Finding that cheap bottle of delicious red is something of a miniature holy grail for the urban professional. Pinot, Syrah, Merlot. Who cares!?! As long as it cost less than $10 and tastes like $200.
Faithful readers of this blog (all two of you … but at least you’re in good company) are familiar with my concept of the Price/Taste ratio as a way to capture the “bang for your buck” in a bottle. Well, it seems I’m not the only somewhat bright light in the room. Over at The Wine Blue Book one can buy their newsletter, “a convenient wine buying guide that compares wine scores to price, uncovering the best (and worst) values.”
Good, but it’s not free ($35 for 18 issues), and it only covers wines that have been rated previously by critics.
A more democratic (and Web 2.0-ey) approach is Snooth. Snooth allows a user to rate wines and then makes recommendations based on those ratings. If users want to buy the wine, they are then sent to Wine.com.
A great idea … or maybe not. I wonder how many people would be willing to go to Snooth just to rate wines. Better to connect rating with purchasing, much like Netflix does by asking you what you thought of movies you just returned. If Snooth is partnering with Wine.com, this shouldn’t be much of a problem for them to arrange (but of course, this would obviate the need for Snooth).
And while Snooth is still in beta (but who isn’t these days) the search and recommendation features leave much to be desired. It is frustrating to be told:
Uh-oh, we’re sorry, but even though you’ve rated 5 or more wines, we are still unable to provide you your personalized recommendations. This is because we don’t know enough about the wines you reviewed, or that there are no wines for sale by our merchant partners that we can identify as similar.
No matter how well formed the error message, this isn’t a way to get people to come back to your site.
For now Snooth remains an interesting idea, but I’d recommend sticking with your local wine shop.
Turn up your Snooth
As always, thanks for listening.
~alex
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Alex – thanks for the review. You’re right, the recommendations have a ways to go.
We currently allow people to buy wines from several retailers, however, there are tens more being integrated. Also, we do track when people click the ‘buy it now’ button, so eventually, like netflix, we’ll make recommendations on past purchases.
We do have a long way to go – but again, thanks for the shout out. It’s been an exciting first week.
Thank you
Philip
ok, thats fixed now – you (and everyone else) should now have recommendations!