The uniqueness and individuality of winemakers is a beautiful thing, and it is one of the many characteristics that make the wine industry so special. 

Because of their different palates and preferences, not all winemakers will like all wines. In the words of Steven DeCostca, Director of Winemaking for O’Neill Vintners and Distillers, “There may be a sample I really like, but I’ve noticed that my palate is not necessarily representative of our consumers.” 

Just like all winemakers’ palates, every individual’s palates are different as well. It can be challenging when you are making a wine for a market whose preferences you have little visibility into.

How can you ensure your wine appeals to your target audience? It’s simple– know your audience’s palates.

CRAFTING WINE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE

Winemakers, to one degree or another, have always had challenges with visibility into what the consumers are going to like.

Winemakers are often left having to use their own judgment to make wines they believe their target audience will enjoy. For example, a winemaker in Napa can only guess at what consumers in South Central Florida are going to prefer. They may acquire some analogous insight like sales data, but just because a $20 Cabernet has been sold in this area doesn’t mean that another winemaker’s Cabernet will sell. Just because a wine was sold, doesn’t mean the consumers particularly liked it. And that data certainly can’t tell you who will like which wine, or how much.

In many cases, winemakers are not members of the target audience they are attempting to reach. And, even if they are, the fact that everyone’s palates perceive wines differently means that a winemaker can’t know what the majority of people from that audience will like just based upon their own preferences.

Tastry can provide you data that shows how the wine is going to perform and the consumers who are going to like it, and those who aren’t going to like it. You can even perform ‘what-if’ scenarios with wine that is yet to be produced.

TastryAI software utilizes collected, tracked, and predicted palates of millions of individuals from a wide range of demographics. Our CompuBlend® software uses Tastry’s extensive database to create blends from your existing inventory to craft wines made specifically for the purpose of catering to your target audience’s preferences. These wines produce the optimal results for your consumers and your winery.

That’s very powerful– giving the winemaker more visibility in areas that have always been a challenge, and the winemaker can use that data how they think appropriate.

For example, we recently spoke about optimizing winemaking for your audience with Jill Osur, CEO and president of Teneral Cellars, a women-owned and operated producer of sustainable wines. "To us, it’s important to create wines to fit the unique palates of our majority women audience. Tastry certainly helps us with that.” [Read the full interview here.] Jill uses Tastry’s software to create wines that appeal to her target audience. 

GAINING VISIBILITY ON WHAT PERFORMS IN THE MARKET

What performs well on the wine market can sometimes be an enigma. In fact, many winemakers are frustrated with the “best-selling” wines, which few winemakers would describe as the “best” wines.

This has been the reality for winemakers forever, living with the pressure of guessing what flavor profile will do well in the market.

Through the Uncorked recommender, Tastry helps match wines with consumers who are most likely to enjoy them.

Here’s how it works: Customers first take the AI-generated palate quiz, and over time they rate wines they have sampled. We translate that data into a kind of palate fingerprint as it relates to their perceptions of the various chemistry, or “flavors”, that they prefer. In this way we understand the consumer’s preferences, and over time our understanding gets more and more accurate.

The Tastry Uncorked recommender, can be implemented on websites, on a shopping app, in store on a kiosk, on an iPad at events, tasting rooms or anywhere else. Through this software, Tastry can work with retailers to identify which products should be on the shelf.

If a retailer has an abundance of specific palate profiles they’re collecting through the Tastry Uncorked recommender, and not enough wines to please those palates, Tastry can help find wines that will perform well with those specific palate profiles. We work with hundreds of wineries, and Tastry can help direct the retailer to find those providers that may have wine that will actually perform well for these consumers.

TAPPING INTO THE PRIVATE LABEL SECTOR

Breaking into, or consistently staying in the private label game, requires consistent production of wines that retailers need. If you could create a wine that satisfies your customer’s needs, then your wine would have a good chance of being selected for their private label.

For instances such as these where you would like to produce wines specifically with a target varietal, price point, and target star rating, Tastry can work with you to make custom wines to meet the precise needs of retailers. CompuBlend can generate a blueprint to help you decipher which wines in your inventory you can use to create a new best-selling blend.

Instead of a retailer having to taste dozens of Chardonnays and intuiting which one is best for their consumers, Tastry analysis provides visibility on what percentage of their consumers will like that wine, and specifically which consumers. 

Making good wine is of utmost importance, but making good wine that your customers are guaranteed to enjoy is the key to success. Every winery knows this, but until Tastry, the only visibility the winemaker has, on how to create a wine customers will love, is by tracking what sells or guessing.

It’s time to eliminate the guesswork– and the pressure that comes with that– out of winemaking, and Tastry is here to partner with you to do that.

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