Technology and your taste buds: Vinely takes guesswork out of buying wine

If you're not a wine connoisseur, choosing a wine from a wall of bottles can mean spending a lot of money and getting something you don't like. Cambridge, Mass.-based Vinely says it has the solution: technology.

Vinely's proprietary software, developed by Vinely owner Bill Wittenberg and MIT scientist/Redstar Ventures owner Joe Chung, gives people a fun way to find wines that suit their taste buds using feedback they provide at a Vinely wine tasting party.

At the party, guests do a blind taste test of six wines. They record their reactions to tartness, sweetness, texture, tingle, and other aspects using a five-point scale. A Vinely "pro" enters the information into the software to get each guest's personalized "wine personality": Easy Going, Whimsical, Exuberant, Moxie, Sensational, or Serendipitous.

"People have been astonished with how well we actually know their wine tastes," says Elizabeth Goede, VP of marketing. "The first step is to get your wine personality. Your next step is to place an order for six or 12 different wines, which come with a rating card and the five-point scale, to help you refine your tastes."

The parties are private, in-home or office gatherings. The cost to host a party ranges from $75 for 12 people to taste wines of $10 to $15 per bottle, up to $120 for wines ranging from $30 to $60 per bottle. A Vinely pro attends each party to guide the wine tasting and handle the feedback and results.

Although Vinely was developed in Massachusetts, the company chose to launch its startup phase in West Michigan with a soft launch in April and an official launch at MoDiv earlier this week. Vinely has 10 employees locally and a storage/shipping facility for the wines in Cascade, Goede says.

For more information or to book a party, visit Vinely's website here, or call 888-294-1128.

Source: Elizabeth Goede, Vinely; Kim Bode, 834 Design & Marketing
Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor