Snooth - Wine Lovers UNITE

So last weekend, Kevin and I were on our way to the USA Mens vs. China Mens friendly game at Spartan Stadium. As usual, I started on my soap box about wine companies continuously trying to market their latest and greatest products. They've come to realize that the "millennial" generation is an important consumer base. However, they don't seem to understand that buying a full page ad in Spectator, Enthusiast or even Sunset, Savour, etc., don't help their cause. Some have taken the beer route and started advertising in Maxim, FHM, Cosmo and the like sort.

As a wine buyer, my biggest challenge to them is to understand the habits of my generation. We've learned to ignore the mass advertising campaigns and rely more on recommendations of friends and blogs. The concept of an online social network has proved to be sustainable. There should be an online network for wine lovers. Recommendations from people around the world based on similar taste profile... what an idea! Any good wine sales person does the exact thing at the store level. You share a handful of wines you like and they are able to come up with similar items that you may enjoy as well.

Lo and behold, ask and you shall receive! Enoch sent me a link to this new site: www.snooth.com

It does exactly what I was going on and on about. They have the funding, they seem to have the partnerships and they seem to know what they're doing. The site needs some serious overhauling in terms of look and feel but in general, it's a good start.

For example, it doesn't help when I search for "red oak" that Penfolds Grange 1998 comes up. It's a great bottle, true, but it's nearly impossible to find for purchase. If you refine by limiting retail and "wines in stock", the recommendations are much better. Is the site trying to recommend wines in general or tap into this concept of recommendations by taste profile? That needs to be stated in a clearer manner.

Easy fixes:
- Uploading photos
- Ability to search by specific price range (currently can only define upper limit, should be able to define lower limit as well)
- Ability to search by country, region, state, AVA/DOC/DOCG/AOC/etc.

Slightly more complicated fixes:
- Rating system. There's only five little glasses for "Hate it, Dislike it, Neutral, Like it, Love it" To average out everyone's rating is not a fair assessment. That isn't the focus of this site, is it? If you hate something, well, maybe there are different levels of hate but I would say if you spit it out, you hate it. If you dislike it, it probably means it made you squirm but you swallowed it and you didn't take another sip. Neutral is truly neutral. But like and love, there are fairly different levels to this. I like a good Bordeaux blend. We make one called Red Sky Ranch Napa Meritage. It's good. But I really like Chateau La Fleur Mongiron. Do I love it? No. But I do like it a lot and much more so than the aforementioned meritage. I love a good pinot noir. But I can't say I have the same level of love for Shea Wine Cellars as I do for Clos de Vougeot or La Tache. There's love and then there's obsession.
- Brick and mortar retailers. Online purchasing is great, but let's support the dusty store around the corner. Possibly an advertising/venue generating vehicle?
- Another idea is to sort by nationally and readily available wines (Smoking Loon, Hess, Jadot, for example) versus small production lots. No use recommending something that can't be found.

More thoughts to come...