What is Palate Club
Palate Club, the world’s most cutting edge wine club is a brand new addition to the scene of online wine delivery services. Palate Club launched officially in May 2018 and the wine club has come into its own, generating fascinating data on what people actually like to drink and sending customers all over California some amazing sommelier selected wines.
How It Works
So, how exactly does Palate Club work? Palate Club uses a custom created algorithm, developed by Advanced Sommeliers and top french data scientists to track each individual users wine preferences; we call this a Palate Profile. Once a user gets their Palate Profile, Palate Club can send them more wines based on their personal likes and dislikes. The more wine a user rates and drinks, the better the app will understand what they really crave and each shipment will get more and more customized. It’s kind of like Spotify or Pandora for your palate. Cool, huh?
Building the Palate Profile
So, how did our team at Palate Club generate the ability within the app to build a Palate Profile for our users? First, we worked to create a data input form with around 200 scent/taste traits found in wine. Wine has so many flavors and scents! We did this so we could build a profile for each wine we buy within our Palate Club portfolio. When we buy each wine for our portfolio, one of the Palate Club sommelier team uses this data input form and rates each of the traits in the form with percentage value from 0-100% for how relevant the characteristic is to the wine.
For example, a big, rich California Chardonnay aged with all new barrels that tastes oakey and buttery has around 90% Oak as a rating in the wine input form; conversely a French Sauvignon Blanc from Loire Valley which traditionally uses little to no oak during fermentation and is more light, lean, mineral driven has an Oak rating of 0-15% Oak. Oak is just an example one of the many types of traits that we rate on every wine we buy. We rate everything from acid, alcohol, tannin, sugar, fruit flavor, mineral, earth, floral, meat flavors, and everything in between.
The User Experience
So, now you have a better understanding of how our Palate Club App works behind the scenes, let’s fast forward to how our user experience works. It starts when a customer orders their first Palate Club shipment. Users taste their wines blind; we let our users do this by sending their wines wrapped in tissue paper and numbered so they can taste objectively. Once a user tastes a wine they open their app and give it a rating. After a user has rated four wines, their Palate Profile appears. The Palate Profile tells users useful information such as what other wine types they may like, tasting notes and information about wineries. We want our users to sip, learn and get as much out of each wine club shipment as possible!
Why Blind Tasting
Why do we prefer blind tasting? The simple fact, most people don’t actually know what they like and its OK! Plenty of people think they hate a grape because they have only tried one style of the particular grape variety. Grapes come from different regions and can taste VASTLY different. Let’s make an example of the Merlot grape: When Merlot is grown in Napa, California it is traditionally allowed to become overly ripe, juicy and fruit forward with lots of rich spicy, vanilla and oak flavor but when Merlot is grown in Bordeaux, France the grape is picked early so it’s still just a little bit tart with notes of red underripe fruit, mineral, earth, snoke and forest floor leading to a completely different flavor profile. I personally, hate Napa Merlot, but love Bordeaux, maybe YOUR palate is different. Palate Club can help users understand why.
Choosing Wine for Your Palate
So how does all of this technology make a better wine experience for our users? A wine starter bundle is sent our customer they try four wines blind. They rate the wines and their Palate Profile is created. A user orders their next shipment, rate wines and their Palate Profile continues to contain more and more information with each bottle they rate. Each consecutive order sent is more customized to each users wine preferences.
Learning and Growing
We want YOU to learn and grow with us! As we grow, we’ll continue to add education content here. We want to tell our users and wine club members what wine they’ll love. Plus, we’ll bring sustainable wines from around the world you’ve likely never heard of before. We currently offer white, red, and rosé wines available in our online wine shop. But stay tuned – sparkling wines are coming soon! Food pairing seminars and classes will be next. The good stuff is just beginning.
So, now that you know how it works what are you waiting for? You are just wasting time that you could be spending drinking better wine.
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