Hello Wine Berserkers!
I would love your knowledgeable opinions on a unique wine challenge I’m working on.
Together with my father, we manage a small wine ferment-on-premise (in a small Canadian town) with a selection of around 350 wines. My background is with computers and as a lead generation tool for our business we wanted to build a very simple ‘recommendation engine’ for our selection of wines. To put that simply, a potential customer could answer a series of questions and the system will provide some recommendations it believes they would enjoy. (A dumbed-down robo-sommolier if you like, just to serve as a starting point for potential new customers on our website.)
In order to create such a system, I’m focusing in on two areas:
- What key metrics to measure our wines by. (Sweetness, acidity, tannin, oak, ect.)
- What questions to ask in order to narrow down the options.
It’s on these two areas that I’m also looking for advice. Specifically, some questions below:
- Which metrics or qualities do you personally use to help pair someone else with a wine they would enjoy?
- In your experience, are certain metrics/qualities more or less significant in determining enjoyable options for someone else? (For example, sweetness is a good example of something that can potentially narrow the options significantly.)
- What questions would you ask someone with previous wine knowledge to determine their preferences?
- What questions would you ask someone with NO wine knowledge to determine their preferences? (This is a tricky one I’m struggling with! A good example of such a question is: “Do you prefer apple or grapefruit juice?” in which the answer can point to whether they would prefer a dry, acidic white or something sweeter).
I sincerely appreciate any advice the knowledgeable community has to share. I hope everyone has great holiday ‘wine-up’ planned! (That was terrible wordplay on ‘lineup,’ sorry =P)
Cheers,
Kris S