What IS “Local Wine” Anyway?: A Study on Defining “Local Wine” to Wine Consumers in Ontario

What does “buying local” mean to you? When you go to the grocery store, how close does a food item need to be produced in order for you to consider it local?  How about wine?  Is a local wine one from your home county or state?  Or perhaps as long as it’s made in your country would you consider it local then?  These questions and more are the basis of a new study, available online since February 2022 from researchers at the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute at Brock University (Ontario, Canada) in the Journal of Wine Research.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, someone intentionally searching for and purchasing local foodstuffs will do so from producers within a 100-mile radius.  In other words, if the food is produced within 100 miles of the persons’ home, then in general that person would consider that a local food item.

The reasons why someone might purchase food locally varies from person to person, but can range anywhere from environmental reasons (i.e., trying to reduce carbon footprint, etc.) to societal issues such as supporting the local economy and local jobs. 

Farmers’ Market” by NatalieMaynor is marked with CC BY 2.0.

While there is a decent amount of research focused on the concept of local food, there isn’t nearly as much know in regards to the concept of local wine.  How does local food and local wine compare to the consumer?  Like food, would the local-seeking consumer also look for wines produced within a 100-mile radius?  Or would they increase their “local” radius to include wines produced further away?

A new study, available online as of February 2022 in the Journal of Wine Research, aimed to address this question by defining the concept of “local” wine to consumers and comparing that to how those same consumers define “local” food.  Specifically, this study focuses on consumers located in the Canadian province of Ontario and was performed by researchers at the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute at Brock University in Ontario.

Brief Methods

This study used an online survey targeted toward wine consumers within the province of Ontario, Canada.  A total of 521 participants completed enough of the questions to be used for statistical analysis.

Examples of questions asked in the online survey include: “What does buying local meat, vegetables, fruit and other foodstuffs mean to you?” and “What does buying local wine mean to you?”.  Examples of answers to these questions include: “a) within 20km radius of my home”, “b) within 50km radius of my home”, “c) within 100km radius of my home”, “d) anywhere in Canada”, and “e) anywhere in North America”.

The environmental values of respondents were also determined via pertinent responses on the online questionnaire.

Finally, demographic information such as age, gender, household income, etc. was also determined.

Selected Results

  • 50.9% of participants identified as female, while 49.1% identified as male.
  • The largest number of participants from a specific age group came from the over 56 years old group with 37.8% of participants falling into the older age group.
  • Household income was distributed more or less evenly across income brackets, with slightly more participants falling into the $101-$140K income range.

FOCUS:  LOCAL FOOD

  • When presented with the statement: “When purchasing meat, fruit, or vegetables, I do not care where they are grown”, 61.6% of participants disagreed, while 26.5% agreed (11.9% no opinion).
  • When presented with the statement: “In our household, we buy Ontario grown and produced food produce”, 65.4% of participants claimed to purchase these products on a weekly or daily basis.
  • In regards to “why” they purchase foodstuffs produced or grown in Ontario, both environmental and non-environmental reasons were identified.  34% of participants cited environmental reasons (i.e., ‘reduce carbon footprint of my food’, etc.), while 66.1% of participants cited non-environmental reasons (i.e., “help build the local economy”, “taste and flavor”, “I know the producers”, etc.).
  • When presented with the question of whether or not participants actually look at the item to see where it was produced, 52.0% of participants indicated that they did so frequently/regularly, 24.4% of participants indicated that they did so always, and 23.6% said sometimes/seldom/never.
  • ~25% (my eyeballing a chart—probably not a precise number) of participants considered local food to be produced anywhere in North America and Canada., whereas ~31% (another eyeballing) considered local food to be produced within a 100km radius of their home.

FOCUS: LOCAL FOOD + LOCAL WINE

  • 63.6% of participants were considered “high frequency” purchasers of Ontario wines.
    • No differences noted for gender.
    • Those with a household income of $66-$85K purchased Ontario wines most often.
    • 18–35-year-olds were more likely to be high frequency purchasers of Ontario wines than the other age groups.
  • High frequency purchasers of Ontario wines were found to be more concerned with the origin of their food compared to low frequency purchasers of Ontario wines.
  • High frequency purchasers of Ontario wines were found to be more likely purchasers of local foods on a daily-weekly basis compared to low frequency purchasers of Ontario wines.

FOCUS:  WHAT IS LOCAL WINE, ANYWAY?

  • 37.4% of all participants indicated that they define local wine as wine that comes from “anywhere in North America and Canada”.
    • High frequency purchasers of Ontario wines tended to consider local wine as being within a 5okm radius of their home.
    • Low frequency purchasers of Ontario wines tended to consider local wine as being within a 100km radius of their home.
    • If the 20, 50, and 100km responses were combined (leaving “under 100k” and “anywhere in North America and Canada” as the only two choices), then 65% of participants considered local wine as coming from within 100k of their home.
  • 31% of participants indicated that they defined local food as food coming from within a 100km radius of their homes.
  • In regards to WHY local wine is purchased, the vast majority of participants cited non-environmental reasons (93.1% of participants).

FOCUS:  THE ENVIRONMENT

  • Female participants held a more “pro-ecological worldview” (i.e., environment is most important), while males held a more “anthropocentric worldview” (i.e., humans are most important).
  • Participants who indicated that they did not care where their food came from tended to hold a more anthropocentric worldview, while those who indicated that they did care where their food came from held a more pro-ecological worldview.
  • Participants who held a more pro-ecological worldview were higher frequency purchasers of Ontario wines than participants who held a more anthropocentric worldview.

Conclusions

The results of this study provide insight into the purchase behavior consumers from Ontario in regards to how they define and purchase local wines and how that compares with the purchase of local foods.

What I thought was most interesting was that the “radius of local consideration” was different between local food and local wine.  If you look at a graph of where consumers consider the radius of local food to be and compare that to a graph of where consumers consider the radius of local wine to be, one would expect these two graphs to overlap if the definition of local food and local wine were the same.  However, this study found that this is not the case.  In this study, the majority of responses for the definition of “local food” fell under the “within 100km radius of my home” category, while the majority of responses for the definition of “local wine” fell under the “anywhere in North American and Canada” category.

Of course, when you break it down further into high vs low-frequency Ontario wine purchasers, there are some differences, but comparing the results of the study population as a whole would technically be more comparable to the general population than a more niche population of consumers.

It is important to note that these results may or may not be comparable to other wine markets in the world.  As we’ve seen in other types of studies, there are often cultural differences between different wine markets throughout the globe, so the definition of local wine by an Ontario wine drinking population may not be the same as the definition of local wine by a US, French, Spanish, etc. etc. etc. population.

It would be very interesting to see this type of study repeated on a larger scale, as well as repeated in different markets.

I suppose from a marketing perspective, this study may shed some insight into how to market the idea of “local wine” at least to Ontario wine consumers (or at least a place to start).

How about you all?  What do you consider to be “local wine”?  And how does that compare to your definition of “local food”?  Are they the same?  Different?  Feel free to share and discuss!

Source of today’s research article summary: 

Kemp, B., Charnock, H., and Pickering, G. 2022. What does ‘buying local’ mean to wine consumers? Journal of Wine Research, DOI: 10.1080/09571264.2022.2036111

3 comments for “What IS “Local Wine” Anyway?: A Study on Defining “Local Wine” to Wine Consumers in Ontario

Comments are closed.