New Funding

posted by philip in Snooth

We announced yesterday that we raised a new round of $1 million. The official press release is in the preceding post (chronologically, but below this one in blog order!). This is a big event for us and we’ll celebrate in due course.

What can you, our users, expect? Well, we’ll be staffing up, becoming more professional and generally growing up. We’re hiring a lot more developers and the odd business person, so you can look forward to the rate of development picking up. We’re going to continue to develop the site, adding new features, cleaning the data and integrating new merchants.

Some specifics you can look forward to: the much touted ‘group pages’ will be coming soon and we’re going to be integrating a lot of non-US based retailers, starting with Western Europe. Lots of small things as well of course…

Thanks for your loyalty and patience, who knows we may even take down the ‘beta’ on our logo soon.

Snooth Announces $1 Million in Angel Funding

posted by philip in Snooth, Press

New York, NY - November 27, 2007

World’s most comprehensive wine review site plans international expansion

Snooth, the worlds most comprehensive wine review site, today announced $1 million in angel funding from the company’s initial backers, as well as a new group of international investors. This is the company’s second round, following an initial $300,000 raised in December 2006.

The new funds will be used to scale the development team, integrate the current backlog of merchants that have already partnered with Snooth, and add new retailers worldwide.

Launched in June 2007, Snooth is a highly interactive, social database of the world’s wine, offering both casual and expert wine drinkers the ability to search, obtain personalized recommendations, browse ratings and reviews, as well as seamlessly buy from a network of over 1,000 merchants.

Users have the ability to search by their own personal preferences (bold, peppery, fruity, etc), by a specific meal-pairing, price, or by region or producer. Snooth’s recommendation engine also provides customized selections based on stated preferences and user feedback. The more information a user gives on wines they enjoy, the more personalized and detailed the recommendations become.

“Snooth is a powerful tool that helps average wine drinkers and connoisseurs alike find better wine experiences,” said site founder Philip James. “The site’s detailed search options and social recommendations allow users to quickly cut through the clutter to find the perfect wine for their individual preferences.”

Snooth has also been introducing new functionality, allowing for a deeper and more interactive user experience. For example, the “My Wines” feature allows users to build and manage their personal wine collection, maintain wish lists, track reviews and keep detailed notes about their personal impressions. The company has also debuted charts that illustrate how a specific wine’s rating changes over time and breaks down by level of popularity.

About Snooth:

Snooth is a revolutionary web-based social shopping experience that is simplifying how people select, interact with and purchase their favorite wines.

Snooth is the world’s most comprehensive wine database, featuring over 1.9 million reviews for over 300,000 wines. It offers both casual and aspiring wine drinkers personalized wine recommendations, ratings & reviews, as well as a wine information search tool that seamlessly connects users to the websites of over 1,000 merchants and wineries and critics including wine.com, Sam’s Wines and Spirits, K&L Wine Merchants, Beverage Media and Inertia Beverage Group.

Snooth launched in June 2007.

Please visit www.snooth.com for more information.

Contact

media@snooth.com
(646) 723-4328

Red and White all over

posted by philip in Wine

The title comes from an awful joke, where the punchline is a sunburned penguin (black and white, but red all over), but what caught me eye recently is that White wine is still the most popular in the US.

I really like white wine (I drink a lot of red too), but I used to get fed up as people looked down on me with a ‘white wine is for beginners’ attitude. Pfft! Baby formula is for beginners perhaps, but White wine? Come on. White Burgundy is white wine (Chardonnay in fact) and there’s no more complicated region than Burgundy. I could write an entire post called “Why is Burgundy so complex?”, but luckily the venerable Robin Garr already has. In less time than you can say Napoleon’s Tricorne Hat, here’s why its THE connoisseurs region: back in the days of yore, unlike most of France, where land would pass to the eldest male, in Burgundy, the land was divided among all the children. Fast forward several hundred years and what were once a few large baronies, are now thousands of tiny plots, each with subtle variations in soil types and production methods, resulting in a nearly infinite variety of wines. [Note: Burgundy also makes excellent reds (Pinot Noir), but thats another post].

Its true that its not Burgundy consumption that is keeping White above Red in consumption, but rather cheap, basic whites. However, after trying Charles Shaw’s 2 Buck Chuck Chardonnay, its hard to argue that even the cheapest wine needs to be bad.

Us White fans can’t gloat too much, as the actual figure are very close: “Even after 17 consecutive years of consumption growth for red wine in the United States, Americans still prefer whites: Americans are expected to buy 120 million 9-liter cases in 2007. That figure narrowly beats out reds, a projected 118 million cases sold by year-end. Blush and rosé wines lag far behind, at only 31 million cases.”

Vertical Limit

posted by philip in Wine Industry, Wine

A few years ago if anyone had said “Vertical Limit” to me I would have thought of the ‘not awesome’ film about Nitrox carrying mountaineers, shoving each other with Diamox injections every 5 minutes while leaping across gaping canyons like Stallone in Rambo. As an ex-mountaineer I was always fond of anything that took such a solitary, and lets face it, boring to observe (high altitude climbing is very sloooooow) pastime and glamorized it.

Now, older, wiser, and considerably more desk-bound, my dreams have changed to more enjoyable and less punishing pastimes. Like wine…

Which is why the following caught my eye today: Veuve Clicquot in conjunction with the Porsche Design Studio has just released their Vertical Limit Champagne Cellar. Scoring very high on the ‘cool factor’, only 15 of these beauties have been made. Fashioned entirely by hand, these sleek units will retail for an impressive $70,000. I say retail, but they’ve all been pre-sold, so put your wallets away.

Each cellar is designed to store 12 magnums, each inside its own compartment held at a constant 12 degrees Celsius. One magnum from each of Veuve’s finest vintages in the last 50 odd years. Represented are the: 1955, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1969 Vintage Rose, 1975, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1988 1989 Vintage Rose and the 1990. Drool on…

Only 2 of these units actually made it Stateside, but they will be on display in Porsche’s Design Studio’s in New York and LA for the month of November.