Snooth moves into closed Beta

posted by philip in Snooth

Late last week we quietly slipped into closed beta. We’ve begun to invite people who signed up on the homepage in manageable chunks. Stay patient as there’s a long list of names to get through.

A lot of the functionality is still being put in place, but the search and reviewing sections are coming together well. You can also get a good sense of the size of the database in the search results as well.

We’re excited to expand the group and to get more feedback. And a big thank you to everyone who’s been giving us just that.

Rinsing Glasses

posted by philip in Wine

I was at a wine tasting the other day and, feeling thirsty, poured some water into my glass. I drained what was left, and held out the glass for the next wine. The server then proceeded to lecture me on how I shouldn’t put water in the same glass as wine as it “changed the pH and acidity”.

It certainly sounded as if they knew what they were talking about.

I let it slide as I hear this sort of fallacy every day. Firstly, pH and acidity are the same thing. Moreover, wine is predominantly made out of water. The few drops of water in the glass made no difference to the half glass of wine that was poured in.

Technically, the water would have diluted the taste, but we’re talking literally 2 drops versus 2 mouth-fulls of wine. I figure that to be a 0.1% difference. Certainly nothing worth mentioning.

Snooth announces merchant partnerships

posted by philip in Snooth, Press

NEW YORK, NY – April 26, 2007

Wine recommendation engine signs up five merchant partners.

Snooth announced that it has initiated partnerships with several leading wine merchants including Wine.com, Sam’s Wines and Spirits, The Wine Messenger, Astor Wines & Spirits, and K&L Wine Merchants. Snooth users who wish to purchase a wine will be redirected to the sites of these merchants to complete their purchase.

“We are pleased that Snooth users will be able to seamlessly connect to the sites of some of the top online wine merchants in the country”, says Snooth Founder, Philip James, “These partnerships allow Snooth to provide users with an end-to-end solution for searching the world’s most comprehensive wine database, reading user and expert reviews, receiving personalized recommendations, and purchasing wine.”

The Snooth site is still being tested and access is currently invitation only. To request an account please sign up at www.snooth.com.

About Snooth

Snooth promises to revolutionize the way people choose wine.

By combining the company’s proprietary algorithms with the world’s most comprehensive wine database, Snooth is able to accurately identify the wines best-suited to an individual.

Snooth analyzes a user’s unique set of interactions with the site and, using its powerful recommendation engine, leverages this digital fingerprint to generate highly-personalized wine recommendations. Snooth also interprets wine queries more naturally and optimizes the relevancy of search results, by incorporating semantic search elements into its core technology.

Snooth is currently in closed testing. Please visit www.snooth.com for more information.

Contact

Media@Snooth.com
646-7283-4328

Getting your hands dirty

posted by philip in Snooth, Wine

Philip James, Snooth (L) and Jason Baker, Corda Winemaker (R)

One of the highlights of my trip last week was spending time at the wineries. While it’s nice to sample the famous wines at the exclusive places, I found that I learned a lot more from the smaller boutique wineries … and you can’t get much more boutique than Corda Winery:

David Corda is a 4th generation Marin County local. Based in Petaluma, the farm has been in the family since his grandfather’s days. The wine is literally made in a barn. The whole process is gritty, up close and fantastic. We tasted wines from the ‘06 barrel samples that were still fermenting, right through to their 2000 bottled releases (my favorite, as ever is their Cabernet Franc - one of the smoothest Franc’s I’ve tasted).

Young Merlot Vines

Best of all? I wasn’t given special treatment. There was a local couple who had seen the Corda sign and had just driven up to see the winery. They were given the exact same tour I was.

If you get the chance to make it out to your local ‘Wine Country’ (wherever that may be) go visit the famous wineries and make sure you try the wines everyone has heard of, but make sure you stop at somewhere off the beaten path too - thats where you’ll really learn something.

One in One Hundred

posted by philip in Wine

I’ve long held Bounty Hunter Wines in high regard. They are a Napa based wine store who excel in supplying high end Californian wines. They produce an excellent catalog, and they evoke a mystique about their craft. I feel like an explorer just by reading it.

When I suddenly found myself driving past their store/winebar on Friday night (it had slipped my mind that they were based in Napa) I felt like I’d found home. The place was fantastic - a casual, saloon style bar; I could smell the barbecue from outside the door. Tens of wines by the glass, and best of all tasting flights.

Now, before i go any further, let me say: I still do hold the company in high regard, and most of the wines I tried were great and the food was excellent. However…

The staff at Bounty Hunter served me two corked wines in a row. Bad enough, but then the waiter refused to believe that they were in fact corked. His disdainful response was that I was in fact mistaking Oak for the wet cardboard smell I complained about! (coincidentally both were bottled under Bounty Hunter’s own label (Pursuit)).

I work in the wine industry and have a nose for corked wines. I don’t just mean off-smelling barnyard style wines, or wines contaminated with any of the tens of other chemicals that can make a wine pong, but a wine that’s tainted with TCA. Trust me, after tasting thousands of wines a year, if it smells of wet cardboard and over the space of an hour turns undrinkable I know it’s corked.

I don’t want this to sully any potential relationship with Bounty Hunter, and we’d love to feature their wines at Snooth, and I most certainly would recommend to anyone that they stop in there on a visit to Napa.

The message I want to convey here, however, is that I see the kind of pretension that the waiter showed me, that night, in the wine industry far too often and it needs to change. The typical wine drinker might detect that the wine was off, and be too timid to say anything, or worse, be shot down if they dared.

P.S. Why the title? Somewhere between 5 and 15% of wines are corked. Lets take the average: 10%. That makes the chance of getting two wines in a row that are corked 1 in 100.

If you are looking for advice on how to save a corked wine, refer to my earlier post on saving a wine that’s corked.

Wine 2.0

posted by philip in Snooth, Wine, Partnerships

I went to California last week to attend a Web 2.0 conference (user generated content and tagging etc.). The conference was good, but it was what I did the rest of the week that made the trip really worthwhile. As I mentioned yesterday, I met with several high profile wine companies out in San Francisco. We’re still ironing out some of the details, but I hope to be able to talk about these soon.

I was lucky enough to get up to Napa and Sonoma over the weekend to visit some wineries and continue to spread the word about Snooth. I met with people, and tasted wines, from Joseph Phelps (Napa), Mondavi (Napa), Luna (Napa), Baldacci (Napa), Corda (Marin), Rosenblum (Sonoma), Thumbprint (Sonoma) amongst others.

Napa County produces some of the finest wines in the world, but the town was too large to be picturesque. However, Sonoma town and Healdsburg really stood out. Both are tiny (touristy) picture perfect towns, and well worth the visit.

Finally, for today, from California, although I sadly didn’t have the opportunity to meet with them this time, K&L Wine Merchants have just started working with us. K&L have a great name in the industry and we’re excited to be featuring their products.

Red Eye

posted by philip in Snooth

I just got back on the red eye from a week long trip to California where I met with a host of wine companies (wineries, retail stores, software providers etc). We covered a lot, formed some important partnerships, and I was fortunate enough to taste some very nice wines. I’ll write about this all in the next few days.

In the meantime, its been a busy few days of work at SnoothHQ as we’re getting ready for the next release. We expect to move into Beta this week and we’re very excited to expand the user base. Thank you to everyone who has been so patient.

Thinking inside the box

posted by philip in Wine

For a long time viewed as the lowest form of wine, box wine is making a resurgence. Last year, sales of boxed wines grew 44% as better wines are now being packaged this way.

Best of all? Packaging wines like this might be the smartest way of all.

Wine degrades in air. This can take between 10 minutes and 5 days, depending on how fragile the wine is, but 2 days is common. This isn’t an issue if you finish the bottle in one sitting, but many people don’t, and end up resealing the bottle, hoping that it will last.

Boxed wine avoids this by putting the wine inside a collapsible bag inside the box. No air gets in as you pour, the wine doesn’t degrade, so you can enjoy it over a couple of weeks. The packaging is cheap, and you’re buying in volume. A smart decision all around. Just hide the box itself from any snobby guests.

How many do you recognize

posted by philip in Wine

IRI recently released its annual list of the 30 most influential wine brands. Some interesting stats:

• 23 of the 30 were Californian
• Of the 5 international brands, 4 were Australian
• Gallo had 4 brands in the top 30
• 83% of the wines were in the ‘premium’ category (although that does start at $5.50)

IRI also noted that Box Wines were making a comeback - I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Corks vs Screwcaps

posted by philip in Wine Industry, Wine

Bottle enclosures used to be simple. Cork=good. Screwcap=bad.

The lines are now blurring more than ever. It started with the Australians using screwcaps for the majority of their bottles, no matter the price. New Zealand, South Africa, South America and the rest of the New World then began to follow suit.

Meanwhile, Europe held steadfastly onto the cork for all but the most inexpensive wines.

Just last month, a consortium of highly regarded French Wineries announced they would begin using screwcaps.

Technically, screwcaps are better than corks for most wines as there is no risk of the screwcap going mouldy. There is still some debate on whether the finest wines, meant for long aging, should be used with a seal as airtight as a screwcap, or whether the slighly porous cork will allow the wine to age more gracefully.

For the remaining 99% of wines, this is a step forward.