Tech Startups and Wine Industry

If the thrust don’t come from inside it will come from outside, and the outside are all those tech startups with a solution for wine industry.

It can be a new way to do DTC, or an app to locate the closer winery, a bottle tracking platform or a Unmanned Drived Tractor working in the vineyard. It doesn’t matter. But if wine growers don’t look at the future, it will be the future to drive the wine growers destiny. Read my post about wine industry and technology.

The Online Wine Club

Selling wine online isn’t easy: wine lover would talk with an expert, the wine seller for example, explaining him or her all the character of that bottle. So, a wine e-commerce can use the preferences of its customer to offer, ever, the best wine, with a review system, comments from other customers, labels from little wineries. Like Yelp for wine.

Startups like Naked Wine, Tasting Room, Winc or Drync are doing so, but ther’s a problem, a legal problem. In USA ther’s a complicate system of law to sell wine across a state line, and this slow down the process of innovation. The same happens in Europe. Large vineries use distributors, but the little ones have to sell their wine to restaurant, local wine shops, some traveler crossing their cellar door.

A wine club has a double mission

First, to develop the technology, reach the largest number of customers, find new business models; second, making easier the process from purchase to pour.

New app and online platforms are putting more and more wine on the table, helping little wine growers and, above all, transforming a wine lover in a sommelier, or just in an advanced wine lover. And this makes them happy.

Wine club have the task to modify the wine three tier system, this is the more difficult challenge.

Originally published at thedigitalwine.com on February 26, 2019.