Snooth Manual Part III

posted by mark in Snooth, Snooth User Manual

It’s a great time for Snoothers to be thinking more locally. We’re constantly improving the site and recently have added the ability to search by zip code. Now you can get recommendations from stores in your area. I thought it would be a good time to go through the search features in a bit more depth to get a better idea of what’s possible. I hope you’ll tell us how you’re using Snooth in the comments!

1. Start big and refine. Snooth works for finding very specific wines, but let’s assume you’re in a store looking for a recommendation. I know that I would probably start with a general idea about what I’d like, and ask someone to help me narrow it down. Snooth can function much the same way. For example, let’s say I’d like to buy a White Wine.

2. What’s your price range? Going back to my store example, the clerk would probably then ask you to select a price range. Generally I like to stick around 8-20 dollars so let’s use the slider to create that.

3. Food pairing? Are you going to have this wine with food? Sometimes that can change the recommendation, so let’s go ahead and say that we’re going to have this white wine with cheese. Here I went ahead and typed “with cheese” directly in the search box. Simple.

4. Location, location, location. At the time of this writing I’m now looking at thousands of results for White wines good with cheese between 8 and 20 dollars. Whew! Now it’s time to buy. First, I need to know which wines are available for me to purchase because some stores might not ship to me. To do that, I need to log in. Once I do that, I’ll see a link at the top of the screen where I can click to “Add a Merchant”.

Here I can select specific merchants I want to buy from. But for now, I want all merchants that can ship to me in the US, so I’ll select USA in the dropdown and rerun my search. Now I can read reviews, choose wines I would like to buy, and click through to a merchant to make the purchase.

5. But I want it now! If you’re not in a rush, I’d recommend the above method. But sometimes, you need to get the product this moment and from a store close to you. Luckily, Snooth has the ability to search around a specific zip code. Simply find the dropdown in the refine tools, add the zip code and re-search.

I hope this has been helpful. Happy Snoothing!

Lemelson Vineyards and Gravity Flow

posted by mark in Wine

While I was out in Oregon I was able to sample some nice wines from a number of wineries including Ponzi Vineyards, Argyle Winery, and Erath Vineyards. All were very good, but the wines I was able to sample at Lemelson Vineyards were the toast, and they had an innovative approach to winemaking there that I felt was worth sharing.

Lemelson makes high quality organic Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling, and Pinot Gris wines. Lemelson’s approach to Pinot Noir is that it is a delicate grape and should be treated with kid gloves. To accomplish this, they wanted the juice to be handled only by gravity, so they designed their gravity flow system so that they could pass the wine through the building using steel tubes.

In the center of the picture above, you can see where the grapes are pressed. The juice flows down into the steel fermentation vats for the next step. Large, pneumatic pistons are used to push the skins and stems into the wine gently from above.

Once fermentation is completed, the wine is allowed to run down into the caves below for maturation in oak (or steel in the case of some of their white wines).

Blending is done back up in the fermentation vats, but they use nitrogen gas to force the wines back up and out of the barrels. They believe that this is much less harsh on the juice than pumping would be.

And how were the wines? They were quite delicious, I have to say. My parents ended up joining the wine club (this was one of their first trips to a winery and they loved it). Try the Thea’s Selection for a wonderful Pinot that was made with thought and care.

Snooth Manual Part II

posted by mark in Snooth, Snooth User Manual

So now you’re searching, rating, reviewing, and wishlisting wines like a Snooth pro — what’s next? Wine is a social product, and Snooth provides a good complement of social networking features you can use to communicate with like-minded oenophiles.

5. Find your friends.

The quickest way to find your friends who are already on Snooth is to use your email address book. If you log in and head on over to the contacts importer page you’ll be able to use the email addresses in your Gmail, MSN Live, AOL, or Yahoo mail. If your friend has already signed up, we’ll let you know that, too.

6. See what your friends are up to.

Once you add a few friends on Snooth you can keep up with what they’re doing by taking a look at the Grapevine on your profile page (log in and visit http://www.snooth.com/).

Here I can quickly see what my friends have been drinking, who their new friends are, the messages that are being posted, and what everyone is talking about in Snooth Talk. You can use the tabs to filter by the type of update you want to see. Wines will show you what your friends have wishlisted, rated or reviewed. Messages is for site messages and social recommendations. And notifications will tell you when your friends add friends or when they post in Snooth Talk.

7. Message your friends.

Whenever you are viewing a Snoother’s profile you will see a link to send them a message. Click that and you’ll see the messaging form. Send them a public or private message!

8. Share wines with friends or the community.

A relatively new feature of Snooth is the ability to share wines directly into Snooth Talk or in a message to a friend.

a) Find the wine you’re going to share. Here I’ll use the Bernardus Chardonnay 2005.

b) Click under the picture to share the wine.

c) Choose the friend you want to share the wine with and add a message.

d) The message will show up on your grapevine and theirs, too! There will be a link directly back to the wine details page so your friend can read all about the wine.