FOOD & DRINK
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6/04/2014 @ 3:57PM |458 views
New Innovations In Wine + Technology: Four Leaders, One Curveball
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Part of my work as a wine writer, especially when my focus is the business of wine, is to keep my finger on the pulse of emerging trends within the industry. Though winemaking is an ancient craft, current ideas and developments show it is also a very dynamic one. And, though those current developments are most often technological in structure, they’re highly interactive and responsive to very human personal tendencies and behaviors.
Here are four recent developments for consumers and businesses that impact how we choose, share, purchase, and manage wine. Plus another – decidedly non-technological in nature – that keeps the quants in check.
Occasion-Specific Recommendations
Early iterations of consumer wine apps for mobile devices were responsive to what information the user wanted to know (varietal, brand, price), howthat user wanted the information delivered (text, video, images), and where the user was located when they accessed the information (meaning they were LBS-enabled, for Location-Based Service).
The latest generation of wine recommendation apps takes that original functionality a step further, drilling down to the very specific occasion or situation the user finds themselves in.
Fiasco, for example, launched just three weeks ago. Users start by picking a “proxy” for the occasion, such as date night or a gift for a friend. Secondary information such as food pairings or price range, combined with taste profile specifications, yields specific bottle recommendations.
A predecessor to Fiasco is Find My Wine, which was created by Elie Gibran and Edouard Kourani, a Lebanese-born, Swiss-educated wine entrepreneur. Released last October, the app aims to “match wines with occasions, foods, people, and moments.”
Vintank
Imagine you’ve got a team of very smart engineers working for your winery, deciphering social technology and making it understandable and meaningful for your specific brand. That’s what happens with Vintank technology, a Napa-based digital think tank for the wine industry.
It isn’t the engineers themselves who show up at the winery, of course, it’s the newly updated platform and dashboard they’ve built that’s the winery’s “mission control” for monitoring all critical social media interaction. It’s an attractive and very user-friendly interface that folds together seamlessly the various streams of social dialogue.
That interface delivers conversations to the winery,about the winery, and with the winery. The kicker is that they do it with context from all social media channels, which enables the winery to understand who they’re serving, what they’re like, and where they are. It all adds up to the winery being in the best position to listen, respond and engage with current and potential customers.
What Else: Vintank also offers e-commerce, prospecting, and geo-fencing capabilities as well.
Wine Industry Technology Symposium
Big data. Security. Mobile. E-commerce. Supply chain innovation. These concerns form the structural backbone of the business end of winery operations. Yet, between rapidly-changing information technology and digital marketing that can often feel like shooting at a moving target, it’s hard to stay on top of the most recent developments.
Unless you attend the Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS) in Napa on June 30 and July 1. Co-chairs Smoke Wallin and Lesley Berglund have produced WITS since 2005, and their line up of speakers and panels reads like a list of bullet points on winery executives’ to-do list.
What Else: This year, content specific to the newly-formed Beer Industry Technology Symposium will be integrated into several sessions at WITS.
