quality isn’t far from those from non-cru regions for those priced above €60. It’s crucial to consider other factors in your decision-making. Although price and ratings show a significant correlation, this relationship holds for only about 40% of wines, and other factors like personal preferences and production costs also influence wine price and quality.
Recommendations by Popularity
For this analysis, I quantified popularity as below:
Popularity = Number of Reviews * Average Rating
The number of reviews deeply impacts the popularity calculation, since the difference in the ratings between the wines is marginal. Champagne receives exponentially more reviews than any other wines so consider filtering if you are looking to explore different wine styles.
By Wine
For whose budget from €15 to €60, Champagne from Moët & Chandon is a no-brainer for you; alternatively, wines from Haut-Médoc and Saint-Émilion Grand Cru region, both in Bordeaux, are also popular and well-renown.
For a touch of luxury, try Special Cuvée Brut Champagne from Bollinger, or a red wine — Pauillac (Grand Cru Classé) from Château d’Armailhac.
By Winery
The top 3 wineries are Moët & Chandon, Louis Roederer, and Billecart-Salmon, and all of their history can be dated back to 200 years ago. Following them on the top list are the famous Champagne wineries in France, including Laurent-Perrier and Taittinger.
Among these, Moët & Chandon and Ruinart are part of the LVMH Group, whereas Louis Roederer and Billecart-Salmon are family-owned independent champagne houses, a rarity in today’s market. The 5th winery, Bollinger, is owned by an international holding company.
By Region
With a strong emphasis on quality and tradition, Bordeaux wines remain dominant in the French wine market.
Let’s dive deeper into the top 10 most popular wine regions. To some’s surprise, Champagne is the most popular wine region in France, with a commanding lead over Bordeaux sub-regions. Yet, within Bordeaux, there is a healthy distribution of popularity across its sub-regions, with Saint-Émilion Grand Cru leading the pack, offering its diversity of regions and styles.
Some might be skeptical about Champagne’s prominence since Bordeaux is often considered the epitome of wine production, however, its popularity is not solely based on its product but is significantly bolstered by strategic marketing, distribution, and cultural prestige. Moreover, seasonal surge in demand underpins its popularity. It is synonymous with celebrations, luxury, and cultural prestige and its popularity for special holidays is shown in its user reviews.
Vivino user’s reviews about Champagne are highly concentrated in December and January, which is exactly the time people pop champagnes for end-of-year holidays like New Year’s Eve. This pattern matches the peak season of Champagne sales and Google Search trends.
Recommendations by Value For Money
In the dashboard, I defined Good Value as:
- Good Value = Price / Popularity
At the beginning, I included number of reviews to increase the validation of ratings, and the outcome is similar to popularity’s ranking due to Champagne’s reviews in high volumes.
According to HAL Open Science, only 50% of French wines are produced and distributed in bulk, and a rule of thumb is that many quality wines are sold locally with smaller productions. To balance the validation of reviews and discovery of less commercialized quality wines, I changed the formula to:
- Good Value (Normalized) = Price / Popularity(Normalized) = Price / (Rating* Log-Transformed number of reviews)
Note: the analysis is based on the scenario that my hypothesis about the ratios of bulk wines and bottled wines is true.
By Wine
Beside the overall ranking on the dashboard, here are my recommendations for good value wines over rating 4.0 of the three price goups:
Under €15, Haut-Médoc Reds 2019 from Château Larose-Trintaudon offer the best value. By the time I am writing this article, it ranks #2 in Top 25 Bordeaux Haut-Médoc Red wines at Vivino.com.
With a budget between €15 to €60, Special Cuvée Brut Aÿ Champagne N.V. is the best bang for the buck, priced approximately €53.79. It’s good value for money. Similar wines usually cost 41% more.
From €60 to €100, dessert wine Sauternes (Premier Grand Cru Classé) from Château Suduiraut are an excellent choice with a wide selection of vintages, ranging from €60 to €80 on average. It’s featured in Vivino’s 2018 Wine Style Awards.
Note: It is a normalized ranking.
By Winery & Region
The ranking for good value shows a variety of regions and styles. The top five are Château Gazin Rocquencour, Château Cote de Baleau, Domaine de la Folie, Bollenberg and Château Beau-Site. Respectively, from Pessac-Léogna (Bordeaux), Saint-Émilion Grand Cru (Bordeaux), Rully (Bourgogne), Alsace, and Saint-Estèphe (Bordeaux). The fact that the other regions outside well-renowned wine production regions offers best value underscores the diverse selections of wines across France. In the “Others” Category, Pays d’Oc has a fairly high ranking.
Note: It is a normalized ranking with rating over 4.0
Conclusion
- There’s 40% of chances that paying more can improve your drinking experience. Generally speaking, higher prices rule out lower quality wines, and cru regions help differentiate quality. But the influence of prices on ratings and cru regions is minimal among high-priced wines.
- Champagne has outstanding popularities followed by Bordeaux sub-regions and it’s underpinned by its seasonal surge in demand.
- Good value wines are not confined to well-known regions. There are many hidden gems due to the intricacies of French wine market, so keep open-minded and consider various choices!
I hope you enjoy the article and don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any feedback.
Stay tuned if you’d like to see similar topics.
See My Tableau Public: Tzuhan Lo
Connect With Me at LinkedIn: Tzuhan Lo
Reference & Inspirations
HAL Open Science — The French Wine Industry
Chiffres et repères : vins et boissons
Vivino: How much does a good bottle of wine cost?
The Vivino Wine Rating System: Credibility of The Crowd
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