Context and cross-section data improve analyses of wine ratings

Much research shows that the ratings that critics, judges, and consumers assign to wines are heteroscedastic. A rating observed is one draw from a latent distribution that is wine- and judge-specific. Estimating the shape of a rating’s distribution by minimizing a sum of cross entropies has been proposed and tested. This article proposes a method of improving the accuracy of that estimate by using information about the context of a wine competition or cross-section ratings data. Tests using the distributions implied by 90 blind triplicate ratings show that the sum of squared errors for the solution using context or cross-section information is 50% more accurate than not using such information and over 99% more accurate than ignoring the uncertainty about a rating.