Appellation more important to price than terroir?

[Robin Garr]

Interesting report in the recent issue of the Journal of Wine Economics:

In Terroir in the New World: Hedonic Estimation of Vineyard Sale Prices in California, Robin Cross, Andrew Plantinga and Robert Stavins’ examine the link between intrinsic vineyard attributes (“terroir”) and vineyard prices in California’s Napa and Sonoma Counties. Although they find a positive influence of terroir on land values, the effect of designated appellations - that may have only weak connections to terroir - is stronger and more consistent.
http://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-c ... fornia.pdf

Interesting, if a little too dense for easy reading while listening to a conference call
But I think hard to draw any real conclusions, as you'd have trouble getting agreement on best factors for terroir. And I'm not sure their use of sub-AVA is necessarily a great substitution for soil makeup. They also left out vine age, which would be a major value factor I'd think.