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Cheers to the Future: Five Cool Beverage Startups at CES’ Eureka Park

Sure, the towering installations, self-driving cars, and elaborate smart home setups at CES are fun to see. But my favorite part of the show is wandering through Eureka Park, the gigantic open room filled with over 1,200 startups all hoping to make a name for themselves. Meandering up and down the aisles of this room is one of the best ways to discover companies that are hidden gems.

Interestingly, some of this year’s coolest startups involved beverages. From coffee alarm clocks to wine sensors, here are five that caught my eye amid the chaos of Eureka Park.

Capsulier
Making your morning espresso with a coffee pod is super convenient, but those plastic pods are a blight on the environment (unless you mail them back to Nespresso), not to mention, expensive. Atom Xquare Limited’s Capsulier device is out to free you from the pod with their countertop machine which lets you make your own custom coffee pods for Nespresso machines. Just put a scoopful ground coffee (or loose-leaf tea) in the top of the device, pop in the reusable stainless steel pod, and pull the lever to pack your own pod. You can use it in your Nespresso machine, then wash it out and then reuse.

There are already refillable Nespresso capsules on the market, but Capsulier promises to precisely measure and pack your coffee so there’s no mess or guestimating. As of now the Capsulier only makes pods that fit into Nespresso machines, so if you use a Keurig you’re out of luck. The device retails for $99 on Atom Xquare Limited’s website, and you can purchase additional pods for $36 each.

 

TeaRado
TeaRado Tech‘s smart, self-heating tea tumbler can brew up to two cups of tea on the go. To make the tea, fill the interior basket with loose leaf tea, pour room temperature water into the tumbler, and set the brew time and water temperature on the TeaRado app. In 12 to 15 minutes, the water will heat up to 170 °F and brew the tea via an automated French Press-like movement. You can either brew by setting the tumbler on a charging pod and plugging it into the wall, or attaching it to a battery pack to brew on the go.

TeaRado’s brewer will retail for $150, and users can also purchase tea through the connected app. TeaRado will launch on Kickstarter on April 15 and is expected to ship in December of this year.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

MyOeno Scan
Unless you’re a sommelier, figuring out the composition of wines — and which types you like — can be a daunting challenge. MyOeno Scan has a small device (roughly 4 inches long) which, when inserted into a glass of wine, will display a breakdown of its levels of tannins, acidity, and strength on the MyOeno app. Afterwards, you drink and rate the wine, so the app learns what type you like. Once you’ve established your taste profile, you can search for compatible wines on the MyOeno app and see where they’re available to purchase.

The device retails for €89 ($102 USD) and is available on the MyOeno website and through Amazon. Fun fact: MyOeno can also be used in milk to detect if it contains any water or detergent, a service which the team told me is mostly used in Asia.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

Barisieur
Dragging yourself out of bed in the morning is way easier if coffee is near. U.K. startup Barisieur‘s coffee brewer alarm clock brings the cup of joe to you while you’re still in bed. The night before, fill the drawer on the front of the device with ground coffee (or tea), then set your alarm and indicate whether you want your coffee to start brewing before, during, or after your alarm sounds. It takes 2 to 3 minutes for the water to boil, and a few more for the coffee to brew. There’s even a small chilled compartment where you can keep a wee container of milk or half-n-half.

Barisieur retails for $445 (zoinks!), and is available online and in several large department stores in the U.K. and U.S.

 

DrinkShift
No one likes running out of beer. And while keeping track of your bottle count isn’t exactly rocket science, the new smart beer fridge from Tokyo-based DrinkShift manages your stock for you. The fridge’s server monitors your drinking pace and uses an algorithm to figure out when to re-order more brewskies so you never run out. You can customize beer packages to indicate which ones you want, and they’re delivered to your door via a third party retailer.

DrinkShift debuted their fridge this April; it was immediately bought by Panasonic. It’s not on the market yet, and also doesn’t yet have a retail price — but one of the booth workers told me it will first roll out in Japan.

Eureka Park is huge and I am but one person — did I miss any cool, under-the-radar startups? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

MyWah to Debut Connected Wine Dispenser for Businesses at CES

With CES just days away, I’m in a mad dash to finalize which companies I’m meeting with (feel free to pitch me!), what products I want to see, and exactly how much I’ll be walking around Las Vegas. One company that just popped up on my radar is MyWah, which will be debuting Edgar, the connected “Wine Butler” (h/t Gadget).

Edgar is a WiFi-enabled countertop appliance about the size of a mini-fridge that can precisely dispense three different types of wine, each at their proper temperature (so whites are cooler than reds, etc.). Instead of bottles, the Edgar system ships RFID-tagged bags o’ wine that tell the machine what type of wine is being loaded in, provide sourcing information about that wine, and have the added bonuses of being easier to ship and supposedly reducing wine oxidation.

There’s no pricing information on the MyWah page for either the device or the bags of wine, but Edgar isn’t for consumers. Instead, the company is targeting restaurants, hotels, caterers, etc. MyWah wants Edgar to revolutionize “the service of wine by the glass.” To that end, Edgar’s system also provides information for owners such as consumption data, invoice management and inventory management.

MYWAH presents Edgar, a smart device

A lot of questions remain about Edgar. In addition to the aforementioned lack of pricing, there is also no info on their site about whether any kind of SaaS subscription is required, and the wine page just says they are preparing a “beautiful wine list.” So who knows if they are crafting their own, white labeling or working with recognized names.

With those caveats in mind, Edgar appears to be at the nexus of a few trends in hospitality right now. First, it automates the process of wine dispensing to maximize profitability (so long, overpours!). It also provides real time data so owners can see exactly what is selling and when. Finally, using proprietary bags not only gives MyWah a source of recurring revenue, but also an easier way to ship liquid. Bags are also being used to make shipping olive oil easier and homebrewing less complicated. I imagine we’ll see more innovation in such packaging this year as well.

Perhaps I’ll save seeing Edgar in action for the end of my time at CES — by then I’ll definitely need a glass of wine.

Trendwatch: Flat is the New Black for Bottles

One of IKEA’s more genius moves was to break down their products so they could fit into flat boxes. These flat boxes made stacking, shipping and delivering odd-shaped Malm-style dressers and such easier and cost-effective. In much the same way, we are starting to see the containers for your favorite liquids get flattened to facilitate easier shipping and delivery.

Case (pardon the pun) in point: Food and Wine reports Garçon Wines’ Flat Wine Bottle, which was just listed as a Diamond Finalist in 2018 30th Awards for Packaging Innovation put on by Dow Chemical Company. (You know, like the Oscars, but without all the glitz.)

The Garçon flat wine bottle is pretty much what it’s name suggests: a squished wine bottle made from recycled plastic that is narrow enough to fit through the standard U.K. (where the company is located) mail slot. The company says it is made from 100 percent recycled, food-safe PET plastic. The plastic also makes the bottle lighter to ship and helps it withstand tumbles in transit as well as the drop from the mail slot to the floor.

Garçon is actually a B2B company, and has protected the intellectual property behind its bottle design. According to its website, Garçon is actively seeking out relationships with various wineries and “with those working at every stage of the drinks supply chain,” according to its website.

Garçon seems to be hitting the market at just the right time. Beverage Daily writes that by one estimate, 34 percent of beer drinkers in the U.K. buy booze online. Here in the U.S., DRINKS said that it shipped 10 million bottles of wine in the U.S. in 2017, and has 500,000 active households as customers.

Garçon is thinking bigger and partnering up with bottling facilities to expand beyond wine. Other companies are taking this flat approach as well. As we wrote about last month, Olivery’s smart olive oil bottle/system uses flat, plastic pouches that can fit through a mail slot to get you your olive oil refills.

Better packaging for shelf-stable beverage and liquid delivery will beget more types of bottled products that can be ordered online, which will beget even more types of packaging modified for easier/cheaper transport. And unlike IKEA, when the flat bottle of wine arrives, you don’t have to assemble it.

DRINKS Gulps Up $15M to Boost its Boozy B2B Biz

DRINKS, an online platform that powers direct-to-consumer wine sales for brands like Martha Stewart Wine Co. and Wine Insiders, today announced it has raised a $15 million Series B round of funding led by Beverly Pacific. This bring the total amount raised by DRINKS to $25 million

According to the press announcement, DRINKS will use the new funds to scale its “ship-to-home platform that enables online and brick-and-mortar retailers to market wine directly to consumers in up to 41 states.”

The DRINKS platform lets digital merchants as well as brick and mortar stores start selling their own wine portfolios directly to consumers. The company says it facilitates curating wines for its clients, state-level compliance, as well as delivery.

While the funding is a nice way for DRINKS to bolster its coffers, it also reinforces the trend of investors paying attention to logistics and fulfillment of food and beverage. The DRINKS raise comes less than a month after Boxed raised $110 million in part for its end-to-end bulk grocery fulfillment technology, which the company can license to other retailers in the U.S..

Of course, DRINKS faces plenty of competition when it comes to delivery of boozy libations to your front door. Saucey, Drizly and Minibar also connect online customers with retail stores to facilitate home delivery of alcohol. DRINKS’s more B2B white label approach, however, seems to set it apart. And unlike other wine sellers online, DRINKS focuses on straight purchases, not subscriptions.

Based in Los Angeles, DRINKS was founded in 2013 and the company says it delivered more than 10 million bottles of wine in 2017, has delivered to 1 million households since its founding and has 500,000 active households. With today’s news, the people at DRINKS were probably raising a few glasses to celebrate.

Podcast: The AI Powered Sommelier With Amy Gross

A decade ago, Amy Gross was enjoying a glass of wine with her husband when she noticed how the same wine tasted different to different people. From there she began to think about how technology could be used to make personalized wine recommendations, and it wasn’t long before IBM and others wanted to learn more about her tech-powered wine recommendation platform, VineSleuth.

In this podcast, Mike and Amy talk about mapping the flavors of wine using technology, how AI could start to provide really contextual and personalized recommendations for wine, and much more.

You can listen to the podcast below, download it here or subscribe in Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast player.

You can also see Amy Gross talk about the power of AI, data and more at Smart Kitchen Summit in less than two months. Get your tickets today with 25% discount code PODCAST.

Six Intriguing Startups Pitching at FoodBytes! London

FoodBytes! recently announced the 20 emerging startups pitching at their London future of food and agriculture event on September 13th. We’re big fans of events that give new, innovative companies a chance to show off what they’re working — in fact, the Startup Showcase is one of the most popular parts of our upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit.

Until then (the next event is October 8-9th, if you’re interested!), here are a few startups pitching at FoodBytes! London that caught our eye:

 

Mimica
This U.K. startup has developed gelatine labels that turn “bumpy” to indicate when fresh food is past its prime. Called “Mimica Touch,” the label is meant to reduce food waste and lead to large-scale behavior change for both consumers and retailers, who as of now have been constrained by overly-cautious expiration dates. When we last reported on Mimica in March, they were piloting their technology with Danish dairy giant Arla Foods and expect to take it mainstream soon.

 

TIPA
Also in the smart packaging space is TIPA. The Israeli company makes bags which look and act like regular plastic, but are fully compostable. Flexible plastic, used as packaging for everything from produce to coffee beans, is traditionally very difficult to recycle because it’s a blend of several materials. However, TIPA has developed a material that is transparent, flexible, and durable, but will break down into compost in 6 months.

 

Photo: Garcon Wines.

Garçon Wines
Sometimes companies make head-slappingly simple innovations that make you wonder why no one ever that of that before. Garçon Wines has done just that: They make full-size flat wine bottles that can fit through your letterbox, so you don’t have to wait at home for your delivery or chase it down at the local Post Office. Their bottles are also made of 100% recycled plastic (no breakage!) and made in the U.K.

 

Photo: Wikimedia

Easilys
French startup Easilys is working to optimizing back of house management for restaurants and reduce food waste. Their purchasing software helps organize ingredient suppliers, store (and calculate the cost of) each recipe, and track food waste, among other services. Altogether, the company claims their software will save restaurants 15% on food costs. Imagine if U.K. restaurant food waste startup Winnow and restaurant software company Ingest.ai had a baby — that would be Easilys.

Connecterra
This Amsterdam-based startup has created an artificial intelligence platform to help dairy farmers manage their cows. Dubbed ‘Ida,’ it learns cows’ behavioral patterns to improve animal welfare, increase dairy farm productivity, and generally make dairy farmers’ lives a lot simpler. You can actually check out a chat we had with their CEO on our food robot podcast, The Spoon: Automat.

 

Photo: Provenance

Provenance
If you’ve ever been around a millennial (or if you are one — hi!) you’ve probably heard the question: “Is it local?” Provenance and sourcing are growing trends in the food world; people are starting to care more about where their food comes from. Which is why the aptly-named U.K. company Provenance has come around at such an opportune time.

Their platform partners with suppliers to gather and verify origin stories for their products and display this information online. They’re also one of several companies experimenting with blockchain to increase supply chain transparency; FoodLogiQ, Ripe.io, and even Nestlé and Alibaba are playing with the emerging technology to tackle food fraud, track product recalls, and increase traceability.

There are plenty more startups presenting at FoodBytes!, and you can see the full lineup here.

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The Startup Showcase applications for Smart Kitchen Summit close today! Keep an eye out over the next few weeks to see which groundbreaking young companies will pitch at SKS in Seattle this October.

Syphon Kickstarts Its Argon-Injecting Wine Preserver

Sometimes at the end of a long day, you want a nice glass of red wine to relax. The trouble is, once you uncork that Cabernet, you’re suddenly in a race against time before it goes bad. Drinking half (or all) of a bottle isn’t the best idea, and sometimes even after just a day the remaining wine has already gone bad.

Enter the Syphon, which launched its Kickstarter campaign today. It’s a bottle top device that uses argon to make your wine last longer.

Wine reacts with oxygen, which affects its taste. Argon, meanwhile, is an inert gas already used by winemakers for preservation in the bottling process. After removing the cork, you plug the Syphon spout into the bottle. When you squeeze the lever, the Syphon injects Argon into the bottle at the same time it releases the wine. Adding argon keeps oxygen out, and the lack of oxygen in turn keeps the wine fresher for longer. According to Syphon creator, Daniel Fukuba, using the device will make your bottle of wine last up to 30 days.

Fukuba hopes to hit a sweet spot in the wine preserving market, between higher-end products like the Coravin, which starts at $200 and uses a needle to pierce the cork and inject argon gas into a bottle, and the lower-end pumps and sprays that Fukuba says don’t really do much.

Right now, Kickstarter backers can pick up a Syphon and two argon capsules for $119. The product is expected to ship in April 2019. The campaign is looking to raise $350,000, and if funded, the Syphon will retail for $149. Replacement argon capsules, which last for fifteen glasses, will cost $5.99.

With wine consumption in the U.S. hitting 949 million gallons in the U.S. in 2016 (up from 705 million in 2006), there is certainly a big, addressable market to make those gallons last longer. And with millennials drinking almost half the wine in the U.S., that market isn’t going away anytime soon.

Syphon is a passion project for Fukuba, who has a background in engineering and robotics. Reaching his lofty funding goal will probably be a stressful time for him. Thankfully he can relax with a bottle of red that will last him all month.

Kuvée, Maker of Connected Wine Dispensers, Is Shutting Down

Kuvée, a maker of connected wine dispensers, is shutting down.

In an email sent to customers today, Kuvée CEO Vijay Manwani said the company, which had raised nearly $10 million in funding, would need to raise significantly more in order to educate the market and have a “louder voice”. Because of this, the company would be closing effective immediately.

For those not familiar with the Kuvée products, the company makes smart wine dispensers that extend the life of a bottle anywhere from 30-60 days. The company’s wine preservation technology utilizes a proprietary bottle system and they monetize through wine subscriptions send new wine bottles to a customer’s home each month.

From the email:

Thank you for being our companion in our journey to redefine the wine experience. Wine is meant to be enjoyed by the glass (not by the bottle) and four years ago, we built Kuvée and a great portfolio of wines to deliver just that experience.

Building a better wine bottle, the Kuvée FreshPour bottle, that keeps wine from spoiling for 30 to 60 days, was no easy task. It took an enormous amount of innovation, sensory testing and collaboration with open-minded and forward looking winery partners to make that a reality. Combined with our Kuvée Connect dispenser and the Kuvee.com website, we delivered a wine experience that freed you, our customers, to enjoy wine on your terms – what you want, when you want them.

We achieved all of this with an amazing team of 20 passionate and highly skilled professionals, all driven by the common goal to deliver this better wine experience.

However, it became clear that, to properly educate the market, we would need a much louder voice and considerably more capital. The last year’s Napa fires, affected our ability to scale our customer base over the holiday season and hence our ability to raise the funds required to continue building awareness of Kuvée.

Therefore, it is with great sadness and a heavy heart we are announcing that all Kuvée business operations will cease effective today.

Manwani went on to say the company is looking for a buyer for the (patented) technology and will be fire-selling the rest of their wine inventory over the next week.

While the story of Kuvée might make you a bit skeptical about wine tech, other companies like Coravin and Plum are doing quite well with new-fangled dispensing systems. Coravin, which has raised over $60 million in funding, has become immensely popular among wine enthusiasts for its argon-based preservation system that lets you dispense wine without pulling the cork.  The Plum wine dispensing appliance also uses argon and has been growing popularity as well.

I also suspect Kuvée suffered from what is often a fatal mistake among young startups: trying to hold customers captive within in a product “walled garden” that limits choice rather than adapting to consumer buying behavior. Unlike Coravin which allows the wine drinker to connect to any bottle of wine, Kuvée essentially required the customer to buy wine bottled in their proprietary bottles. While the company had some decent wine partners to choose from as part of their subscription program, my guess is customers just don’t buy wine that way and weren’t willing to limit their choices.

Kuvée also targeted the consumer market almost exclusively, while Coravin has been able to tap into the restaurant and pro-market where preserving expensive bottles of wine is a real problem.

Aveine is a Smart Aerator that Fits on a Wine Bottle

If you’ve seen the movie Sideways, the thing you probably remember most is Paul Giamatti proclaiming “I am NOT drinking any f–king Merlot!” Perhaps Paul wouldn’t have been so angry if he had Aveine, a smart aerator, to let his wine breathe properly.

Coming soon from France, Aveine is a bottle-top device that removes the need for decanting by injecting tiny bubbles into your wine to aerate it as your pour.

According to Wine Spectator, “Exposing wine to air does two things: it triggers oxidation and evaporation… Wine is made up of hundreds of compounds, and with aeration, usually the volatile undesirable compounds will evaporate faster than the desirable, aromatic and flavorful ones.” So it’s not snobbery, it’s science.

But according to Aveine co-founder, Matthieu Robert, not all aeration is created equal. Depending on the type and age of the wine, too much or too little aeration can have a negative impact on a wine’s taste. This is where Aveine claims its technology can help.

There are two parts to Aveine. First is a mobile app, which you use to scan the label of your wine. The app talks with the aerator, which affixes to the top of your wine bottle. Based on the vintage and varietal information scanned with the app, the aerator automatically aerates wine as you pour it. The bubbles it shoots in create more surface area for the wine to interact with. The result, Robert told me, will make your wine “rounder and have more taste in your mouth,” as opposed to drinking it straight out of the bottle.

Right now, Aveine has just 10,000 bottles of wine in its catalogue, which is a pretty small number considering how much wine is produced around the world. As more people use the product, the company will use that data in its machine learning algorithms as well as expert help from sommeliers to update and expand its library.

Aveine will be available for pre-order on Indiegogo on March 28th. Early backers can pick up the Aveine for $100, though it will eventually cost $200. Robert said that the first batch of Aveine’s will be delivered this September.

Based in Paris, France, Aveine was founded in July 2016. It has raised a million euros in seed funding and currently has fifteen employees. After Aveine completes its Indiegogo campaign it will use that market data (where were people buying from, how many did they buy, etc.), to help determine its next fundraising strategy.

For those hoping Aveine is some type of philosopher’s stone, Robert warned me “Aveine won’t change crappy wine into good wine.” But maybe it will mellow out the obnoxious oenophile in your life.

Wine-Searcher Builds Casey The Chatbot To Reach ‘Everyday Wine Drinker’

Since the time Wine-Searcher was founded by London wine merchant Martin Brown in the late nineties, the site has become one of the Internet’s go-to destinations to discover new wine. Over the past 18 years, the wine search engine has made a name for itself by pairing an extensive database of wines with the opinions of renowned wine experts like Jancis Robinson to help thirsty users find their next great bottle.

But if you just need to pick up a bottle for dinner tonight at the local wine shop or grocery store, you may not have time to sift through the millions of listings (about 9 million at last count) on the Wine-Searcher website or on their mobile app to find one. But that’s probably ok with Wine-Searcher, since nowadays they might just suggest you ask Casey.

Meet Casey The Chatbot

Casey is Wine-Searcher’s new wine chatbot. The bot, currently available in beta on the Wine-Searcher website or through Facebook Messenger, is a big strategic initiative for the company who sees Casey as a way to expand their addressable market.

“For us, (Casey) is moving us into the everyday wine drinker market beyond the wine expert,” said company spokesperson Suzanne Kendrick in a phone interview with The Spoon.

Kendrick explained the typical Wine-Searcher user ranges from wine enthusiasts who know enough to discern they “like New Zealand Pinot” all the way up to wine experts. However, the company feels there is a large swath of wine drinkers who just want a good bottle of wine and don’t have time to learn the difference between New Zealand and California Pinot.

Those drinkers just “want a recommendation, want a great wine at a great price, and they want to get it now and not wait for it to ship next week,” said Kendrick.

It’s for this consumer – the ‘everyday wine drinker’ – that Wine-Searcher built Casey.

Minimal Viable Product

The company has been working on Casey for about a year and has eight people working on the project according to Kendrick. To help them build the bot, the team has been working closely with Microsoft. That’s because the framework powering the bot’s ability to carry on a natural language conversation is Microsoft’s LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) platform.

According to Kendrick, the Casey is getting better and better and having conversations about wine, but she says the chatbot is still in the “minimal viable product” phase of development. While Casey is good at wine recommendations, it’s still learning to how to make food recommendations.

Casey, Wine-Searcher’s chatbot

I gave Casey a whirl, and it worked better on the Wine-Searcher website than in Messenger, where the bot told me the server was unavailable after I asked it for a $75 bottle recommendation to go with a hypothetical meal of fried chicken. On the company site, Casey asked me my wine preference (red, white, etc.) and price range and was able to recommend a bottle. When I chose a bottle of wine, it handed me off to Total Wine & More’s website for me to choose in-store or delivery.

This last part is important because Wine-Searcher makes much of its revenue through its relationships with large wine retailers like Total Wine & More. Other wine destination sites like the fast-growing Vivino, which just nabbed $25 million in funding, are taking more of a one-stop shop approach for wine buying by serving up recommendations and handing the commerce and delivery as well (it also looks like Vivino is working on its own effort to take its wine scanner capability from the app and put it into bot form).

For its part, Wine-Searcher is happy to stay out of fulfillment and shipping and just be the Internet’s wine experts helping the widest possible audience. With its chatbot, which the company is just starting to talk about, they hope to expand their audience and help take the company into its next two decades.

One-Stop Shop Wine App Vivino Snags $20M in Funding

It’s a good day for wine lovers (and wannabe lovers) everywhere. Vivino, the world’s most downloaded wine app and largest online wine marketplace, just raised $20 million in series C funding.

The latest funding round was led by SCP Neptune International, the investment arm of former Moet Hennessy CEO and Chairman of VinExpo Christophe Navarre. This comes about two years after Vivino’s series B funding round which raised $25 million, also led by SCP Neptune International. Put ’em together and that puts Vivino’s total aggregated funding at $56.3 million.

Vivino plans to use the new investment capital to expand its wine marketplace and add key team members. They’re aiming to reach $1 billion in wine sales by 2020 and have plans to expand into Hong Kong

The Denmark-based company launched in 2010 with the goal of easing consumer’s wine purchasing experiences. After downloading the app, users can take a photo of their wine label and proprietary image recognition technology will promptly deliver pricing, ratings, and provide them with an option to purchase. And, with an annual subscription of $47, users can get their curated wine selections delivered to their door at no added cost.

According to Vivino, since its series B funding round closed, their user base has skyrocketed from 13 million to almost 29 million. They haven’t cornered the wine delivery market yet, though: companies like Winc, Blue Apron Wine, and retail behemoth Amazon also offer vino delivery.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this announcement is what it could mean for the specialty foods purchasing experience in general. Vivino brands themselves as “an online wine community, database and mobile application” aimed at easing the user’s wine-buying experience. Which, let’s face it, can be pretty confusing and inconvenient: Do you prefer Bordeaux or Zinfandel? What’s a good bottle to go with fish? And once you’ve found a grape you want to try, you’ve got to track it down and find the best price. (Delectable is an app that offers wine label scanning, recommendations, and pairings, but you have to download a companion app for delivery.)

We’ve already written about direct-to-consumer wine delivery and Ai-powered sommeliers, but the interesting thing about Vivino’s is its abililty to combine these into one neat app. They provide a trusted review platform, suggesting new bottles for their users, then deliver them to their door, creating a seamless purchasing experience across multiple channels. Plus it would really come in handy for those times your party ran out of rosé but you don’t want to go to the store to get more.

Vivino’s move to combine mobile commerce and an online marketplace with their personalized wine recommendation system is an exciting example of vertical integration in the grocery-delivery sphere. It’s a model that I could see expanding into other specialty consumable goods, such as artisan coffee or even marijuana; areas where delivery apps may already exist but not with such a heavy emphasis on customer guidance and handholding.

I could also envision a future where Vivino (or similar apps) link up with food delivery services like UberEats, delivering you a bottle of wine paired perfectly with your tofu pad thai. I’d be hyped to try this combo, just as long as it doesn’t involve my wine nemesis: Pinot Noir.

You can hear about Vivino in our daily spoon podcast.  You can also subscribe in Apple podcasts or through our Amazon Alexa skill. 

Côtes du Robot, Historic French Vineyard Goes High-Tech

We often think of winemaking as an art. A mysterious dark art that only a few have mastered. But the truth of it is, winemaking is farming, and robots are becoming an increasingly important part of any farm — even for historic French vineyards dating back hundreds of years.

Decanteur magazine has a story up about “TED,” a new robot from Näio Technologies, being used by Château Clerc Milon to help tend its high density vineyard. As you can see from the video, TED is an arch-shaped autonomous vehicle, that runs up and down the rows of grapes cultivating the soil and tending to weeds.

The TED trial took place earlier this year, and a spokesperson for the winery told Decanteur that robots are good for arduous, repetitive tasks (something we’ve heard before) involved with agriculture, and there is an added environmental benefit with the reduction in fossil fuel usage. The winery says, however, that humans are still needed for the selecting and picking of grapes.

As The Spoon founder, Mike Wolf, pointed out in our podcast earlier this week, farms are the perfect place for robots like TED. They feature wide open spaces, defined geometric areas (straight rows!) and a lack of people to run into or around.

This automated approach may be new for a hallowed French winery, but robots have been steadily taking on more complex wine related tasks such as yield monitoring, vine pruning, and grape sorting. And with the advances in image recognition, AI and spectrometry, robots will only get better at the more nuanced necessities of wine making and play an even bigger part of what goes in your bottle.

Hopefully, hundreds of years from now, we can figure out a way co-exist with robots so us humans have more time to enjoy their wine.

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