Very similar findings emerge for New Zealand
from the Winestate data (Table 8) as those from the
Halliday data (Table 7): vintage ratings are nearly
all significant with no obvious trend over time, variety
and regional differences are not pronounced, and
nor are they becoming more significant over time.
Finally on the results, note that in all subsamples
the variation in prices explained by the model
(adjusted R2) is higher for New Zealand, despite
the much smaller sample sizes. Moreover, note that
the estimation results are fairly consistent across the
two different data sets for each country, although the
Halliday data set has the higher explanatory power.
In addition, the size of the price premia that consumers
are willing to pay for higher-rated wines is
consistently less in New Zealand than in Australia
(especially bearing in mind that the NZ$ was
worth only 70–85 per cent of the value of the A$
in the 1990s).
V Implications and Areas for Further Research
At least three clear lessons can be drawn from these
results. One is that vintage ratings by independent
writers/critics/judges (in this case those of
Winestate magazine judges and, for James Halliday,
as well as his winery ratings and classic wine