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QUANT versus QUAL
The SavvyTaste profile creates a quantitative method to describe wine.
Quantitative means the description uses numbers.
Qualitative methods are used everywhere else.
Qualitative depends on whatever a reviewer can think up.
This is an actual excerpt of a qualitative wine review:
"This is a powerful, ageless Cabernet - a classic Bordeaux-like nose of currant, ropy licorice, cigar box, dried herbs and ripe blackberry lead to a lifted, well-defined palate. A graphite hint gives some edge to the long, silky finish, and the broad structure hints at its long life ahead."
OoooooooKAY!
Riiiiight.
QUAL - Words Can Mean Whatever Someone Wants Them To At The Time
The example demonstrates that the qualitative method does a superb job of stressing out the wine reviewer's vocabulary. On the other hand, it offers consumers very little help in selecting wines they like. Indeed, flowery, over-blown wine prose obscures more often than helps purchase decisions.
Rather than try to decipher whether or not it's good to have a wine that smells like a cigar box, many people head for the beer cooler.
The task of fitting the wine to the drinker is further complicated by wine drinkers' individual experiences and by genetic variations that dramatically affect the way people experience wine.
QUANT - Numbers Are Your Friend
The SavvyTaste profile zeroes in on eight characteristics that can be reliably comprehended and scored by both experts and consumers alike. Those are:
1. Intensity
2. Fruit
3. Dry/Sweet
4. Acidity
5. Body
6. Tannin
7. Oak
8. Complexity
Intensity - Does this light up all your taste buds like the Fourth of July or Van Halen? Or is it subtle, like James Taylor or a Chopin piano sonata?
Fruit - Do you get fruit juice flavors? Don't mistake fruitiness for sweetness. While many sweet wines are fruity, many fruity wines are quite dry.
Sweetness - Think sugar. Maple syrup is a 10. A dill pickle, a 1.
Acidity - acidity is tartness. But tart is not the absence of sweet. They are two different things. Think of a gherkin pickle: sweet and sour. Sweetness comes from sugar. Tartness comes from organic acids. Two different quantities that play differently on your palate.
White wines usually have a higher sugar content (sweetness) than reds. But without acidity to balance the sugar, the wine can come across as syrupy. Tartness helps balance sweetness.
Body - Think thickness, viscosity.
Tannin - This is a wine's pucker factor. High tannin wines give your tongue and mouth a rough, high-friction feel.
Oak - A woody taste.
Complexity - do you get lots of different flavors and sensations? Is there a lot going on in your mouth. Is it a single acoustic guitar or the entire Boston Pops Orchestra?
The SavvyTaste profile of a wine is entered into our database. We use a proprietary algorithm (fancy name for secret mathematical formula) to search the database for wines that best match wines you have previously tasted and enjoy.
Is This Like The Amazon Book and Music Recommendations?
No.
Why? Amazon looks at what other people have been buying and tries to make a guess at what you like. This is called collaborative, or preference filtering. You may have noticed that it is less than consistently accurate.
Preference filtering attempts to group people with like tastes so that they can make and receive recommendations from each other.
SavvyTaste's social community addresses the need for direct interaction, but goes a big step forward by using our invention: knowledge-based preference selection.
The SavvyTaste “Find Wines Similar To This One” search relies on our analysis of the taste profile to offer the user selections most likely to match their preferences. The algorithm is continually being tweaked to make it more accurate.
In addition, people can use SavvyTaste to take the fear out of buying wine as gifts. They need to remember wines the intended recipient likes (from restaurant choices, wines served at home, at parties), find that wine in the database and then using the “Find Wines Similar To This One” search link.
Why Did We Do This?
Wine is a highly subjective product with thousands of products crowding grocery store and wine shop shelves. Because of the huge variations among these wines, it's hard for individual consumers to find wines they like. This hit-or-miss situation means that many consumers shy away from wine at all, or cling to a small universe of “safe” brands.
This results in lower overall consumption and serves as a barrier for the purchase of these products as gifts for holidays, birthdays and other special occasions.
While some consumers are fortunate to find talented and reliable vendors and sommeliers who can recommend appropriate purchases, the demand for solid and reliable purchase information far outstrips supply.
In addition, many knowledgeable vendors frequently conduct themselves in an arrogant or snobbish manner, setting themselves up as arbiters of “good taste” rather than facilitators for individual preferences. Because of this, many people are reluctant to consult these “mavens” of taste.
Where Did You Get The Idea For SavvyTaste?
The SavvyTaste quantitative taste profile is inspired by an early method developed by one of the world's smartest and most talented Master Sommeliers, Peter Granoff.
Peter, owner of Plaza Ferry Wine Merchants in San Francisco, first created a quantitative system for describing the wines he sold on Virtual Vineyards, the world's first online wine retailer.
Peter's method was itself adapted from techniques pioneered by the Court of Master Sommeliers that teaches its members ways to help customers find they will like.
Peter adapted his Virtual Vineyards method and uses an abbreviated variation to describe the wines he sells.
