Wine Awards Analysis

Data

I use San Francisco Chronicle Wine Awards Data. Each row represents each wine that was awarded by the contest.

Objective

What type of grapes tend to receive Gold or higher awards?

Analysis

I categorized Varietal (the type of grapes) into top 20 popular grapes and others. I also reorganized the awards to “Gold+”, “Silver”, “Bronze” and “Other”. “Gold+” includes “Best of Class”, “Double Gold” and “Gold”.

If I look at the total number of awards by the grape types and awards, Cabernet Sauvignon received the most number of awards in total. Note that here I excluded the “Other” grapes.

If I look at the Awads ratio (% of total) for each grape, I’m seeing that Riesling has the highest ratio (34.73%) on the Gold+ category.

Here is how the ratio of Awards changes by year for each grape. Riesling is stably receiving higher “Gold+” ratio in these years.

Conclusion

• If you want to receive any type of awards, Cabernet Sauvignon is the choice.
• If you can create a really good Riesling wine that deserves awards, you may have more chance to receive Gold or higher awards.