Joey Lam

The Journal of Wine Research (JWR) has a near 30–year history of publishing varied articles examining aspects of viticulture, oenology and the international wine trade. The primary objective of this research is to examine the characteristics of literature published in the JWR through bibliographic analysis. The research utilises the Scopus database to identify the most productive authors, countries and papers published in the JWR since it was established in 1990. The total number of publications and citations are used to assess productivity, in terms of the number of publications, influence, and the number of citations of both authors and countries. Network maps were created using the VOSViewer software examining patterns of co–authorship, co–citation and keyword co–occurrence. The results indicate that the most prolific authors, in terms of the number of publications, are not necessarily producing the most profound research that gains traction through citations in the field. This study is helpful for prospective JWR authors, readers and editors who wish to understand the intellectual landscape of the journal in terms of the productivity and impact of different stakeholder groups and the noted trends of publications. The paper concludes by acknowledging limitations of the study and discussing implications for future authors.

This paper investigated whether the nature of the language in wine reviews differs by wine ratings. Reviews of 1-, 3- and 5-star wines were downloaded into text files, then analyzed for Word Count, Analytic, Clout, Authentic and Tone by using LIWC text analysis. ANOVAS was adopted to determine differences between reviews by ratings. There were significant differences between wines by star rating on Word Count, Analytic, and Tone, while there were no significant differences on Clout and Authenticity. This research was limited to South African wines, 1-, 3- and 5-star reviews. It was not possible to identify all individual reviewers. Also, price and availability were not considered. Research implications include using other textual analysis software to conduct inter-reviewer comparison of reviews with the same ratings by different influential wine writers, investigating price as a variable in rating and review, and authenticity as a factor in the context. Wine marketers can help wine makers gain a better understanding of what tastemakers prefer by analyzing wine reviews with automated text analysis software such as LIWC. A positive link between word count in a wine review, the degree of analysis and tone used with the ratings of wines by experts can be established.