US Wine Market Council boosts insight with academic partnership

America’s Wine Market Council is teaming up with the Wine Business Institute at Sonoma State University in order to boost its academic credentials and provide greater transparency.

Dr Damien Wilson of the Wine Business Institute

The organization is a non-for-profit affiliation of US growers, producers, importers and retailers, which has been tracking US wine consumer attitudes and researches industry issues and emerging trends in the sector for twenty-two years.

The Wine Institute’s Dr. Damien Wilson, the Hamel Family Faculty Chair in Wine Business, is set to advise Wine Market Council on methodology and research topics, and will also contribute knowledge of other industry data sources, the Council has announced.

President of Wine Market Council John Gillespie said the relationship with the Wine Business Institute, a research and education institute of the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University, would greatly benefit its members by adding a new layer of transparency to its research. “We are thrilled to offer our members this new unbranded and unbiased research that will help them in their everyday businesses,” he said.

Wilson, who headed up the Wine Business programs at the Burgundy School of Business in Dijon until his move to Sonoma last September, said the Institute was pleased to contribute its expertise and insights to the organization.

“This important partnership benefits from decades of cooperation among the industry’s greatest minds and global business leaders, working to solve its most important issues,” he said.

The Wine Countils’ research committee is made up of representatives from Nielsen, Constellation Brands, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Wine Communications Group, Breakthru Beverage Group, and the Wine Business Institute at Sonoma State University.