July 31, 2007

25 new partners

posted by philip in Snooth, Partnerships

This was supposed to go out yesterday, but we got carried away. Anyway, here’s this week’s 25 new partners. We welcome:

I’m also pleased to introduce Oliver Hsu, the newest addition to Snooth. Oliver’s going to be working on the front end web development, so you should all see us speeding up on that front. To that end, there’s some great features in the works, the first of which we’ll launch today.

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July 30, 2007

In defense of the big apple

posted by philip in Snooth, nextNY

People are sometimes surprised that Snooth, as a wine company, is based in New York. “Why not Napa?” seems to be the most common question.

We think that sitting here in Manhattan allows us to span the world of wine in a way thats hard to do elsewhere. Think about the following: We’re based in the state with the 3rd largest wine production volume (thanks to the Finger Lakes as well as the North Fork of Long Island). We’re close enough to California that we don’t lose touch with what America’s epicenter of wine is doing, but we’re also just a stone’s throw away from America’s largest shipping port, Port Elizabeth, which is where most of the wine from France, Italy and other European countries comes into the US.

New York and New Jersey (closer to the port and with cheaper warehouse space) has quite a roster of wine companies, from the importer Kobrand, to some of the best wine stores like Astor, Zachy’s and Morrells. Even the iconoclastic Gary of Wine Library calls Manhattan home. New York is even host to the headquarters of Constellation, the worlds largest wine company, and the only wine company with revenues of over $1 billion.

So, although literally we live on an island, figuratively, it’s anything but.

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July 27, 2007

Snooth releases Facebook wine application

posted by philip in Website Updates, Snooth, Press

NEW YORK, NY – July 27, 2007

Wine recommendation engine releases Facebook wine application, backed by world’s largest wine database

Snooth announced that it has released the Snooth Facebook wine application, allowing Facebook users to interact with, and explore, Snooth’s functionality from within their Facebook account. Using Facebook’s API to access Snooth’s database of millions of wine ratings across hundreds of thousands of wines, users can now rate and review wines, get recommendations and see what their friends are drinking as well as find retailers to purchase specific wines from.

“Integrating Snooth into Facebook is an important step for Snooth. Giving our users multiple choices over how they interact with our service is a strong focus of ours.” says Snooth Founder, Philip James.

Snooth is still in a beta release. In anticipation of its full launch, Snooth will continue to add features and build its partnerships over the coming months. Visit Snooth at www.snooth.com to sign up today.

About Snooth

Snooth is revolutionizing 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.

Please visit www.snooth.com for more information.

CONTACT
646-723-4328 • media@snooth.com

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July 27, 2007

Image uploading

posted by philip in Website Updates, Snooth

As much as we like the Snooth default wine image…

Now, any time you see a wine without an image, there’ll be a link underneath allowing you to upload an image of the wine. Its pretty simple really (in fact identical to the profile image upload - which I’m glad so many of you are using). For those yet to do this, get on it! We want to see who you all are.

Anyway, wine label image uploading. A nice start to some real treats for the wine detail page. Coming soon, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. Have a good weekend and go drink some great wine.

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July 26, 2007

Out with the Nouveau and in with the Old

posted by philip in Wine

I attended a Beaujolais boat cruise around Manhattan last Saturday night (I know, such hard work). There were several wines on offer, a Beaujolais, a Beaujolais Village, as well as several Cru’s: Brouilly, Morgon and a Moulin-a-Vent, amongst others. A fellow member of the wine trade wrote about it here.

If all you know of Beaujolais is the Nouveau that comes out each November, then Summer is the time to revisit the Gamay grape. It can range from very light, barely a trace of tannin, wines like the Beaujolais Superior wine I tried, to the deeper, earthier, mushroom notes I found in the Brouilly. All of these can be drunk at room temperature, but become the perfect accompaniment to picnic fare when served slightly chilled.

The classifications of Beaujolais are worth learning:

  • Beaujolais Nouveau wines are the first wines from the new vintage, released on the 3rd Thursday of November after harvest.
  • Beaujolais superior wines are more ripe and contain more alcohol than the nouveau wines.
  • Beaujolais villages are wines that are made from a mixture of different villages.
  • Cru Beaujolais come from better vineyard sites in and around the ten “crus” in the north part of the region. These wines are often more full-bodied, darker in color, and significantly longer-lived. The ten crus are the following: Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Saint-Amour, Chiroubles, Chénas, Fleurie, Juliénas, and Régnié. The Cru’s rarely show the name Beaujolais on the label - so unless you’re using Snooth, you might have to remember a few of them.

PS. Wilkommen Deutschland - A big hello to the huge influx of German users these last few days. No idea what triggered this, but happy, nonetheless. OK - A big thank you to Ehrensenf for their vlog review of us.

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July 25, 2007

Snooth launches Facebook application

posted by philip in Website Updates, Snooth, Partnerships

Last night we launched the Snooth Facebook application. I know that I say I’m excited a lot, but this is really the start of something good. The app allows users to integrate most of Snooth’s functionality into Facebook seamlessly. You can see your friends, your highly rated wines, your recommendations. We’ve also added a mini feed, so you can see whats happening thats new to your account.

There’s a lot left to do, and we’re still working on it, but we’re pretty happy with this at the moment. If you’re a Facebook user, go take a look at the application, here.

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July 24, 2007

Whats in a name

posted by philip in Wine

Estate / Winery / Vineyard - these are the most common winery name words we see, and its interesting as each evokes an image. Sadly, there’s no regulation here so the name is rather irrelevant.

You’d rather hope and expect that a wine company with ‘winery’ in their name actually made wine, and that ‘vineyards’ meant they grew grapes. When I see ‘vineyard’ (singular) I start thinking small lots and boutique, and when I read ‘cellars’ I think of subterranean caves. I’m not going to delve into a name and shame here, but be aware that these words don’t technically have to mean anything. There is fortunately some correlation with these words, however, and a wine label that says ‘Winery’ was probably made by a winery.

The one word that needs to be treated separately is “Estate”. This word actually does mean something. Only a wine that is produced from grapes grown by the winery, on lands that are either contiguous with the winery or on owned lands in the same appellation can qualify.

None of this really has an impact on quality, a wine made from purchased grapes isn’t necessarily worse than one made from grapes the winery actually grew (Joseph Phelps Insignia isn’t an Estate wine and its known as one of Napa’s best cab’s). I just think its fair that people know what the heck’s going on under the hood…

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July 24, 2007

Rating changes

posted by philip in Website Updates, Snooth

Just a small change, but part of something bigger…

After getting lots of feedback on the issue of ratings and half glasses, we have decided to follow WineCast’s system (with 2 glasses representing neutral). We’ll also allow users to rate in half glasses soon (we just need to create some better looking icons first) - for now, you can see the new rating system here.

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July 23, 2007

Its Monday so its partnership day

posted by philip in Snooth, Partnerships

Another new week, and I’m happy to bring you this week’s 25 new partners:

A full 40% of these are wineries not yet on Snooth, and we’re very excited to have the companies as partners and to continually expand our offering. Have a good week.

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July 20, 2007

Corrections

posted by philip in Snooth

We’ve gotten a lot of press since launching the Friends module and I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who’s written about us. I did want to correct a few pieces of mistaken information that have been floating around though:

  • We have around 350,000 unique wines in the database (de-duped from the roughly 1.25 million that we’ve loaded in so far).
  • 1.6+ million ratings, with close to 500,000 yet to get loaded in, which brings us past 2 million.
  • Over 100,000 images, with a further tens of thousands yet to get appended to the correct wine.
  • More than 450 data partners, with several hundred yet to get loaded in.

Thank you.

PS. Whoever searched for “Cheese Puffs with expensive Bordeaux” - hats off to you Sir, we like your style…

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