Good Grape Wine Company

March 1 2007

Sommelier:  Journalist, Marketer and Storyteller

I have curiously been watching technology infiltrate the world of consumer wine—the winepod, the enomatic and now a digital sommelier called Vinio.

Back in the late 90’s (it sounds better than saying a decade ago) I worked for an international technology book publisher that was making the transition from being just a book publisher to being a “content provider”—looking at intellectual property not just in bound form, but also on the internet, in computer-based training, etc. 

I still remember fondly when the General Manager for the business, a guy that got to his point in a hurry, pointedly remarked, “What is all of this content talk?  We publish books.” Uh huh went the nodding glances before everybody went back to their desks. 

I went back to my desk and licensed content to third parties for their use and got a nice royalty stream for the organization for doing so--tens of thousands of dollars for doing so … I didn’t see much of that “free money” make its way into my wallet, which is kind of why I left, now that I reflect on it. 

At any rate, a couple of the companies that I did deals with included Softbook and eBook—two early pioneers in the digital book reader market.  We were a computer book publisher so the notion was that having an archive of say, SQL server, information in a digital format would be handy for techies and the like. 

I don’t think either of their businesses ever got off the ground and you can still hunt down a quote from me in a Wired magazine article online from days gone by.

So, it’s with some interest that I noticed a Hewlett-Packard ad featuring an HP business partner that has an electronic device, similar to an eBook, but this time geared towards restaurants and the wine list.  A digital sommelier of sorts.

Let me say briefly, as an aside, that after leaving the computer book publisher, I spent the next seven years in and around the IBM channel working with or for IBM business partners.  So, when I see major technology advertising featuring partners, I know most of the back story of how these marketing things get accomplished and what their relative value is.  Most of them start with “lipstick” and end with “pig,” by the way.  And, most of these channel marketing campaigns are designed to foster goodwill in advance of IBM, or in this case, HP, laying the wood to you at a big channel tradeshow in Las Vegas and ask you how your numbers are going to be this quarter. 

But, the Vinio, featured in a very well done online vignette found at this HP site, seems different.  It seems like it might have a useful application.

The gist of the Vinio is it is a tablet pc—the kind that lays flat and you can use a stylus to write notes, or click the touch screen.

It is designed to be a digital wine list.  So, you’re in a fine dining restaurant and instead of having the 7 lb leather bound wine list presented to you for an exhaustive review of wines that jog absolutely no recall before you select the one California wine that rings a bell, you could now review the same list with CONTEXT. 

Yes, Context.  Because the Vinio is interactive and lets you pick wines by region, varietal, producer, or really any combination, you get context and information for your decision-making.  To me, this is an elegant combination of technology and function.  Certainly, because restaurants spend tremendous amount of time on building reputable wine lists, having the opportunity to learn about a small producer and using that as a decision-making tool and as conversation fodder is a really cool thing.

From the site promo, found here:

Using the sleek, 4.6-pound wireless tablet, restaurant goers can select wines by such criteria as varietal, vintage, country of origin, price and even other diners’ recommendations.  Now marrying menu selections with wines is as simple as a few taps on the touch screen.

Now, restaurateurs are some of the sharpest guys around because they’re managing businesses with razor thin margins, so investing in technology for technology sake isn’t a likely circumstance.  The Vinio also does automatic inventory depletions, and a bunch of other “make life easy” kinds of things. 

Very, very interesting.  Andrew Bradbury, the principal for Vinio in the featurette indicates that they are taking the sommelier job to the next level and using technology to marry the aspects of the job that are parts journalist, marketer and storyteller. 

I like that.

Check out the online featurette and their web site and leave a comment here.  Is this cool?  Is it technology for technology sake?  Or is it just merely interesting with potential. 

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