The pandemic has slowly (or rapidly) cut off many from the simple pleasures of life. But not all need be written off completely. Some leisures, like a well-prepared restaurant meal, we might be able to order out for, while others, like new releases at the cinema, we will have to wait for. A few of them however, like a nice bottle of wine, have become difficult to find and enjoy. But the truth could not be any further from that pessimistic view, thanks to innovators like Palate Club.
Covid-19 shoved the cork back in the wine industry, then broke it off.
The easiest places to enjoy a fine bottle of wine have always been restaurants, where carefully chosen bottles are already matched to your meals, and waiters or someilliers are on hand to advise you on taste. Unfortunately restaurants are, if not off limits, not safe, and we are all discouraged from going out.
Which leaves wine drinkers worried about their safety struggling to find access to good wine. But with practical and taste conscious services like Palate Club out there, they could just sit back and wait for the wine to come to them.
Why is good wine so difficult to find during the pandemic?
Without restaurants or sommeliers, you are stuck with two options: brick and mortar stores (if they are still open) and online retail, both of which have their disadvantages.
Big retail stores will sometimes stock wine, but usually it ranges from the ‘in a box’ varieties to endless arrays of slight variations on the theme of red or white by big wine industry labels or their affiliates. Not only is it nearly impossible to distinguish between the bottles (which in some cases may even contain the same wines!), but the labels are often misleading and unhelpful when it comes to trying to guess what the wine might actually taste like.
Liquor stores might offer a slightly higher quality, and if the owner knows anything about wine, better advice. Short of a wine focused store the selection, however, is likely to be limited as they cannot stock even a small percentage of the varieties out there. Furthermore they have to, understandably,charge a higher mark-up to get by, which might be enough even in non-pandemic times to drive customers online.
You can buy wine online, but you may not want to drink it…
The internet however is not exactly the easiest place to buy wine either. While you can alternate between giant retailers like Amazon or small wineries’ individual store pages, there is little consistency or security in your choices. With few guarantees, and a paralyzing variety of choices, it can end up being even harder to discover new ones you actually end up enjoying.
Furthermore the online environment lacks the personal connection to establish contact, and more importantly trust. While you can find a thousand reviews for a well known wine, you might only find a handful for a boutique one, and none at all for either which can guarantee you will enjoy them.
Personalized wine delivery makes your home the best place to drink good wine!
Why not get the good wine to come to you instead? What if someone else did the work of finding out what you enjoy in wine, and delivering it straight to your home? That is the dream of the small team of start-up innovators at Palate Club.
These wine enthusiasts are taking data technology and artificial intelligence to streamline the wine industry. By having customers blind taste wines and rate them on their app, their algorithm starts to learn what you do, or do not, love in wine. Then it suggests new, and better, wines for your next delivery (which you can conveniently choose both the number of bottles in, and frequency of!).
Based on hundreds of data points on every wine, collected from rigorous research and tasting by expert sommeliers, their system offers reliable and personalized guidance for choosing wine. In fact, over time, it will allow you to develop your own palate, learning what flavors and aromas you, consciously or unconsciously, enjoy in your wine.
The best wine to drink at home is only a few clicks away with Palate Club
Palate Club’s rigorous selection procedures means that quality is assured, so you don’t have to fret before every purchase. In addition to working with small scale wineries here in the US, they have an impressive selection of international wines from both the heart of old wine country and the frontiers of wine territory around the globe. A dizzying selection of quality wines to make sure to find the ones which match your taste.
So don’t risk health or safety to go out and get bad wine this winter, sit back at home, order a wine tasting kit. Who knows, by this time next year, maybe you will be advising your friends on what wine to order when you go out.
