After gaining a degree in history and pursuing a varied career involving the law, politics, and managing a community training project I migrated to Sydney, and started to work in wine shops. This was great fun, but not very intellectually stimulating, so for a challenge I started on the Master of Wine programme. After I passed this, and entirely unexpectedly, I was given a job teaching about wine and wine business at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. While I was there I completed a PhD in consumer behaviour, examining what people think wine quality is when they are in the process of drinking it. I also wrote a book entitled Wine and Society: The Social and Cultural Context of a Drink.
One of my big interests while I was living in Australia was champagne – and I paid a number of visits to the region. In 2006 a Chair in Champagne Management was set up at a Business School (grande école) in Reims and I successfully applied for the position. Seven years later, seeking another challenge, I moved to another Business School in Burgundy, which was setting up a specialist School of Wine & Spirits Business and that is where I work today. As an academic my research interests – which link closely to what I’m talking about on this site – include ideas of quality and aesthetics, the importance of place with wine (terroir, tourism, and territorial organisation), and consumers’ and producers’ motivations.
I travel widely around world wine regions which helps to feed this blog, and I remain very involved with the Institute of Masters of Wine. I’m also a Chevalier of the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne. I’ve done some wine journalism, and regularly speak about wine at conferences around the world. Beyond the drink, however, I like reading (history, politics, biography, and novels), music of all kinds, cooking, and trying – not always successfully – to keep fit.
For the real wine nerds, below you’ll find a link to a few of the academic publications I’ve written, which go into more detail about my research interests. For most readers these would be best used late at night as a cure for insomnia.
Books
Charters, S. (2006). Wine and Society: The Social and Cultural Context of a Drink. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann
Carlsen, J., & Charters, S. (Eds.). (2006). Global Wine Tourism: Research, Management and Marketing. Wallingford: CAB International
Charters, S. (Ed.). (2012). The Business of Champagne: A Delicate Balance. Abingdon: Routledge. [Winner of the 2013 OIV Prize for a book on Wine Economy and Law].
Charters, S. and Michaux, V. (Eds.) (2014). Stratégies des Terroirs Vitivinicoles: Clusters, Gouvernance et Marque Territoriale. Paris: Editions EMS/Management and Prospective Editions
Charters, S., and Gallo, J. (Eds.) (2014) Wine Business Management/L’Economie et Business du Vin. Montreuil, France: Pearson. [Commended in 2015 by the OIV for a book on Wine Economy and Law].
Thach, L. and Charters, S. (Eds) (2016). Best Practices in Wine Tourism. New York, Miranda Press.
Capitello, R., Charters, S., Menival, D. & Yuan J. (2017) (Eds). The Wine Value Chain in China: Consumers Marketing and the Wider World. Kidlington: Elsevier. [Commended in 2017 by the OIV for a book on Wine Economy and Law].
Shorter pieces
Charters S. and Ali-Knight J. (2002). Who is the wine tourist? Tourism Management, 23(3). pp. 311-319.
Charters, S., & Pettigrew, S. (2005). Is wine consumption an aesthetic experience? Journal of Wine Research, 16(2). pp. 37-52.
Charters, S. (2007). On the evaluation of wine quality. In Smith, B. (Ed.). Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. (p. 157-182). Oxford: Signal Books.
Charters, S. and Pettigrew, S. (2007). The dimensions of wine quality. Food Quality and Preference 18(7). pp. 997-1007
Charters, S. (2008). Listening to the wine consumer: The art of drinking. In Alhoff, F. (Ed.). Wine and Philosophy. (p. 186-202). Oxford; Blackwell Publishing.
Charters, S. and Pettigrew, S. (2008). Why do people drink wine? A consumer-focused exploration. Journal of Food Products Marketing. 14(3). pp. 13-32
Mitchell, R., Charters, S., and Albrecht, J. (2012). Cultural systems and the wine tourism product. The Annals of Tourism Research 39(1) pp. 311-335
Spielmann, N. and Charters, S. (2013). The dimensions of authenticity in terroir products. International Journal of Wine Business Research. (25)4 310-324
Charters, S., and Spielmann, N. (2014). The characteristics of strong territorial brands: The case of champagne. Journal of Business Research 67 pp. 1461-1467
Velikova, N., Charters, S. Bouzdine-Chameeva, T., Fountain J., Ritchie, C. and Dodd, T. (2015) Seriously pink: A cross-cultural comparison of consumer preferences, perceptions and attitudes towards rosé wine. International Journal of Wine Business Research. 27(4) pp. 281-298
Charters, S., Spielmann, N., and Babin, B. (2017). The nature and value of terroir products. European Journal of Marketing. 51(4) 748-771
Charters, S. (2019) Terroir wines in Champagne: Between utopia and ideology. In Dutton J. and Howland, P. (eds.) Wine, Terroir, Utopia: Making New Worlds. Abingdon: Routledge.
Wine, Culture & Society 