Think of it as a sommelier in your pocket. The Santa Clara based startup BottleVin is doing everything it can to make drinking wine more enjoyable for everyone.
“Even for someone without any information about wine and how to taste it, it gives them that ability to at least enjoy the wine and talk about it,” said BottleVin Cofounder and CEO Paul Salcedo.
BottleVin is an app years in the making but it’s only been on the market for about a year.
“We’ve essentially created a bottle of wine that’s just a bottle and now made it smart enough to talk to the internet,” said Salcedo.
When you scan the label or QR code on a bottle of wine in the BottleVin library, you’re immediately connected with details about the vineyard, its history and information about the wine you’re drinking.
“What the consumer gets is stuff that you won’t see in any other app out there. If you’re a crazy wine connoisseur you get the region it was produced in, you get the year, you get the drinking window,” said Salcedo. “You do get videos and images with some wines. Real time videos. You get pairings, recipes. Information on accolades.
“If you’re actually in the tasting room, you can use the app to follow along in the tasting that you have,” Salcedo continued. “You can click on [a wine]…and then start adding notes and photos to that to remind you what you tasted.”
Salcedo is a Napa Valley native. He met his Cofounder, Jason Driver, in Napa in 1994, but the two didn’t get together on this project until 2017. Before then, Salcedo found his way to the South Bay, where he worked in the tech industry for almost two decades.
“I always knew there was going to be a combo of tech and wine in my future somewhere,” said Salcedo with a laugh.
For Salcedo, BottleVin is something that addresses the future of the wine industry.
“The wine industry itself is going through a transition,” said Salcedo. “If you look at 5 to 10 years from now, within 5 years you’re going to get the millennials and in 10 years you’re going to get the iGen generation. Those two generations themselves it’s just expected that they can get data instantly. They’re on their phone, I can call a car, I can call delivery for food, I can do all that stuff.”
BottleVin’s database currently consists of more than 200,000 bottles of wine. It has three winery partners: Bricoleur Vineyards in Windsor, CA, Reynolds Family Winery in Napa and Balboa Winery in Walla Walla, WA.
You can find BottleVin online at www.BottleVin.com.