Bottoms up! 5 Questions With WineAlign

Like wine? Consider yourself high-tech? You can have your, er, Shiraz and drink it, too, with WineAlign, a tool that helps Ontario wine drinkers make more informed decisions at the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) stores. Here we chat with the WineAlign prez.

It’s been a while since we covered WineAlign on Sync, so we caught up with Bryan McCaw, president of WineAlign, in Toronto, to give us a refresher course about the Web 2.0 service and what’s new, as well.

Sync: Thanks for your time, Bryan. Please remind our readers what WineAlign is all about.

Bryan McCaw: WineAlign is all about helping consumers make better wine purchase decisions. Most consumers play “wine-roulette” where they buy wine based on the label or a hunch.  What we do is take thousands of scores from multiple top critics and WineAlign members and create a ranking of all the wines in stock at your local LCBO.  We can tell you the top scoring Malbecs under $25 in stock at your local LCBO.  WineAlign is also a community where you can share reviews, recommendations and preview wines being released at the LCBO.  

Sync: Can you give me an example of how/where someone might use the mobile app?

McCaw: I can give you three examples. First, you can preview the wines being released on a Saturday and build a shopping list. When you visit the store you can pull up your shopping list and it will contain the items that are in stock at that store. For items that are not in stock you can click a button to find the store closest to you that has your preferred wines available.

Secondly, if you’re having salmon for dinner you may want to find a wine that will complement it. We have a food/wine matcher on the mobile and online versions of WineAlign. Simply enter salmon and it will recommend a Pinot Noir and it will suggest the highest rated Pinot Noir in your price range that is currently in stock at your local store. 

Thirdly, you may be standing in store and wondering what wine you should buy. You can quickly select Chardonnay, pick your price range (i.e.: < $20) and WineAlign will automatically return a ranked list of the top-rated Chardonnay’s that are currently in stock in the store where you are shopping within your price range.

Sync: Cool. Please explain what you’re introducing at the Toronto Wine & Cheese Show and why that’s important?

McCaw: Most consumers tend to enjoy the wines at wine shows rather than take detailed notes as they taste various wines. After the show they generally can’t recall the names of the wines they liked.   So we’ve come up with a very innovative 2d barcode application to solve that problem for the Toronto Wine and Cheese show. Each wine at the show will have a unique 2d barcode associated with it. If you try a wine and like it, you simply snap the 2d barcode with the free scanner software on your smart phone and we will automatically add it to your Wine & Cheese Show Shopping list. After the show you can just click on your Shopping list and find out which wines are in stock at your favourite store. The 2d barcode technology is important for several reasons. The wine agents are interested in having consumers try their new wines and ultimately purchase the ones they enjoy. Consumers are interested in having a way to record the wines they are tasting and enjoying. And thirdly, this is the first time 2d barcodes have been used in such an interactive way at a consumer event. If it works as well as we hope it will, this could become a standard at wine shows going forward. We have been told by ScanLife (2D barcode company) that this is one of the most progressive and innovative applications of their technology to date. 

Sync: Any plans to branch outside of Ontario?

McCaw: Yes. We’ve been focused on Ontario while we build out our functionality and ensure we have a scalable platform. We’re just about complete with the functionality, so now it is time to tackle additional  provinces. 

Sync: Finally, where do you see WineAlign in 5 years? What cool tech can we use to research, buy and chat about wine?

McCaw: Five years from now I see WineAlign as the primary site for Canadians to research and make wine purchase decisions. As we expand nationally and add wines available in other provinces, only from wineries or through wine agents (consignment wines) I see our database becoming the most comprehensive wine resource in Canada. We will continue maintain our objectivity by providing multiple reviews and allowing consumers to influence the way their wine rankings are calculated.   We’ll be able to mine our user information and through collaborative filtering start to recommend wines to users based on their reviews and preferences. I see strong increase in mobile usage as a way to research wine.  As more smart-phones are released with auto-focus cameras, I can see consumers being able to take a photo of the UPC code (traditional bar code on the back of the bottle) and it taking the consumer directly to the wine reviews within WineAlign. People are passionate about wine and many are eager to share their views with others. Wine is a social lubricant and that extends to the online world (a social media lubricant :-) ).  We already have Twitter integration where we post their reviews automatically to their streams (Facebook by month end). I have a vision of consumers sharing what they are drinking in real-time, both with friends and in the aggregate (i.e. what is the top wine in Ontario tonight). People like to communicate about wine and we’re going to our position ourselves to facilitate that interaction.

Sync: Thank you, Bryan. We wish you continued success with WineAlign. Cheers!