Wine and Math? A One-of-a-Kind Pairing

It’s like Pandora for wine enthusiasts. Bright Cellars, a startup wine club launched in 2014 and founded by two MIT alum, incorporates a math formula into determining your next glass of wine. An algorithm designed by co-founder, Joe Laurendi, curates your taste profile based upon your answers to questions from an initial quiz and the rating you give your wine purchases thereafter. What a genius way to drink and enjoy wine!

Co-founder Richard Yau, who along with his co-founder, Joe Laurendi, worked for four years after graduating from MIT before launching Bright Cellars. He admits it is not easy to get into the wine industry, “I ended up taking a class and realized that most people don’t necessarily want to take a class. I thought maybe we can introduce people to new wines with an opportunity to learn about wine and their personal preferences.” From there the college grads built an intelligent wine club designed to help members discover great wine at an affordable price. Joe, who has a computer science background and taught algorithms as a TA at MIT, employs his unique algorithm to Bright Cellars’ members’ profiles. Beginning with a wine quiz as a starting point, the algorithm is configured to measure 17 dimensions each weighted differently; sweetness is one of the important categories. Richard states, “We’ll look at acidity, body, and more so we build a profile starting with the quiz and modify that – fine tune their [members] profile.” The feedback received from members is the most important piece of the algorithm. Upon receiving their wine boxes, members rate the wine, and those results alter a member’s wine profile, and therefore the type of wine in their next delivery. Similar to how Pandora works – thumbs up if you like a song or thumbs down if you don’t and the station is adjusted based upon your music selections. “It’s really user-defined in the sense that it’s powered by math, but what’s ultimately fueling it is your preferences as a wine drinker,” Richard explains.   

It’s not just a numbers game. The founders discovered that the combination of your lifestyle and food preferences influences your wine palate. Richard reveals, “For example, if you like dark chocolate that means you are okay with more bitter flavors. And sweetness is also defined. If you choose margarita then you are probably more interested in wines that are crisper with higher acidity, a little sweetness, and fruit because margaritas are citrus.” Overall, the quiz is more interactive than technical and the founders of Bright Cellars emphasize the fun component of the quiz rather than the mundane ‘rate this from 1-10’ type quizzes.

While not all wines get rated as it’s up to the member's discretion, the biggest indicator that Bright Cellars is on to something is through the retention rate. “We’ve been growing our membership 10-15% and we just passed 4,000 active members,” says Richard. Growth in membership is a big sign of their success. As a wine club, Bright Cellars has uniquely set themselves apart with the use of an algorithm that leads members to viewing wine differently by focusing on their personal preferences. According to Richard, rating wine was a big deal thirty-five years ago, “When wine critics started rating wine everyone called it the democratized nation of wine where you didn’t need a producer or winery with a historic reputation for wine – we are taking that one step further and personalizing that democratization.” From the collection of data, Bright Cellars understands what members are looking for and as a result are enabling customers with what they desire.     

With such happy customers, it's no wonder Bright Cellars is successful on social media. While their competitors focus marketing efforts on search and social media, Bright Cellars has taken an organic approach by allowing the members to do the marketing for them. People often find out about Bright Cellars through customers sharing their un-boxing, the algorithm or their purchases with friends and their followers on social media. “When members get their boxes they’ll tweet about it. We’ve had bloggers come to us or become customers and write a post about us – it’s been great!” exclaims Richard. In addition to their grass-roots social marketing technique, Bright Cellars customers refer other customers, which confirms to Richard and Joe that they are doing something right, and they hope to continue to improve that. Richard states, “That’s what inspired us to start the company, we want to do it in a fun and educational way and do it in a way that’s natural and shareable – that’s really been the core of our presence.”

Photo credit: brightcellars.com