Snooth Gets Funding (And A New Fan)

I’ve spent the last couple of days playing around with Snooth, a collaborative recommendation engine for wine lovers. Well, founder Philip James calls is an “online wine retail website” in this Guardian blog…but I’m not sure I that really describes what they’re doing right now (maybe more what they’ll accomplish in the future?) Regardless, and more to the point of the article, congrats to Mr. James and his team on the $1.2 mil in funding.

Now on to the site itself.

It’s not that I don’t like the website. Actually, I’m quite fond of it so far. Yeah, it told me that if I completed five reviews I would get some recommendations…then told me that because they don’t know enough about the wines I reviewed. Fair enough – I was delighted to add my two cents on bottles previously missing from the site. Oh, and the pop up that indicates there’s a way to shop for wine on their site? Useful the first time, but annoying each time (three times as a matter of fact) that it happened again. Despite carefully clicking on “Got It!” to indicate I received the message.

Okay, there are some kinks, to be sure. But this is a great concept and a fun brand I’m ready to get behind. Now, one thing to note…this early on in, this recommendation model can get wonky. Like, when I look at the review for Copper Creek Vineyards Cat’s Pee On A Gooseberry Bush Sauvignon Blanc and notice the on the side South Hill Sauvignon Blanc is recommended as similar (and almost 5x the price!). But when I go to the South Hill entry, only wines that are similar and also on the pricey side are recommended. Strange.

I also love that they have Twitter integration…BUT it’s not as enticing or seamless for me as the way Winetweets (which I’ve mentioned before) is set up.

The interview with Mr. James is good, and I really hope they can iterate quickly in order to keep Snooth fresh, fun and worth writing reviews for. They’ve got a really intuitive system for using the site, but lots more they can do to keep things moving and give me more reason to love theirs site.