Snooth
Just two days ago I was enjoying a deliciously refreshing Chardonnay at my organization’s one year anniversary party. I think it’d go great with the dinner I am planning tonight but I’ve already forgotten the name on the bottle, only remembering the region and varietal. As recent as three years ago, I would probably be out of luck. But today, with powerful online databases such as the recently launched Snooth, wine drinkers have a great way to be reunited with a favorite.
Snooth was founded by Philip James in 2006 and finished a successful round of seed funding late last year. Just six months later, a team of in-house and offshore developers put together an splendid site with an equally impressive set of tools, featuring Linux, Apache, PostGreSQL and Perl/PHP. As a techie, the part that I am most interested in is the database population and manipulation techniques. The site adds about 5 new partners (both wineries and stores) per day, which provides it with a large and relevant database. By having partners volunteering information, Snooth avoids potential translation problems and false positives.
I am a huge stickler for ratings and I personally find them to be invaluable when choosing anything from a new bottle of wine to a new restaurant to try out. There are no less than 4 different types of wine ratings and their scales are not the same; some using stars and some using numerical values on different scales. Snooth provides a simple “SnoothRank” value which is calculated using a, wait for it, proprietary algorithm. It takes things like reviews, number of reviews, and how trusted each review is into account and returns a simple value which will help you in your wine purchasing decision.
Snooth prides itself on the size and accuracy of it’s database. It’s constantly being tweaked and filtered. I particularly like the “intelligent” searching algorithm which let you type in things like red good with steak. Next time, before you head to the wine aisle, check Snooth out. Who knows, you might end up with a new favorite.
