Wine Ratings: Seeking a Consensus among Tasters via Normalization, Approval, and Aggregation

The modern era of wine journalism has provided abundant information about wines and widespread use of numerical rating systems. A tiny difference, especially at the top of the distribution of ratings, may have striking consequences on wine sales and investment returns. This article provides a general framework to obtain a consensus among tasters’ opinions (reflected as numerical wine ratings) via three subsequent stages: normalization, approval, and aggregation. It is inspired by contributions in political science, social choice, game theory, and operations research. We apply it to the Judgment of Paris as well as to rank 2018 en-primeur Bordeaux wines, rated by five international experts. (JEL Classifications: C18, L15, L66)

Poll Vaulting

This chapter provides a set of real-world examples of how the process used for decision-making dramatically affected the outcome and shows how different voting rules would have led to different choices. Examples include the 2000 U.S. presidential election (Bush vs. Gore, with Nader intervening) and the choice of finalist candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (Clinton vs. Trump). It also includes a famous vote by 11 wine judges in France in 1976 (sometimes called “Judgment of Paris”), where we have the actual preferences of the judges. American wines won the blind taste-testing, shocking the French and eventually leading to the “democratization of the wine world . . . a watershed in the history of wine.” This chapter shows that even votes by small numbers of people can have significant effects and that the choice of voting method in part determined which wine “won” the contest.

First insights into the archaeometric analysis of the Los Amores Mosaic in Cástulo (Linares, Spain): the Judgement of Paris

This paper discusses results obtained from in situ analysis of the tesserae of the Roman mosaic of Los Amores (Cástulo site, Linares, Spain) dating back to the turn of the 1st to the 2nd century AD. Specifically, it focuses on the scene The Judgment of Paris. In view of the exceptional state of preservation of the mosaic, from which very few tesserae had fallen off, non-invasive methods with portable Micro Raman Spectroscopy (MRS) and hand-held X-ray fluorescence (hXRF) and data assessment by use of principal component analysis and binary representations were selected. The results obtained allow to evaluate both the analytical method and the portable equipment used, as well as to classify the raw materials, the colouring agents and the opacifiers used. MRS analysis proved crucial for the identification of stone tesserae (ironstones, carbonate and siliciclastic rocks) and for the identification of the type of glasses used (soda-lime-silicate and lead type glasses) based on the analysis of two detached tesserae. hXRF analysis of the glass tesserae identified both colouring agents (Co, Cu, Pb, Zn) and opacifiers (calcium antimonate). The data obtained lend themselves to an assessment of the degradation process that threaten the integrity of the mosaic. The identification of tessera made of specific stone materials (especially ironstone) and of lead glass tesserae suggest the existence of a mosaic workshop in the Upper Guadalquivir (Eastern Andalusia, Spain).

Fish, Firemen, and Prize Fighters

Burlesque drama—arguably the most widespread form of theatrical entertainment in nineteenth-century Britain—brought the Iliad and Aeneid to a wider range of spectators than those who traditionally encountered ancient literature and mythology at school. These entertainments both exploited contemporary performance culture and enacted the tensions between their composite ancient and modern sources. This chapter focuses on four successful examples of epic repackaged for the London stage, by renowned playwrights at leading theatres, who particularly revelled in negotiating the transformation of classical epic into popular drama: Thomas Dibdin’s Melodrama Mad! or, The Siege of Troy (1819, Surrey Theatre), Charles Selby’s Judgment of Paris; or, The Pas de Pippins (1856, Adelphi), Francis Cowley Burnand’s Dido (1860, St James’s), and his Paris, or Vive Lemprière! (1866, Strand). Analysis of these burlesques reveals deliberate anachronistic juxtapositions which turned the epic performances into complex games of identifying—or overlooking—their varied references.