Big data analysis of Spanish wine consumers reviews

Purpose Wine is a complicated and difficult product to know, which makes it extremely difficult for people with little knowledge to choose the wine they want. This study aims to analyze whether the vocabulary used in reviews on wine written by experts and amateurs on the specialized website is useful for those consumers who wish to search for information on this website to choose a wine. Design/methodology/approach The analysis combines text mining, Natural Language Processing and the Biterm Topic model applied to 25,847 reviews, evaluating a total of 13,263 Spanish wines made by 17 selected users of a specialized wine website. Findings The results show that wine consumers and users of the specialized wine website who write reviews can be divided into expert users and amateur users. Both experts and amateurs use a specific vocabulary related to the wines they review. Unlike amateurs, experts have a broader and more precise vocabulary, and greater consistency in the use of words with the aspects of the wine. For the revised wines, they address fewer and more specific aspects of wine (such as vintages), but they do so with more depth and rigor. Originality/value The originality and value of this research work lie in addressing two aspects that have hardly been analyzed: the reviews of experienced consumers and amateur consumers, and the textual information referring to the Spanish language, which distinguishes this analysis from other similar analyses carried out on the English language.