Are Celebrity Athlete Wines Great or Gimmicks? With Dr. Antonia Mantonakis

Natalie MacLean
Jul8th
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Introduction

Are wines named after a sports celebrity any good or is this just a marketing gimmick? Are more gentle sports like golf better suited to marketing a wine than the more rough and tumble world of wrestling? What does research tell us about the effect of celebrity endorsements on your wine-buying behaviour? How does your wine knowledge impact your interpretation of external cues, like celebrity endorsement, when buying wine?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Dr. Antonia Mantonakis, Fellow of the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute and Professor of Marketing and Consumer Psychology at Brock University’s Goodman School of Business in St. Catharines, Ontario.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Highlights

  • Why is Antonia’s research around wines associated with celebrities relevant to you as a wine consumer?
  • Is there any overlap when you think of certain sports and wine?
  • How do you determine how well-matched a sport is to wine?
  • Which sports had the highest and lowest matches with wine?
  • How were the final sports categories chosen for the study?
  • What do the study results suggest about the effect of celebrity endorsements on your wine buying behaviour?
  • Why do moderately mismatched products and sponsors cause you to pay the most attention?
  • How does your wine knowledge impact your interpretation of external cues when buying wine?
  • What wine-related research can you look forward to from Antonia in the near future?
  • How does the inclusion of a picture change your perception of a wine label?

 

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When you think about wine, what are some words that you can think of? And when you look at consumers’ responses you can see that there’s a little bit of an overlap when you think of certain sports like golf. - Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Click to tweet

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What we found… is that the overall evaluation of taste of the wine and willingness to buy was pretty similar for the good match and the bad match, but where we got a higher rating was for the moderate match. - Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Click to tweet

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It’s this moderate mismatch that leads people to elaborate more and think a little bit more that then makes them have this slightly higher evaluation about the wine pairing. - Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Click to tweet

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In our research it it seems to be that it’s more the higher knowledge and enthusiastic wine consumer that is going to use extrinsic cues for their judgement. - Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Dr. Antonia Mantonakis Click to tweet

 

About Dr. Antonia Mantonakis

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis is a Fellow of the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute and a Professor of Marketing and Consumer Psychology at Brock University’s Goodman School of Business in St. Catharines, Ontario.
She is a psychologist by training and holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Toronto; and has both a Masters in Experimental-Cognitive Psychology and a Doctorate in Experimental-Cognitive Psychology from Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on the psychological factors that affect consumer behaviour and consumer decision making.

 

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Transcript & Takeaways

Welcome to episode 84!

Are wines named after a sports celebrity any good or is this just a marketing gimmick? Are more gentile sports like golf better suited to marketing a wine than the more rough and tumble world of wrestling? What does research tell us about the effect of celebrity endorsements on your wine-buying behaviour? How does your wine knowledge impact your interpretation of external cues, like celebrity endorsement, when buying wine?

That’s exactly what we’ll learn in this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. We’re chatting with Dr. Antonia Mantonakis, a Professor of Marketing and Consumer Psychology at Brock University’s Goodman School of Business in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. Dr. Mantonakis is also an Associate Fellow of the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI), the university’s research institute focused on the Canadian grape and wine industry. She joins me from the university in St Catharine’s.

This conversation first aired on my regular Facebook live video a couple of years ago, so keep that in mind as the context for Dr. Mantonakis’s comments.

Also, you’ll hear me respond to viewer questions. You can be part of that conversation every second Wednesday at 7 pm eastern.

I’ll include a link as to where you can find us on Facebook as well as the video version of this conversation in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/84.

If you want to discover mouth-watering juicy wines and what to pair with them, sign up for my free, online video wine class the 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!).

Go to nataliemaclean.com/class and choose a time and date that work for you. I look forward to seeing you inside the class!

Okay, on with the show!

 

You can also watch the video interview with Antonia that includes bonus content and behind-the-scenes questions and answers that weren’t included in this podcast.

 

Well, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed this chat with Dr. Antonia Mantonakis.

Here are my takeaways:

  1. I expected golf to be the best match with wine, and wrestling the worst. However, I find it fascinating that it was actually sports in the middle, like speed skating that were a moderate match for which consumers would pay the most. As Dr. Mantonakis explained, it’s because people have to think more about the match, and many would give it a fair shot rather than dismissing it as they might a wine sport match that fits their expectations or one that doesn’t at all.
  2. I was also surprised that those with higher levels of wine knowledge were more likely to pay more for these wines. I would have expected that they’d be more skeptical about such endorsements, however their high involvement in wine probably leads them to be more curious than the consumer with low involvement or knowledge in the wine category.
  3. It would be fascinating to know if celebrities, like Wayne Gretzky, who have other product lines in other categories would seem to be more of a fit in wine versus someone who doesn’t have multiple endorsements.
  4. I do think we’re all more influenced by the extrinsic cues on wine like celebrity endorsement and label design than we are in many other product categories because often that’s all we have to rely on. Unlike a book where you can read the first chapter or a dress that you can try on, you can’t try before you buy the wine.

We’ll have Dr. Mantonakis back on a future episode talking about her experiments with consumers and their perceptions based on the price of wine. It’s not what you think.

You won’t want to miss next week when I’ll be chatting with Rex Pickett, the author of the novel Sideways, and the multiple award-winning Alexander Payne film of the same title. Sideways captured 2 Golden Globes, an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the prestigious Writers Guild Award. He joins me from his home in California next week.

In the meantime, if you missed episode 29 where we talk with wine detective Maureen Downey about how wine labels have been faked throughout the centuries, go back and take a listen. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite:

If you liked this episode, please tell a friend about it, especially one who’s interested in the fascinating wine tips that Dr. Mantonakis shared. You’ll find links to the wines we tasted, a full transcript of our conversation, the video version of this chat and where you can find us on Facebook live every second Wednesday at 7 pm, at nataliemaclean.com/84.

And if you want to connect with me personally, join me in a free online video class at nataliemaclean.com/class.

Thank-you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a Gretzky Chardonnay!

 

Full Transcript

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 0:00
When you think about wine, what are some words that you can think of and when you look at consumers responses, you can see that there’s a little bit of an overlap. When you think of certain sports like golf, you know, it’s more prestigious or luxurious or a leisure activity, maybe, you know, tends to be enjoyed by certain types of people and so on. And these were the responses that we got about wine, whereas a sport like soccer or hockey or wrestling, you know, we tested a whole bunch of different categories of sport and the degree of overlap or the degree of match was not really as strong and so that led us to categorise different sports as being a high, medium or low match to the product category of mine in order to do our study.

Natalie MacLean 1:01
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? That’s the blend here on the unreserved wine talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie McLean. And each week, I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please. And let’s get started. Welcome to Episode 84 I wines named after sports celebrities, any good prices just a marketing gimmick. Or more john teal sports like golf better suited to marketing and wine then the more rough and tumble Contact World of Wrestling. What does research tell us about the effect of celebrity endorsements on your wine buying behaviour? And how does your wine knowledge impact your interpretation of external cues like celebrity endorsement when buying wine? That’s exactly what we’ll learn in this episode of The unreserved wine talk podcast. we’re chatting with Dr. Antonia Manton Agus, a Professor of Marketing and consumer psychology at Brock University’s Goodman School of Business in St. catharines, Ontario. Dr. Mountain Agus is also an Associate Fellow of the cool climate enology and viticulture Institute, co v. The university’s Research Institute focused on the Canadian grape and wine industry. She joins me from the University in St catharines. This conversation first aired on my regular Facebook Live video show a couple of years ago so keep that in mind as the context production Manta Naka says comments. Also you’ll hear me respond to your questions. You can be part of that conversation every second Wednesday at 7pm. Eastern. I’ll include a link as to where you can find us on Facebook, as well as the video version of this conversation. that’ll all be in the show notes at NatalieMacLean.com/84. If you want to discover mouthwatering juicy wines, and what to pair with them, whether they’re made by Wayne Gretzky or leaping Lanny Ressler was sign up for my free online video wine class, the five wine and food pairing mistakes that can ruin your dinner and how to fix them forever. Go to NatalieMacLean.com/class and choose a time and date that work for you. I look forward to seeing you inside the class. Okay on with the show.

Natalie MacLean 3:56
Dr. Antonia Mantonakis is on faculty at The Goodman School of Business at Brock University in Niagara, Ontario, Canada. And she’s done a number of really interesting consumer perception studies when it comes to the wine market. Today, we’re going to talk about her study with celebrity athlete endorsed wines or wine brands that have a celebrity name on the bottle. So Antonio, welcome. First of all, tell me a little bit about this study. What were you trying to find out with this one?

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 4:27
Thanks for having me again, Natalie. In this study, we were interested in examining consumers perceptions for different wines that have celebrity pairings to them we can see right now in the marketplace, there are so many different options for wines that are endorsed by athletes versus other kinds of celebrities, rappers and so on. So we really wanted to look at how the degree of match for who the celebrity Sponsor was. So for example, if we think about the match of the kind of sport that the athlete plays with the category of wine, so something like golf might seem to be a closer match to wine versus hockey, perhaps, you know, we did some pre tests to look at what our consumers perceptions of how these categories of sport match with the product category of wine to get an indication of what those matches were. And then we wanted to see what effect that level of match had on consumers taste perceptions and how much they were willing to pay for the wine.

Natalie MacLean 5:42
Would golf be a better match because it’s more sedate or perceived as a gentlemanly versus hockey is rougher tumble, whatever, less wine ish, more bearish? I don’t know. I’m going to get comments on that anyway.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 5:55
And that’s why we wanted to do the pretest. So exactly for the reasons you mentioned. We wanted to see what consumers cognitions were what consumers thoughts were, when you think of golf, what are the first words that come to mind? And we got participants to list what those words were. And then we asked them the same thing about wine. Well, when you think about wine, what are some words that you can think of. And when you look at consumers responses, you can see that there’s a little bit of an overlap. When you think of certain sports like golf, you know, it’s more prestigious or luxurious or a leisure activity, maybe, you know, tends to be enjoyed by certain types of people and so on. And these were the responses that we got about wine, whereas a sport like soccer or hockey or wrestling, you know, we tested a whole bunch of different categories of sport and the degree of overlap or the degree of match was not really as strong and so that led us to categorise different Sports as being a high, medium or low match to the product category of wine in order to do our study.

Natalie MacLean 7:10
Were there any others like all that came up high as a good match for wine?

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 7:14
golf was the highest wrestling was the lowest. Yes and sir in between which we used, because we use hypothetical celebrity sponsors in our actual experiment, but the sport that came in between as being not necessarily a good match, but not necessarily a bad match was speedskating. You know, people tended to I think, maybe not have as many strong associations. It wasn’t one way or the other. And so speed skating was somewhere in the middle. So those were the three categories that we use in our actual experiment we had golf, speed skating and wrestling.

Natalie MacLean 7:53
Hmm, well, I would like to see more things like rhythmical gymnastics or synchronised swimming would come up but anyway, but again, more real For scientific inquiry in the future, so you made up celebrity athletes so you didn’t choose real athletes for this again to control the variables, is that correct?

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 8:09
We used real celebrity names but what was made up is that they don’t have winery so we had the rock for wrestling, the rock wine. He doesn’t have a wine as far as I know, maybe the study was done. Maybe he does, but probably will soon yeah, he or he might. We had the rock wine. We had Jeremy Weatherspoon, SB Canadian speed skater as our endorser for speed skating category wine. And then we had Vijay Singh as our goal for who produces wine because again, we wanted to we didn’t want to use Mike Weir as the golf name because he does have a wine and we didn’t want to introduce that kind of confound. If maybe one of our participants thought, you know, oh, well, I’ve had Mike Weir wine and I like it and so I’m going to rate that as the best so we wanted to keep it controlled, and in the sense that they were all fictitious sponsorships,

Natalie MacLean 9:04
right. And you also control them for male versus female because you’ve chosen all male athletes for this round.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 9:10
That’s right. We pre tested male and female athletes we hope to be able to run a study with male athletes and another study with female athletes, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find a good set of female athlete names, because we wanted to control for pre experimental familiarity and likability. So we looked at categories like soccer, and you know, everyone loves Christine Sinclair. And so we’d like the ratings for that were way higher, and also Canadian female hockey names and it just was very difficult to find something that was equally matched to using the experiment and with the male athletes. The examples that I told you, those came out as equal ratings on every other variable we wanted to control for, so That’s why we use those ones. Yes,

Natalie MacLean 10:02
your results then what kind of scale were you using to prove that the golf was much better match than wrestling. And then the speedskating was in the middle.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 10:12
In our pretest, we had participants view a list of about 10 sports. So the first pretest that I mentioned, was getting people to generate the thoughts. And so that made us kind of think like, okay, we should probably include possible good matches are things like golf and possible bad matches or things like wrestling, and then, you know, maybe soccer hockey could be somewhere in between. And so we included a whole bunch of basketball, various different kinds of sports. And so we took a list of 10 sports and had another group of participants rank order, the degree to which they thought that that sport was a good fit for wine. And we told them, you know, hypothetically, if you were to think of a good solution Pretty sponsor and that celebrity was an athlete in one of these categories, which one do you think would be a good match. And so, based on those rankings, we were able to come up with golf, speed skating in the middle, and wrestling as the low congruent a low match twice. So those are the pre tests that we did. And we chose those three. And we had participants come here into the lab to do a wine tasting study. And we told the participants that they were going to be sampling three wines today and that they would be endorsed by different people and that we wanted to get a sense of how they found the taste of the wine and how much they’d be willing to pay for the wine or if they’d be willing to buy the wine so on. So those scales included, you know, overall, how much do you like the taste of the wine on a scale from one to seven? Overall, how much are we willing to buy this wine on a scale of one to seven? And overall, how much are you willing To pay for this wine, and now that was in a scale response, this was a free report, they could have written any dollar amount in Canadian dollars that they would be willing to pay. So that’s the study that we did. So what did you find in terms of the results? What we found, which is maybe surprising, but it’s actually consistent with previous research in consumer psychology, is that the overall evaluation of the taste of the wine and willingness to buy and also the willingness to pay in Canadian dollars was pretty similar if it was a really, really good match to if it was really, really bad match, but where we got this spike in the data where we got higher ratings for people saying I would be willing to pay you know, a couple dollars more for this was for the moderate match. So for that wine that was endorsed by the speed skater, people said you know what, I like the taste of this A little bit better. This was especially the case of for our participants who were a little bit higher involved with wine because at the end of the study, we gave participants a simple questionnaire to gauge their knowledge and enthusiasm about wine. You know, it’s kind of like a mini trivia test that asks people facts about wine or what colour is is great for idle and so on. And people who are very enthusiastic and involved in wine tend to get these questions correct. Whereas more casual consumers tend to make more errors on this. And so based on their score on that wine knowledge questionnaire, we were able to analyse the data based on whether these participants were high versus lower knowledge about wine and it was actually the higher knowledge consumers who tended to show this spike in the data that they liked the taste better and they would be willing to pay a couple dollars more if it was endorsed by the Moderate matched athletes to the wine. So they weren’t willing to pay a few dollars more for the good match of, say the golf, vj Singh, and presumably not for the wrestling guy, but you didn’t see that strong response for the good match,

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 14:16
did you? I guess I would say it was surprising, but it seems to fit with previous research. So let me try to explain a previous research and how this finding is consistent is that when consumers are evaluating something, a co brand or sponsorship match, in this case, it’s the match of the sponsor or the sport or category that the athlete belongs to the product category of wine, for instance, something that is maybe too predictable or seems to make sense, you know, leads the consumer to kind of evaluate it and it’s kind of fit with their expectations and so they might not think Further about it, it’s in line with their expectations or their thoughts about the two categories. And similarly, if it’s in Congress pairing like wrestling and wine, that seems to be a big mismatch, consumers tend to think that’s just odd. And so they’re not gonna think anything special of it, they’re just going to evaluate it and move on. But if something is a moderate match, so consumer needs to elaborate on it, and Hmm, well, this is speed skater Oh, I’m kind of intrigued. They might just pay more attention and elaborate a little bit more extensively than they might have for the other two categories. The other two pairing examples and, and it’s that extra elaboration extra thought process that might lead them to need to kind of give it a fair chance and resolve any kind of inconsistency that they might have in their mind and I know that I’m explaining that thought process very much in depth. But this is what we think is happening at a very quick level in the consumers mindset. And it’s for that reason, if this moderate mismatch that leads people to kind of elaborate more and think a little bit more that makes them have this slightly higher evaluation about the moderate matched wine pairing. That makes sense, actually, and

Natalie MacLean 16:27
I find that fascinating, the fact that it probably is a very fast consumer thought process, but still, it’s it’s happening and it’s, it’s interesting, just from purely the psychology point to just kind of understand that. So you and I both have celebrity athlete wines, both Canadian, you have which one,

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 16:45
I have the mic, we’re seven your bunk,

Natalie MacLean 16:49
the golfer guy and I had the hockey guy Wayne Gretzky’s Pino are. Now we’ve already talked about the fit here. I’m just wondering if Wayne Gretzky might have sort of slid in there because he was very much a gentleman hockey player wasn’t one of the What do they call them? The goons are the enforcers. That’s a whole other sliver perhaps of research. I don’t know, the reputation of the athlete might have an influence because he was well regarded. But anyway,

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 17:16
that’s a good point that you raised. And I certainly want to point out that in the experiment we ran, we didn’t include these other factors of, for instance, with Wayne Gretzky, he’s got a whole host of brands in his brand portfolio. And so we didn’t look at that impact, because you’re right. He is a great guys well known in Canada is well known to many consumers. And that’s why I think it’s such a great idea that he does have so many brands in his portfolio. I mean, he’s gotten Skechers and there’s a tea brand and wine and so that’s something we didn’t look into because that is something that could impact as you said, the personality The Celebrity if he’s a good winner.

Natalie MacLean 18:03
I see so yeah and and just having other merchandise, consumers would be used to a Wayne Gretzky brand on other products and services. So like a line extension of wine might be less of a jolt, I guess to see it there if you’ve seen the Wayne Gretzky clothing and you’ve seen the Wayne Gretzky, I don’t know, cruise ship and packaged together shoes, whatever. It’s interesting, but I’m wondering what you think like if you think that buying behaviour wine is more prone to these extrinsic factors. Do you think we’re more hung up on that because of the social hang ups around wine, say versus orange juice or Coca Cola or whatever of soda pop? I guess I should say.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 18:44
That’s a good point. The name of the celebrity athlete and even the category of sport that they’re involved in is extrinsic to the actual wine itself, right? Something that’s on the label itself. Wayne Gretzky out there harvesting the grapes, right? It’s

Natalie MacLean 19:03
no, oh, that’s what he was doing now, this offseason.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 19:11
It definitely is an extrinsic cue that the consumer is using to make their judgement about the quality and the perception and the taste of the wine, how much they’re willing to pay for the wine and so on. That’s just one example of an extrinsic cue, your price is another extrinsic cue. And, and consumers use these cues all the time when making quality judgments. We know a lot about the perception of price, you know, the price quality relationship that consumers have that interpretation. And so this is just another example of extrinsic q that consumers are going to be using. In our research. It seems to be that it’s the more higher knowledge and enthusiasm Thick wine consumer that is going to use this cue for their judgement. And now this doesn’t necessarily mean that extrinsic cues are only used by higher knowledge consumers, there are certain cases where, you know, lower knowledge, consumers will use cues like colour or country of origin. Or if there’s an animal on the label, you know, those are also extrinsic cues, but they may not necessarily be used by higher knowledge consumers and maybe more likely used by lower knowledge consumers. And that’s what our researcher hoping to discover is uncover what the extrinsic cues are that consumers use in different situations and how does that interact with whether the person is more experienced with wine versus being a more casual consumer?

Natalie MacLean 20:49
Fascinating, really? What do you think of your mic? We’re selling your lawn. I like it.

Natalie MacLean 20:54
What do you think I’ve tried it before and I think it’s a really good value. I think I rated it at seven points. If that means anything. And then this Pete Anwar, from Wayne Gretzky, I think is terrific. I think yours is probably under $15. This is more like around 20 $25. But I think these are actually good wines. I must say these aren’t just, you know, name on a label. They’re, they’re well produced lines. And both are partnering with very solid wineries in Niagara who are actually making the wine. Yes, Mike, we’re in Wayne Gretzky are busy. They’re not out there, picking the grapes. So what’s next for you, Antonio, which aspect of research are you going to pursue next?

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 21:32
Well, I would maybe just describe it. We’re mentioning extrinsic cues. And there’s a study that we just started running that is looking at the effects of a very simple extrinsic queue. And that queue is whether there’s a picture on the label or not any picture at all.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 21:57
We could certainly imagine bottles of wine Have a picture of art or maybe even a picture related to the name of the wine. And our colleagues in New Zealand have done some preliminary laboratory work, where they brought people into a lab and they didn’t show actual wine bottles, but they showed labels. And they told their participants that there was a California Wine competition and that certain wines won gold medals amongst the labels that we’re going to show you and it’s your task in the study to decide based on the label which wines you think are called medal winners. In this competition. Now that competition was fictitious, they just made up these labels with or without a photo to see if the addition of a photo to the label made a difference and consumers perceptions of whether the wines were award winning. And that’s indeed what they found that their participants in the study were more likely to think it was an award winning wine in this California Wine competition if it had a photo on the label or not. And, you know, this is a pretty fascinating discovery, because it’s such a simple addition to a label to include a photo. And you know, the next step in this research is just a collaboration that we have that we’re running here in our lab, to see whether the addition of the photo on the label makes a difference to consumers evaluation of the taste of the wine, and how much they would be willing to pay for that wine because certainly you can imagine when you go into a winery and somebody pours while for you, in some cases, they leave the bottle there on the counter for you while you’re tasting it and other cases, they put it down below the shelf and it’s outside of the view of the consumer and same thing at the lcbo when we have different product samplings and again, that bottle could be displayed right there. As you’re tasting, or it could be turned around or put away, and if the photo makes a difference for the consumers perception of the taste of the wine, that would be important to know. So that’s where research is headed.

Natalie MacLean 24:15
That’s true to very practical takeaways when you’re designing a label, but also how you display it, whether it’s in the tasting room at the winery or in store as much as you can with with tastings or shelf facings, I guess is what they call them in the industry. Antonia, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much. You’re doing some really great and important work for the wine industry here. And Niagara Ontario in Canada is lucky to have your brain applied to bear industry. So I wish you all the best and let’s keep in touch. I’d love to hear about other studies as you do them.

Dr. Antonia Mantonakis 24:46
Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. This has been great.

Natalie MacLean 24:55
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Dr. Antonia menten Agus Here are my takeaways. Number one, I expected golf to be the best match with wine and wrestling the worst. However, I find it fascinating that it was actually the sports in the middle, like speedskating that were a moderate match for which consumers would pay the most. As Dr. Montanakis explained, it’s because people have to think more about that match, and many would give it a fair shot rather than dismissing it as they might a wind sport match that completely fits their expectations, or one that doesn’t at all. Number two, I was also surprised that those with higher levels of my knowledge were more likely to pay for these wines in the middle. I would have expected that they’d be more sceptical about such endorsements overall. However, their high involvement in wine probably leads them to be more curious than a consumer with low involvement or knowledge in the wine category. Number three, I think it’d be fascinating to know if celebrities like Wayne Gretzky Who have other product lines in other categories? would seem to be more of a fit in wine versus someone who doesn’t have multiple endorsements? My guess I think he would. And number four, I do think we’re all more influenced by the extrinsic cues on wine, like celebrity endorsement and label design, then we are in many other product categories, because often that’s all we have to rely on. Unlike a book where you can read the first chapter, or a dress that you can try on. You can’t try before you buy when it comes to wine. We’ll have Dr. Mountain Agus back in a future episode talking about her experiments with consumers and their perceptions based on the price of wine. It’s not what you think. You won’t want to miss next week when I’ll be chatting with Rex Pickett, the author of the novel sideways, and the multiple award winning Alexander Payne film of the same title. Remember, miles, I’m not drinking any frickin Merlot sideways captured two Golden Globes, an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the prestigious Writers Guild Award. He joins me from his home in California next week. In the meantime, if you missed Episode 29, where we talk with wine detective Maureen downy, about how wine labels have been faked throughout centuries, go back and take a listen. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Maureen Downy 27:29
I worked in auctions for many years, and I’ve been managing private wine collections and it’s not just the crusty old 1960 bottle that we need to worry about, because the current wine fraud that we’re seeing is recent vintages recent releases. So if you think that you don’t buy thousand dollar bottles and therefore wine fraud doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong. There’s been a lot of mirrorball, Rosie, that’s counterfeit. There’s more and more brunella multi Chino in the $40 range that is coming out as counterfeit. So this really does hit all aspects of the industry. And that is because you We have seen such low punishment for those who get caught doing this, that organised crime has gotten into the game. Because if you get caught human trafficking or trafficking drugs, you’re going away forever. You get caught counterfeiting wine or selling counterfeit wine. You maybe get a slap on the wrist. If that literally.

Natalie MacLean 28:22
If you liked this episode, please tell a friend about it. Especially one who’s interested in the fascinating tips that Dr. Mountain Agus shared. You’ll find links to the wines we tasted a full transcript of our conversation, the video version of this chat, and where you can find us on Facebook Live every second Wednesday at 7pm. That’s all in the show notes at NatalieMacLean.com/84. And if you want to connect with me personally, join me in a free online video class at NatalieMacLean.com/class. Thank you for taking the time. Join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a Gretzky shirt nay.

Natalie MacLean 29:13
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full body bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at NatalieMacLean.com/subscribe, maybe here next week Cheers.

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