How CellarTracker and AI Are Changing Wine Collecting

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I think the most exciting thing about wine is the utter

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diversity of wine. I view my journey over what has now

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been 40% of my life doing this as using technology

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to help make wine more approachable, to not dumb it down,

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but to meet people wherever they are, no matter how geeky they are.

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Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine

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Talks with Paul K.

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Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul K. And we are in studio today in

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beautiful Southern California, about to have a conversation with Eric Levine, way up in

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Seattle with Cella Tracker introduction in just a moment. Hey. Just

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released a couple incredible podcasts. One of them was just really fun because it was

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an enology student from Cornell who just returned

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from her six week stint at Chateau Aubailly in Bordeaux,

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France. And of course, Wine of the Month club was an integral part of getting

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that internship. And the way she is so eloquent in

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telling her experience in Bordeaux, in another country as a

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wine student. So take a listen to that. But not why we're here. We're here

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to have conversation with Eric Levine. He's the founder and CEO of Cellar Tracker.

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Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much. Sorry for the screw up,

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but we're here. Yeah. And actually, believe it or not, it's Levine. It rhymes with

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wine. My. Oh, Levine. Yeah. My great grandfather screwed up and most people would

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expect Levine, but it's. I got a capital v. It's. Anyway,

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1910 was the original sin and it's convenient later in life that now it

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rhymes with wine. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible. You know,

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it would seem natural that you got into the trade somehow as a. With

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a name like Levine. Right. I had a conversation with Max Riedel.

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Everybody says Riedel, but he says no, this Riedel, as it rhymes in needle. So.

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So let's talk a little bit about. I've. I've been in this trade for. Since

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1993. I wrote, I bought a piece of software

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in DOS off the shelf to run the catalog side of this business.

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And we actually wrote what I think is probably one of the most

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robust and still the most most robust

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direct to consumer part of any piece of software that's out

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there today. And there weren't. There weren't

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any really. There's just little databases of where you could keep your wine

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information at that time, of course, in DOS and some. Maybe

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it was FoxPro or some database like that. What gave you the idea in

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2003 to start seller Tracker? So the original

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moment was actually 1999. And two things happened

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one, I started working on a team at Microsoft. Do you remember when software would

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crash and it would pop up and say, send error report, don't send.

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Yes. So that was me and two guys in the Office team who decided crashes

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suck and we're going to let the world tell us about them and we're going

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to use that to fix stuff. Wow. The other thing that happened is my wife

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and I went on a bicycling trip in Tuscany. And I always liked wine, but

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didn't know that much about it and came back a changeman, had just fell in

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love with wine. And so then over the next few, two bottles

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became 20, became 200, became 700. And so

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fast forward to 2003. I'm keeping track of my wine in a

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spreadsheet. I was looking at a bunch of different wine specific

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software to catalog the cellar, didn't really like anything and decided to

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just build something for myself and sell. Our tracker

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happened at that point. And then the final part is I showed it to two

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friends who immediately said, oh, I want to use that. Which is like, oh, I

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hadn't thought of that. And I got the two friends on there and then I

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realized, oh, wow, three people could be 300 or 3,000 or

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whatever. Like this is a thing that's so interesting. So let's go back

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to Tuscany for a second. And I don't really talk about

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aha moments all the time because I think everybody sort of beats that. A

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dead horse. But an aha moment that leads you

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into not only studying wine and understanding wine and appreciating collecting it,

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which is a bad disease which I have now.

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You know, I didn't know really until I sold my company

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what that disease was, because I. I was Scarface. I just sold everything I

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had my hands on. And during COVID so much came in the door that we

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could sell. And all of a sudden I had this collection of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

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And now I realize what it is about collecting that is

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if I drink that bottle, I won't have it anymore. And that

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sucks. So I. There's always another going, you know this. There's

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always another vintage. There's always another. Yeah, that's true. So

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anyway, what was it about that. Because it led you

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down a path of, you know, create a career for you that you had this

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moment. Was it the Tuscan wine? Was. It was. I can tell you exactly what

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it was. I'm a very meticulous guy. I remember way too

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much stuff. So it's 1999, it's harvest time, we're in Castalina in

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Chianti. This was a bike trip. So we had done a nice big ride that

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day, and they had a little local merchant up from Siena and he put four

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wines in front of us. And again, at this point, I enjoyed wine. I didn't

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really know anything about it. And so the four wines were. And I was not

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wine aware, so I don't remember the exact vintages, but I remember the appellations. So

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there was a Chianti, a Chianti Classico Reserva, a Vino Noble di

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Montepulciano, and a Brunello di Montalcino. And then he was. He did

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a song and a dance talking about IAGT versus DOC versus docg.

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But basically what I remembered was four wines all made predominantly from

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Sangiovese. And over the next few days we biked to

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Montepulciano and de Montalcino. And so I got to visit the towns. And

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so, you know, and he pointed like, okay, one hilltop over there, one over there

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down in the valley. So I just assumed these four things were going to

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taste exactly the same. And as we tasted through the four,

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they were completely distinct. And my mind was blown. I didn't understand how

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four wines all made within, you know, 30, 50 kilometers

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could be so different, made from the same grape. And then you

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spend a week biking around Tuscany having, I think, you know, if there's a

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region in the world where the traditional food, foods and the traditional wines are just

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magic with each other, Tuscany's high on the list. And

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so, you know, so we kept tasting wines over the course of the week with

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meals. And so I just came home and, you know, in technology you'd say it

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was the bit flip moment, right, Where I just, I had to learn more. I

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was compelled. I wonder if

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this doesn't just also sort of

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corroborate one of my thoughts. I do on the show all the time, which is

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the experiential part of wine, is such an important part of wine,

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and that it's actually coming back now. How long

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ago was this? 1993, you said 99. 99. So

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just coming up on 26 years. Ago, when my dad,

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in fact, this patch here was from the 70s, it was all about

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that. You got together, you talked, you experienced, you

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visited. And all of a sudden there's a connection between that

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wine bottle and that visit and that time you had together.

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That place, that winemaker, whatever it might be. The. I mean, I

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sort of call that context, right? And it's. It's I'm glad

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I'm not a wine critic because they have to separate context, you know, as

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they taste something and evaluate it. And you know, Parker always said, you

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know, he would just remove it and, and it was almost clinical. Right. And pretended

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you could be so precise. I'm glad I don't have to do that. Like, if

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I know a winemaker, generally I appreciate their wines more. If I like the

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person, I can feel them in the bottle. And you know, anytime I taste

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something from Tuscany, I think to that trip and those wines and

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you know, my collecting has gone to a lot of other places, although I still

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always love Tuscan wines and Italian, you know, obviously Italy has so many

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regions and so much diversity of wine. Yeah, it's.

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It's complicated for a lot of people. Maybe not as complicated as Burgundy, but it's

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complicated. Yeah. So you came back and wrote this thing. What, what was the prevalent

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language in code back then? So I was

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so at that point was working on the Office team and

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it's actually some of this original code still exists, but basically it's Microsoft SQL

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Server on the back end and the front end was classic ASP with

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VBScript and JavaScript down

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in your browser on the client. To this day we're still

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very much a Microsoft shop. And on Azure and in the cloud and

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SQL is big, but all the other stuff has evolved dramatically.

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There's so many frameworks and rich tools now for building amazing stuff.

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And how many, let's call it not versions

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but major reiterations, has the product gone through?

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I would say four. So there was the original site that I created

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which basically makes Craigslist look sexy. Craigslist, I think

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famously was like one of the least good looking websites on the. Plenty of

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sign. Yeah. And so if you go to sellertracker.com

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classic the original is still out there and it is black and white and

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blue and it is just as retro a website as you're ever going to find.

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And there's still people who, some people who cling to that. I did a major

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renovation of the desktop site, sort of a slow

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rolling one between 2010 and 12. We launched a mobile site and

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app based that in 2014. And then over the last three,

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four years we completely re platformed and built a

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very modern, beautiful mobile application. That's where the vast bulk of the effort is

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going into is subscription.

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Subscription based. Now it is subscription. So it's always been. I used

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to call it voluntary payment or if you think back to the ancient days of

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software Sort of as you referred to, shareware was a thing then where, you know,

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if you use it, like it and pay, but it. What it's been for two

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decades is if you pay, then we flip on some extra functionality. But about a

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year and a half ago, we did make a pretty significant switch

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in mainly how we talk about it, calling it a subscription. We did

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take some things that used to be free. And this is, you know, you get

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to do this once. We basically just sort of said, look, what do the people

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who are paying get versus what do the people get who are using it for

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free? We want to make sure the free proposition is powerful and wonderful

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and also honors the. The fact that Seller Tracker really is of, by

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and for the community. The value of Seller Tracker is what everyone

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creates. And so all the 12 million reviews people

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have created are free to anyone who wants to come. And whether you register or

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not, although generally experience is better if you register and log

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in. You don't see ads or stuff like that. But anyway, a year and a

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half ago, we did sort of formally create a more formal subscription

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model, set prices. You don't get to sort of make up your own price or

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something like that. Although to this day the throwback is

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we do, even if, you know. So we suggest what you should pay based on

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the size of your collection. But if you disagree, you can

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basically say, well, you know, I don't want to pay that. You can pick one

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of the lower levels and you still get everything. So

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here's an interesting question. How much? And I'm going through this now my own

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seller, because I told you that we sold the company and they didn't

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buy or want any of my collectible wine. So I've got, I don't know, like

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2,500 bottles of wine here. And I'm a.

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I'm not an organized guy. You know, I'm neat

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to the extent that I make sure things are in their place. But I, you

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know, the tediousness of, of keeping track of it, it drives

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me crazy in the seller. And how do you, how do you, how do you

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address a guy like me? So, I mean, you know, first and

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foremost, I'll step back and say that probably the biggest misconception

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about Seller Tracker, and, you know, some of it comes from the name is. And

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it was originally designed for me as a tool to catalog and track my own

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seller. The big surprise was as more and more people started to sign

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on and use it, we get the better part of 10 million people a year

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visiting the site Downloading the apps, et cetera. For most people out there, they

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actually just use it as a research tool. They're looking at all the information

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that's amassed, the reviews and tasting notes and drinking windows

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and things along of that nature.

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So the biggest misconception is that you have to actually use it to

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catalog and track your seller. Now, that said, if you choose to do that, that

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was definitely the original core use case.

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You know, we have definitely come up with like one of the features we're really

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excited about that we created in the last couple years. And we don't talk about

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it as an AI feature, but it's actually using AI behind

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the scenes is you buy wine from a retailer or winery and

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they generate a receipt that comes to you, an email

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or even a paper receipt. You can take a picture of it and literally just

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forward it to us. Add addselartracker.com

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if the email matches your account. We're using AI to pull out

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the vintage, the wine name, the price, the size, the quantity,

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the purchase date, the invoice number, and then putting that all into a

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tool. We match about 90% of the wine names automatically to our database

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of 5 million wines and you just confirm them and say, boom. So that's all

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about how do you lower the friction on the way. Yeah, that's amazing.

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Yeah, I'm kind of amazed by it. Sometimes it works just flawlessly and

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it's technology, so it's fallible. So the goal is look, for someone

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like you, the trade off of time

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has to make sense. And I think there are definitely people who

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are like, look, it's going to ruin the romance or it's too much work

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we find for people who want to track and know, then it's going to be

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useful. Now, in the age of all the AI features we're starting to

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build now, which get more to recommendations and helping people

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learn and explore and discover, think about, you

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know, food pairings, whatever it might be. Really any kind of question you could ever

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think to ask. Frankly, we only need to know

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what are a few wines you like, what are things you don't like to start

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to dial in and have those tools really personalize themselves

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to you. So part of what we're thinking about is how do we make Seller

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Tracker a much more broadly available tool for anyone who's

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just passionate, curious, wants to learn, explore, discover, and

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wherever they are in their journey, no matter how expert order or they

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have to decide they want to learn, they have to be interested beyond I want

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a glass of Chardonnay. Or a glass of Merlot with no curiosity beyond that. But

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if they care, they want to have the journey, then.

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You just put your finger on the pulse of, you know, almost all the conversations

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on LinkedIn and where, you know, they're trying to force the public

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or not force the public, or tell the public what's up, what's not up. And

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the aristocracy want all that, which hasn't changed in the millennial.

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It's just a different generation that thinks they've got a better idea of it

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because it's interesting. You know, one of the things. Nothing's worse than being a

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collector and then something going over the hill because it wasn't

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managed properly or you lost it. I can remember when I moved the

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company, I lost all my best stuff. I didn't know what happened to it.

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And finally I remembered I'd locked it in a closet in the old building, and

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thank goodness I still own the old building, and went there and unlocked the closet,

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and there it was, you know, stuff from my Dad's store in

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1975, you know, so it has great value.

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But if. If I'm one of these people that wants to use it to its

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complete efficiency, you're talking

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about not only inventorying your wine where it probably is in the cellar,

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you can love its features. Barcodes for every specific bottle. I mean, you

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can go. You can go crazy in terms of how much precision

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you. How much data you enter, or just keeping a simple list, you know,

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and it. It varies if I grab. Well, here's a. Here's a bigger

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problem. Yeah. We're here in Southern California, and the Altadena

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fires displaced my daughter and her husband and the three kids. They didn't

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lose their house, thank God, but they. They live with us. Well, my

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depletion is much faster now than it had been prior

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to their arrival. And so, you know, if I was able to just take that

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bottle and scan on the way out on my phone, or even

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an iPad that's hanging inside the cellar and know that that was depleted,

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that can happen. You can do that already today. And we think we can

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make those tools a lot better. And, you know, really, you know, almost

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totally hands free today. You can basically, you know, scan the front

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label or scan the upc. UPC is funny because

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the industry doesn't tie it to specific vintages, so you

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still need the user. Again, click and pick the specific wine and the

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specific bottle. But our goal is how low can we.

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How much can we lower the friction around both? Populating your seller, you Know,

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every time you buy, having it automatically populate and

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likewise on the, on the way out, just helping you keep that up to. Date,

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et cetera, you know, and that's, that's how I use

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AI here, because I, I don't believe AI is taking jobs.

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I think it's just going to add so much more information to, on the plate

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that it's going to require just, you know, just different places for, for

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labor and for trained personnel to work.

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But I always look at what I'm doing to see where I can

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apply it and I. You don't even know the answer to that question all the

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time because you're, you just are assumed and kind of embedded

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in what you do. And then all of a sudden you go, wait a minute,

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I could, I could apply AI to this. Is it the way you look at

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this kind of thing? Because certainly the idea of scanning a receipt is

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brilliant and putting it in my inventory right away, and then the

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values there, at least the retail value at that point.

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So, you know, I, we're, you know, we

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have a pretty significant team of engineers right now really leaning into this. I mean,

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I will say, number one, it's early days and things are moving

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so quickly. It is. That's a question. It is

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shocking. And I am an optimist, you know, writ large for

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society. I think that's a whole separate question in terms

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of what we can do to help one, collectors who are putting some amount of

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information in seller tracker to make that more useful and to help

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again with exploration, discovery, seller management. I am

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unbelievably optimistic. It's super fun for

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me. We just launched a chat feature in beta about a month ago.

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And so it's fun. Sometimes I have my standard

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ways of how I'm going to go. Either rummage the seller physically or sometimes I'll

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start on the computer and I've got a notion of, oh, I want a Loire

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red tonight. And then I just asked the chat like, hey,

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find me all the Loire reds in my cellar within their drinking window.

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Read all the reviews from this year and based on the reviews,

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tell me which ones seem to be most ready and summarize the review for me.

294
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And it came back with a list of three. And I sort of, I mean,

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this is just in a chat, but you can imagine soon it would be more

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like Siri, where I can dictate to it. And it picked a different

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wine than I had. I'd been fumbling around for five minutes on the computer the

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old fashioned way, and just in two Little back and forths. I was. It

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steered me to wine. It was great. And I'm sure any of the wines I

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could have picked probably would have been good, but it was just such a new

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way for me to even think about interacting with this technology.

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And, you know, for food pairings or imagine the scenario of saying, hey, I want

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to build. I want to do an Italian wine dinner. Help me

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build three flights, you know, based on the wines in my cellar. And I've got

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about 3,000 bottles. And the chat has access to that privately. It knows what

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I have. So I can ask it to basically propose flights. I can ask it

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to propose a. Look, I couldn't even imagine

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a year ago that this was like Star Trek kind of stuff. Like,

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okay, we could build that in 10 years. It's just about here.

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And our implementation is far from perfect, but

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it is moving so quickly. I am such an optimist on what we'll be able

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to do to make this more useful. Well, it is moving very

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quickly and things will be obsoleted

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very quickly and very fast. And there's even a talk about this bubble, sort of

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like the dot com bubble occurring with all these applications.

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I sat down at Starbucks for a month or two and just went through a

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training session. So I understood what was out there to do it. And some of

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those packages, they're already behind. And this is not that

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long ago, but it is pretty amazing that as long

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as you are keeping up with what its capabilities are that you can do something

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like that. You couldn't write that code. Right? I mean, it's just

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like the early days of websites. And I never bought off

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of this. I never thought it was possible. I never thought it was real. When

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they would say, hey, tell us if you like to eat mushrooms and salt your

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food and whether or not, you know, put ketchup on your hamburger, that we're going

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to pick wines for you. And if anybody tested those, those

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algorithms that were on those websites would know that it would give you the same

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wine suggestions. Anyway, there's a bunch of horse hockey, however,

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now with the ability of AI to go to the web and find

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all these reviews and to find all the character that has been

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described as and maybe summarize that better and then bring

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it back to you with the recommendation, it's phenomenal.

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It's very good at summarization in particular. I mean, you think about large language models.

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That's what it's all about. So

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we're flexing it, we're using it, we're experimenting and so we started with

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the first problem we tried to solve beyond us using

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AI as a tool for parsing receipts, which again, to the end user, that's not

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an AI feature. It's just a way for us to

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have some technology extract the information we want from a receipt, either

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a picture or a textual one. But the first actual AI

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application was literally you go to a page for wine and

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there's a button to say, will I like this wine? And it loads

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up into the AI a bunch of information about me, what I've tasted recently,

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if I've posted tasting notes, what I'm purchasing. And then it's

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sort of cross referencing that against the actual wine. And it's a make,

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trying to make a determination of, of how likely or unlikely it is I'm going

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to like it. But then it's got like a three sentence summary. And so even

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if it's guessed wrong, when it describes the wine in two or

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three sentences by summarizing the notes and summarizing

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sort of the metadata, and it's actually able to go look up the alcohol percentage,

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even though we don't have that in our database. I almost always can

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tell right away, like, is this a very parkerized kind of thing that I'm a

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little less like, you know, all due respect, I'm, I'd probably lean a little more

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old world and a little more on the acid end of the spectrum. But like,

355
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is, it describes the wine, like I know right away. We have also now

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summarized this wine, which is a longer form. You know, think like

357
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a one pager, where it's going to go through and talk about the,

358
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the variety, the region, the vintage, the specific wine and

359
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winery. And I'm, I'm a nice textual learner. So

360
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I love that because that's a, you know, go to any of 5 million wines

361
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in the database and it's sort of, it's asking it, you know, tell me in

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a, in a nutshell what you know about it. And anyway,

363
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there's a bazillion things that we could do. We're just trying to figure out what,

364
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:08,960
what works and what we can do with the technology as it exists today.

365
00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:12,480
And if it doesn't work today, it's probably going to work in a year or

366
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in six months or whatever it might be. You've said a lot

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that I wanted to play with and we only have 45 minutes or so and

368
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I don't think I can cover all of these little pieces. I'll try to be

369
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more teres. No, no, no, it's so fascinating because you. One of the things you

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did say, and it's a very human thing, is

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I, because I'm in the trade, been doing for so long, you as well, and

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you said it yourself, I feel like drinking tonight, right? I feel

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like having. Not only drinking in general, I feel like drinking a

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bottle of Loire red or, you know, a Bordeaux or a Burgundy,

375
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whatever. And I had this conversation with Jonathan Waxman, the

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famed chef, and he goes, you know, I don't. I come home from work, and

377
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it's not what I'm making for dinner, it's what I feel like in my glass.

378
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And then I'll cook around it. And. And that's a

379
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fascinating comp set which you brought up. I felt like this. And then we. What.

380
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What goes with this? And then you. You make some. You make all these options.

381
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Another thing you said, too, that's really important, the summarization idea.

382
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And because AI for the listeners, has a bias,

383
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and sometimes you can ask it to explain the bias when it makes a

384
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decision. Right. So if you. The. The Master of Wine test

385
00:23:20,410 --> 00:23:24,170
really isn't necessarily about whether you can identify, you know, cinnamon or

386
00:23:24,170 --> 00:23:27,690
cardamom or something in a glass of wine is if you did sense that, why

387
00:23:27,690 --> 00:23:31,240
did you sense that that, and what reason do you think it exists? And so

388
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:34,840
that's kind of an interesting approach to having AI do that for you.

389
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But here's something that happened to me

390
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:42,480
getting when I started collecting more than just selling, and

391
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:45,840
that is my knowledge base and my. My, let's say, my world

392
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:49,360
geography. You know, I didn't study that in high school. Who paid attention to

393
00:23:49,360 --> 00:23:53,040
geography? And now it's like, you know, I know everything. It

394
00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:56,760
seems like because there's a wine district everywhere in the world, practically has

395
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,840
your. Your wine knowledge base

396
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:04,320
exponentially grown since you started writing code around it to.

397
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To accommodate somebody's cellar and accommodate, you know, food

398
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,480
pairings or whatever you're doing. Did you just. All of a sudden, you open up

399
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:15,120
the whole volume of information? Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is I started actually

400
00:24:15,120 --> 00:24:18,680
when I was trying to figure out what's the right schema to create a

401
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:22,480
wine database. As part of my early learning, when I

402
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,730
was really getting passionate about wine and geeking out, I. Oz Clark's

403
00:24:25,730 --> 00:24:29,090
Encyclopedia of Wine, Like, I sort of read that thing cover to cover and

404
00:24:29,330 --> 00:24:32,210
looked back at it. I mean, it's a little dry. Who reads an encyclopedia? But

405
00:24:32,210 --> 00:24:35,970
it, you know, it was a nice sort of structure. But literally, when

406
00:24:35,970 --> 00:24:38,610
I came back from the trip in Tuscany. One thing I didn't mention was I

407
00:24:38,610 --> 00:24:42,330
went to the guy who I worked with at Microsoft, who I knew knew

408
00:24:42,330 --> 00:24:45,930
more about wine than anyone else. And I was like, Antoine, help me. Help me

409
00:24:45,930 --> 00:24:49,650
crack the code. Like, how do I do this? And his advice was

410
00:24:49,650 --> 00:24:53,270
two words. It was pay attention. And he basically was. He sort of said, look,

411
00:24:53,270 --> 00:24:56,990
if you're going to open an Oregon Pinot from a particular vineyard, what the heck,

412
00:24:56,990 --> 00:25:00,590
Open two. Two different producers, same vineyard, or same

413
00:25:00,590 --> 00:25:04,190
wine, two different vintages. And then his idea was always

414
00:25:04,190 --> 00:25:07,950
be comparing and then writing it down. And then his idea was to

415
00:25:07,950 --> 00:25:10,190
write it down in a paper book, at which point I was like, well, that's

416
00:25:10,190 --> 00:25:14,030
unsatisfying. So that's where a few years later, Cellar Tracker came out of that. But

417
00:25:15,230 --> 00:25:18,750
really what I realized was for me to learn about wine,

418
00:25:19,270 --> 00:25:22,670
writing notes about wines as I tasted them. I got into a tasting group. E

419
00:25:22,670 --> 00:25:26,190
Robert Parker bulletin board was very vibrant at the time. And that's sort of where

420
00:25:26,190 --> 00:25:29,150
I cut my teeth. And people had this notion of going to

421
00:25:29,150 --> 00:25:32,870
offlines and people would come back and they'd post tasting notes.

422
00:25:32,870 --> 00:25:36,270
And so I was doing that and I wanted a tool to store that. And

423
00:25:36,270 --> 00:25:38,390
so Cellar Tracker again, sort of popped out of my head

424
00:25:39,990 --> 00:25:43,750
during this period of time. But for me, the learning was knowing

425
00:25:43,750 --> 00:25:47,190
when I was having something, you know, a condrew like, oh, that's

426
00:25:47,190 --> 00:25:50,780
Vonnet. I've had a Washington Vonnet. And just understanding the differ

427
00:25:51,090 --> 00:25:54,810
between varieties in different regions and even how a

428
00:25:54,810 --> 00:25:58,210
wine name is assembled from the underlying data. Like when I first

429
00:25:58,530 --> 00:26:02,330
launched Cellar Tracker in the earliest, earliest days, you know, it

430
00:26:02,330 --> 00:26:05,370
would put for every wine in the world, it would put the name of the

431
00:26:05,370 --> 00:26:09,130
variety in there. And so you don't say, you know, Jean Paul

432
00:26:09,130 --> 00:26:12,730
Versay, Vionnet, Condru. You know, you don't say Vionnet. Right. It's part of the

433
00:26:12,730 --> 00:26:16,570
description, but it's not in the wine name. It's not composed. So. So I

434
00:26:16,570 --> 00:26:19,770
learned really early on because wine geeks were like, you don't do it that way.

435
00:26:19,770 --> 00:26:23,330
So I learned like, oh, how do you compose wine names? In very

436
00:26:23,330 --> 00:26:26,850
regional ways around the world. That makes sense. And even I made

437
00:26:26,850 --> 00:26:30,570
mistakes in the initial database schema for how to catalog stuff. But

438
00:26:30,570 --> 00:26:34,050
it was part of my learning journey. And then the accident was just that it

439
00:26:34,050 --> 00:26:37,810
was useful for other people. There was never a goal to build a company. I

440
00:26:37,810 --> 00:26:41,650
was just building a piece of technology for myself. And then other

441
00:26:41,650 --> 00:26:44,170
people wanted to use it. And I've sort of been running to catch up for

442
00:26:44,170 --> 00:26:47,760
the last 22 years. So do you consider yourself a wine geek or a

443
00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:50,720
tech geek? I'm a tech geek turned wine geek.

444
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:55,320
I'm a geek. Anyone? Trust me, all my friends will be like, yep, he's about

445
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,640
the geekiest person you'll ever meet. But I wear it as a badge of Arnor.

446
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:01,920
And I would say, you know, as far as wine goes, look

447
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:06,440
for anyone in the industry. I think the most exciting thing about

448
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:10,200
wine is the utter diversity of wine. The fact that there's no right

449
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,560
or wrong. There is so much, as you said, every region of the world, there

450
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:17,390
can be something interesting and so many new, exciting regions beyond the

451
00:27:17,390 --> 00:27:21,030
traditional ones. But I think people underestimate and forget

452
00:27:22,390 --> 00:27:25,830
when you're not into wine yet how

453
00:27:25,830 --> 00:27:29,190
unbelievably intimidating it makes the category. So whether

454
00:27:29,670 --> 00:27:33,190
so, you know, I view my journey over what has now been

455
00:27:33,190 --> 00:27:36,710
40% of my life, doing this as using technology

456
00:27:36,950 --> 00:27:40,590
to help make wine more approachable to not dumb it

457
00:27:40,590 --> 00:27:44,390
down, but to meet people wherever they are, no matter how geeky they are

458
00:27:44,390 --> 00:27:47,970
or how beginner they are, along just no matter where they are. And

459
00:27:48,450 --> 00:27:51,730
to appreciate the full nuance of wine. Again, not dumbing it down,

460
00:27:52,130 --> 00:27:55,730
but also to try to remove a little bit of the

461
00:27:55,730 --> 00:27:59,490
mystery that just makes it, I think, scary and intimidating for people

462
00:27:59,490 --> 00:28:03,250
young and old. It's a hard category to get into. And

463
00:28:03,250 --> 00:28:06,050
once you get a little base of knowledge and confidence and know what you're dealing

464
00:28:06,050 --> 00:28:09,890
with, then I think wine starts to get fun. You know,

465
00:28:09,970 --> 00:28:13,810
that's the most important word of all of this, is confidence. I've known

466
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,760
psalms in people in the trade forever that

467
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,840
know a ton but have such little confidence to express it that

468
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,680
you would never know it. And I, and I agree with you completely. You. You

469
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,360
really can't dumb it down, because really dumbing down only means I'm

470
00:28:29,360 --> 00:28:32,560
gonna. I'm gonna enter as a person, I'm gonna enter into the trade

471
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,720
to an extent that I want to. You know, I have friends that are

472
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:40,480
huge proponents of the stuff that we taste together, but they would

473
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:44,260
never bother going onto a map and to see

474
00:28:44,260 --> 00:28:47,900
where it's from or bother visiting the neighborhood. They just won't. And that's okay. I

475
00:28:47,900 --> 00:28:50,300
have no problem with this. But. And I wouldn't say that's dumbing it down. It's

476
00:28:50,300 --> 00:28:54,140
just everybody's going to have their level of intellectually intellectual

477
00:28:54,140 --> 00:28:57,300
curiosity as to what this stuff is, and

478
00:28:57,700 --> 00:29:01,260
there's something very special about it. There's something. I

479
00:29:01,260 --> 00:29:04,980
suppose there's something aristocratic about it. If you wanted to look at

480
00:29:04,980 --> 00:29:08,830
that. When I think the industry itself, and I think your software actually

481
00:29:08,830 --> 00:29:12,510
fights this, I think the industry itself propagates the

482
00:29:12,510 --> 00:29:16,310
aristocracy of it. I think swirling and sniffing is one of those things that

483
00:29:16,310 --> 00:29:19,950
people just what are you doing? You know, they're confused as to what you're

484
00:29:19,950 --> 00:29:23,790
smelling and maybe they don't smell it. My whole premise in this

485
00:29:23,790 --> 00:29:27,070
industry, and I want to ask you some questions specifically about the software, but my

486
00:29:27,070 --> 00:29:30,910
whole premise is there are amazing stories and experiences to have

487
00:29:30,910 --> 00:29:34,630
with it. And when those people have that, whether they're novices or not, that

488
00:29:34,790 --> 00:29:38,550
will realize there's something very special about it. And even to this

489
00:29:38,550 --> 00:29:42,190
day, I have a wine that I've never had and just go, wow, this is

490
00:29:42,190 --> 00:29:45,710
amazing. Happened last night with my son in law. Like I said, my depletion is

491
00:29:45,710 --> 00:29:49,550
twice as fast as it used to be. What was the wine? It was a

492
00:29:49,550 --> 00:29:53,310
Super Tuscan. I forgot the brand. It was rather. I bet I

493
00:29:53,310 --> 00:29:57,110
can find it for you. Coli. It's been

494
00:29:57,110 --> 00:30:00,550
on my shelf forever. And it had, it was so terroir driven. It had so

495
00:30:00,550 --> 00:30:03,950
much interesting terroir and soil and

496
00:30:04,190 --> 00:30:07,950
minerals to it that I had not tasted it. My wife doesn't like that style

497
00:30:08,670 --> 00:30:12,190
and so she said, do you have something else? So that's again, my

498
00:30:12,190 --> 00:30:15,110
depletion is twice as fast as I expected it. But my son in law is

499
00:30:15,110 --> 00:30:17,870
like, no, I want to finish this. This is really, really fun to taste.

500
00:30:18,830 --> 00:30:22,310
I can't remember the brand name anyway. So if I'm a beginner, if I've never

501
00:30:22,310 --> 00:30:26,070
done it, I've got my first cellar, I got my 48 bottle wine

502
00:30:26,070 --> 00:30:29,910
chiller. Where does seller tracker step into my career with

503
00:30:29,910 --> 00:30:33,270
this and how do I use it? And then I'll ask you the same question.

504
00:30:33,270 --> 00:30:37,030
For an experienced, fully stuffed seller, I. Think

505
00:30:37,910 --> 00:30:41,350
the starting premise is that especially if you're just getting going,

506
00:30:42,950 --> 00:30:46,150
going back to what I said, paying attention, knowing what you have,

507
00:30:47,190 --> 00:30:50,790
paying attention to when there's never, you know, drinking windows,

508
00:30:50,950 --> 00:30:54,710
people expect a greater degree of precision around what

509
00:30:54,710 --> 00:30:58,510
that means. But recognizing that wines evolve and you

510
00:30:58,510 --> 00:31:02,080
may like them more or less at different points of their evolution and they can

511
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:05,800
get, definitely get, I think everyone will agree at some point wines are past.

512
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:10,600
So just having some notion of that and knowing what you're having and

513
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:14,440
starting to pay attention to, you know, oh, I like this style

514
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:18,240
of Chardonnay. I don't like that style of Chardonnay. Also recognizing your taste may shift.

515
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:22,040
So if you have the 48 bottles, literally just take Pictures of the labels,

516
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:25,720
pick the wines, stick them in there, maybe record the shelf number if that'll

517
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:29,440
save you a minute when it comes time to go find the bottle. You

518
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:33,180
know, people tend to be overly pre price. Like people with thousand bottle sellers

519
00:31:33,180 --> 00:31:36,900
want to have an individual XY coordinate for every single

520
00:31:36,900 --> 00:31:40,380
bottle. But you know, that means then if you do that, then anytime you want

521
00:31:40,380 --> 00:31:43,100
to move a bottle or sort something in the cellar, you got to go update

522
00:31:43,100 --> 00:31:46,860
the software. Like it's always a trade off of how quickly can I find the

523
00:31:46,860 --> 00:31:49,540
thing and how much energy do I have to spend

524
00:31:50,420 --> 00:31:54,020
maintaining the information in the database. And again, people are often

525
00:31:54,500 --> 00:31:58,260
overly precise and don't make that trade off. Well, but just,

526
00:31:59,100 --> 00:32:02,780
even, just having the list. And then now again, this was even

527
00:32:02,780 --> 00:32:06,380
before the AI tools and the ability to sort of get into food pairings

528
00:32:06,380 --> 00:32:10,180
and have it suggest which wine you might want to open. Or just say, hey,

529
00:32:10,180 --> 00:32:13,860
surprise me, pick one. Like it's, you know, it's, it's just fun

530
00:32:13,860 --> 00:32:17,700
sometimes to just do it differently. But then, then people start to know

531
00:32:17,700 --> 00:32:21,260
what they have also then maybe they don't over buy and go really super long

532
00:32:21,260 --> 00:32:23,180
on one particular thing. And

533
00:32:25,230 --> 00:32:27,390
some of the best advice I got as a collector early on was like the

534
00:32:27,390 --> 00:32:31,150
rule of three bottles, right? Like one for now, one in a

535
00:32:31,150 --> 00:32:34,630
bit and one to age kind of a thing. And you know, occasionally you get

536
00:32:34,630 --> 00:32:37,230
that third one and you wish you'd bought a case. But you know, again, there's

537
00:32:37,230 --> 00:32:40,670
always another vintage. And if you hone in on a region and a

538
00:32:40,670 --> 00:32:44,470
producer having a tool like seller tracker and just tracking it

539
00:32:44,470 --> 00:32:47,150
as you go, I think is going to help you be sort of a little

540
00:32:47,150 --> 00:32:50,970
smarter as you start to build up on the front end of the equation. You

541
00:32:50,970 --> 00:32:54,450
sound like a retailer if you're gonna say buy three, buy five, buy six. Because

542
00:32:55,650 --> 00:32:58,850
I mean one can be sad. Because if it was, yeah, that's really good. You're

543
00:32:58,850 --> 00:33:02,210
just like, no, you know, But. I'm doing a tasting

544
00:33:02,450 --> 00:33:06,090
here in la. It's one of the famous port collections in the

545
00:33:06,090 --> 00:33:09,570
world. And it's right here in Glendale, California. Guy named Don

546
00:33:09,570 --> 00:33:13,370
Schliff and he said in the next tasting, which is October, you're

547
00:33:13,370 --> 00:33:16,690
going to be opening probably the last bottle of the some of these vintages that

548
00:33:16,690 --> 00:33:20,470
ever existed. And that, that's sort of sad and it's kind of cool,

549
00:33:20,470 --> 00:33:24,190
right? It's like, yeah, no one's ever gonna taste this after this. Well, this collection

550
00:33:24,190 --> 00:33:28,030
behind me here, I, I have to figure out if the guy

551
00:33:28,030 --> 00:33:30,790
had seller tracker or Not, I guess based on the fact that he left him

552
00:33:30,790 --> 00:33:33,950
in his cellar is. No, but we were

553
00:33:34,270 --> 00:33:37,550
walking on the street in our neighborhood right here in Arcadia, California. Went into an

554
00:33:37,550 --> 00:33:41,070
open house, went in the basement, and down there was all these

555
00:33:41,070 --> 00:33:44,850
wines and much more than what you see. And I, I, one of them

556
00:33:44,850 --> 00:33:48,170
was in a bucket in a staged tasting.

557
00:33:48,650 --> 00:33:52,010
And it was the wine I got married on, which is this obscure

558
00:33:52,010 --> 00:33:55,730
Riesling that my dad bought 1983. And I told

559
00:33:55,730 --> 00:33:59,490
my wife, I said this is impossible that this guy has this. It turns out

560
00:33:59,490 --> 00:34:02,650
all the wines in the rack were my, from my dad's selections back in the

561
00:34:02,650 --> 00:34:06,490
70s and 80s. And so I, I did a one for one bottle switch with

562
00:34:06,490 --> 00:34:10,170
the guy. So he got a full 100 some bottles of fresh

563
00:34:10,170 --> 00:34:13,330
wine and I got all my old selections that had my dad's sticker on it.

564
00:34:13,330 --> 00:34:16,829
And, and I'm guessing if he had cellar track, he would have known. We opened

565
00:34:16,829 --> 00:34:19,549
a lot of them and none of them were over the hill. They were all,

566
00:34:19,549 --> 00:34:23,269
you know, some were tired, but none of them were, had changed so badly

567
00:34:23,269 --> 00:34:26,069
you couldn't drink them. I thought that was interesting. Now let's say I have my

568
00:34:26,069 --> 00:34:29,788
3000 bottles here, 2500 bottles. And I said I'm going to try

569
00:34:29,788 --> 00:34:33,549
seller tracker. You know, what's, what's the first thing I should do with this

570
00:34:34,109 --> 00:34:37,949
so that. You know that look, you know, physically you just think about,

571
00:34:38,189 --> 00:34:41,870
forget the technology for a second. 2,000, 3,000 bottles of

572
00:34:41,870 --> 00:34:45,590
wine. It's a lot of stuff that's, I mean, it's literally, you know,

573
00:34:45,590 --> 00:34:49,310
three pounds a bottle. You're talking, you know, tons, literally tons

574
00:34:49,310 --> 00:34:53,030
of wine and glass. So a,

575
00:34:53,030 --> 00:34:55,350
there's two approaches people can take. And this happens all the time. You know, there

576
00:34:55,350 --> 00:34:59,070
are professionals out there who will just come and, and, and storage companies

577
00:34:59,070 --> 00:35:02,430
who will just come in and just do it for you. So if, wow.

578
00:35:02,830 --> 00:35:05,990
Yeah. And you know, they charge you per bottle and whatever. But for some people,

579
00:35:05,990 --> 00:35:09,710
if time is precious, it's just easier to get it done, get

580
00:35:09,710 --> 00:35:12,510
it in and they'll, you know, they'll do the optional thing of like going and

581
00:35:12,510 --> 00:35:14,990
barcoding all the bottles and they'll even work with you to keep it up to

582
00:35:14,990 --> 00:35:17,870
date, that kind of stuff. So that's the, the white glove end of the spectrum.

583
00:35:17,870 --> 00:35:20,990
We don't do that ourselves, but we have a list of people who do that

584
00:35:20,990 --> 00:35:24,070
and travel around the country. And you know, for some people that's the way to

585
00:35:24,070 --> 00:35:27,870
go. Otherwise, like what I always advise people is get a friend or Two

586
00:35:27,870 --> 00:35:31,110
who know how to read a wine label. Get a couple laptops

587
00:35:31,670 --> 00:35:34,990
and you do like a call and response. One is physically pulling up bottles. He's

588
00:35:34,990 --> 00:35:38,540
reading it off. Another is typing. It's going to autocomplete really

589
00:35:38,540 --> 00:35:42,180
quickly. And that's usually the most efficient way,

590
00:35:42,180 --> 00:35:44,820
like people using a laptop,

591
00:35:46,180 --> 00:35:49,980
understanding what data matters from the label. You know, the other

592
00:35:49,980 --> 00:35:52,860
approach is you can take pictures of the. You can scan the upc, you can

593
00:35:52,860 --> 00:35:56,620
scan the label on the front. I personally,

594
00:35:56,620 --> 00:35:59,940
maybe it's because I built the site in 2003. I'm very comfortable with a textual

595
00:35:59,940 --> 00:36:03,750
search in a laptop, but I'm kind of an old dinosaur. But the

596
00:36:03,750 --> 00:36:07,110
key thing is having someone there helping you and doing it. Call and response. I

597
00:36:07,110 --> 00:36:10,270
see people get through a thousand bottles in a couple of hours. Yeah.

598
00:36:10,990 --> 00:36:14,790
Harder, the more cramped it is. And if stuff's really piled up in fridges,

599
00:36:14,790 --> 00:36:18,270
then you're moving stuff and inventorying and putting it back.

600
00:36:19,070 --> 00:36:22,910
You can see, you can take it in pieces. Some people will do a shorthand.

601
00:36:22,910 --> 00:36:26,510
If you're very knowledgeable on wine, what the pros do is they'll do a shorthand

602
00:36:26,510 --> 00:36:30,300
inventory into a spreadsheet. You can email us the spreadsheet. We

603
00:36:30,300 --> 00:36:33,460
can basically then stick it into your account, match 90% of it.

604
00:36:34,580 --> 00:36:38,180
And that's the fastest way to go if you have any existing data dump

605
00:36:38,980 --> 00:36:42,700
or can do a shorthand inventory. But generally speaking, once you get past the

606
00:36:42,700 --> 00:36:45,940
project, then, boom, you've got the data. And it's actually not a lot of work

607
00:36:45,940 --> 00:36:49,580
to keep it up to date. Unless you're, I don't know, opening thousands of bottles

608
00:36:49,580 --> 00:36:53,260
a year. I mean, I open one most days. Of the week, so you have

609
00:36:53,260 --> 00:36:56,490
a gateway to the database

610
00:36:56,890 --> 00:37:00,650
from Excel or any CSV file or any.

611
00:37:00,730 --> 00:37:04,130
I'm coming from one package to another. Yeah. Any form of data, you get us

612
00:37:04,130 --> 00:37:07,890
a text file or a spreadsheet. I've got a set of folks on

613
00:37:07,890 --> 00:37:10,850
my team. They'll work with you to sort of figure out, okay, what columns are

614
00:37:10,850 --> 00:37:14,410
what. What information matters. We'll get it in our template. We'll get it in there.

615
00:37:14,970 --> 00:37:18,570
The technology can match 90% of the wine names, and then you

616
00:37:18,570 --> 00:37:21,970
just basically just have to match the wine names, and then we can suck in

617
00:37:21,970 --> 00:37:25,660
all the data from your spreadsheet. That's phenomenal. Yeah.

618
00:37:26,700 --> 00:37:30,380
Different ways to go. Yeah. After you zapier or anything for

619
00:37:30,380 --> 00:37:34,140
that. No. So here, by the way, here, the biggest complaint I ever hear, and

620
00:37:34,140 --> 00:37:37,020
I hear this a lot, it's kind of almost like a running joke. If I'm

621
00:37:37,020 --> 00:37:40,820
friends with someone and they inventory a seller, a big, bigger, more

622
00:37:40,820 --> 00:37:44,580
mature seller for the first time, usually I get an earful from the

623
00:37:44,580 --> 00:37:48,300
spouse because one of the first things they go and do is they

624
00:37:48,300 --> 00:37:51,260
bring up this report we have called Ready to Drink, which is sort of

625
00:37:51,260 --> 00:37:54,860
superimposing your wines. So let's say you have 12 bottles of

626
00:37:55,080 --> 00:37:58,400
wine and you have a 12 year drinking window, you know, 2020 to

627
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:02,240
2032. So here we are in 2025 and you haven't opened a single

628
00:38:02,240 --> 00:38:05,960
one yet. The basic idea, the algorithm is going to say, hey, you're five

629
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:09,800
behind, you should be drinking those or heaven forbid you're past the

630
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:13,440
window. So they bring up this report and usually it's like a crime

631
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:16,200
scene showing them all the wines in their cellar that they really

632
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:20,160
probably need to check in on because they, you know, they might be, they just

633
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:23,710
have too much or they're potentially past the window. So the spouse

634
00:38:23,710 --> 00:38:26,430
complaint is I don't just get to go and pick what I want to drink.

635
00:38:26,990 --> 00:38:29,550
I got to pull it from this report and it's always going to be at

636
00:38:29,550 --> 00:38:32,790
the top of the report. And I'm like, hey, sorry, that's between you and your

637
00:38:32,790 --> 00:38:36,470
spouse. And you know, but yeah, I can't help it. That's actually very funny

638
00:38:36,470 --> 00:38:40,190
because yesterday when I sold the company, I didn't, I didn't

639
00:38:40,190 --> 00:38:43,910
collect wine at home because I had a warehouse full of it and so just

640
00:38:43,910 --> 00:38:47,150
leave it here. But when I sold the company, I had to bring it home,

641
00:38:47,230 --> 00:38:50,190
some of it anyway. And I built the cellar in the kitchen. It's really nice,

642
00:38:50,190 --> 00:38:53,950
holds about 900 bottles, but I couldn't get to the top shelf. Once I

643
00:38:53,950 --> 00:38:57,790
stocked it with a ladder. It's a 14 foot ceiling and I got that vintage

644
00:38:57,790 --> 00:39:01,590
view thing where you put the box. So I finally worked

645
00:39:01,590 --> 00:39:05,350
with an iron monger and we put together this beautiful ladder and yesterday for

646
00:39:05,350 --> 00:39:08,150
the first time I got up there and that's where I found this Super Tuscan.

647
00:39:08,230 --> 00:39:11,430
Oh nice. And so I'm like. And I, and if I had cellar track, I

648
00:39:11,430 --> 00:39:15,030
would have known it existed. It was, wasn't tired, but it certainly was peaking and

649
00:39:15,030 --> 00:39:18,430
it was in a good spot where it was maybe, maybe. Maybe losing it was

650
00:39:18,430 --> 00:39:21,510
good in this case. Yeah. And I would have never gotten to it. I couldn't

651
00:39:21,510 --> 00:39:24,690
get this ladder but I would have known if I had it had. Sellout tracker.

652
00:39:26,450 --> 00:39:29,810
What, what, what do you tell then People that come. If, if I come to

653
00:39:29,810 --> 00:39:32,130
the site for the first time and I've Never been to your site many times.

654
00:39:32,290 --> 00:39:36,010
But am I trying to solve a problem typically

655
00:39:36,010 --> 00:39:39,410
as a consumer or am I just sort of pounding around, looking around, see what's

656
00:39:39,410 --> 00:39:42,730
going on and you know, what's the intent of the people that come to your

657
00:39:42,730 --> 00:39:45,690
site generally? I mean. Well, by the way most of the people coming to us

658
00:39:45,690 --> 00:39:49,420
these days by far are coming through our app app.

659
00:39:50,700 --> 00:39:54,420
20 years ago it was all Google and Websites. Now it's all the Apple

660
00:39:54,420 --> 00:39:57,820
App Store is driving thousands of people to us a day. It's mind

661
00:39:57,820 --> 00:39:59,980
blowing. And.

662
00:40:03,180 --> 00:40:06,900
Again I mentioned earlier, the biggest misconception is that Seller Tracker is

663
00:40:06,900 --> 00:40:10,660
just for if you want to catalog and track your seller. So we're going

664
00:40:10,660 --> 00:40:13,940
to try to figure out okay, how do we make the tools more approachable and

665
00:40:13,940 --> 00:40:17,620
make it more understandable that this is just a research, exploration and discovery

666
00:40:17,620 --> 00:40:21,150
tool and you can track your seller and you can use it to guide

667
00:40:21,150 --> 00:40:24,910
shopping if you want to do that. We've stayed very, very far from commerce by

668
00:40:24,910 --> 00:40:28,710
design. You know my joke is I'm the only person in or around the wine

669
00:40:28,710 --> 00:40:32,190
industry who doesn't try to sell you wine every five minutes. It's just not our

670
00:40:32,590 --> 00:40:36,190
role. We really try to just be very much for the consumer.

671
00:40:36,190 --> 00:40:39,550
So I think as long as someone is curious

672
00:40:39,710 --> 00:40:43,410
about what it is they're drinking and buying and sellering, etc.

673
00:40:44,200 --> 00:40:47,880
Then there's value. Seller tracker can deliver them either in the free version or even

674
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,240
more with a subscription. So that's what we're trying to get across to people is

675
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,760
it's a great tool for cataloging and or learning,

676
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:58,440
researching. I think it's wise the

677
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:01,920
DTC market and the Internet. Our first website is

678
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,520
1997 so we've been doing it for a long time or we had and I

679
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,880
was writing a website before we sold

680
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,730
that I think was probably the most robust, best DTC engine in the industry.

681
00:41:12,050 --> 00:41:15,810
Only because what we wrote in 1993 was

682
00:41:16,370 --> 00:41:20,130
still more capable in the back end than anything was available on

683
00:41:20,130 --> 00:41:23,850
the market, which always befuddled me. But we went through it

684
00:41:23,850 --> 00:41:27,530
so many times and fixed it so many times and realized all the features that

685
00:41:27,530 --> 00:41:30,890
we needed to make it work with the, with the granularity that

686
00:41:30,890 --> 00:41:34,450
customers expected these days. I just thought it was fascinating that nobody had

687
00:41:34,450 --> 00:41:38,200
produced that yet. It's probably better now and AI's probably changed that. But

688
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:42,040
do you even then is the feature set of

689
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:45,560
a piece of software like this just open ended for. I mean because

690
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:49,200
it, it becoming so much more, so much easier to modify

691
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:53,040
and to drag data in and to go look for data. Do you even

692
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,480
consider feature stats? Like yeah, well, I mean the feature, it's almost like

693
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:01,000
Microsoft Office. There's a lot there what we're trying to do. So I actually have

694
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:04,260
like, you know, I've grown the company. So when the, the pandemic started, the team

695
00:42:04,260 --> 00:42:07,940
was just four people. We're about 25 now. So we're really actually leaning

696
00:42:07,940 --> 00:42:11,740
in. And I'm excited because it means more innovation, more features,

697
00:42:11,740 --> 00:42:15,420
more stuff for consumers. But I actually have a marketing person and so

698
00:42:15,420 --> 00:42:18,739
there we've just tried to boil down to basic value

699
00:42:18,739 --> 00:42:22,460
propositions like this is a tool to help you find, you know, help

700
00:42:22,460 --> 00:42:26,140
you learn about new wines, find a fair, you know,

701
00:42:26,140 --> 00:42:29,060
if you're looking at a wine, figuring out is this a fair price to pay?

702
00:42:29,770 --> 00:42:33,490
Figuring out when to drink wines, just answering the most basic

703
00:42:33,490 --> 00:42:37,210
questions of will I like this wine increasingly with AI

704
00:42:37,210 --> 00:42:40,650
and sort of again recommendations and preference based stuff.

705
00:42:40,890 --> 00:42:44,570
So honestly I feel like we're actually just trying to answer

706
00:42:45,450 --> 00:42:49,130
really, really simple questions in a very consumer centric way to

707
00:42:49,130 --> 00:42:52,930
just make wine a bit more approachable. And if you have a big

708
00:42:52,930 --> 00:42:56,780
seller and are willing to do the work work and where our goal is to

709
00:42:56,780 --> 00:43:00,220
lower that work, there's a lot to be gained from that. But I also

710
00:43:00,220 --> 00:43:03,980
recognize it's either for, you know, not everyone wants to do that and that's

711
00:43:03,980 --> 00:43:07,700
okay as well. Well, you, you built it because you had a

712
00:43:07,700 --> 00:43:11,420
neat, you found a need in your own thing. I have to tell you this.

713
00:43:11,420 --> 00:43:15,020
The database I used forever to take every Tuesday I tasted wine

714
00:43:15,500 --> 00:43:18,620
came to me as a five and a quarter inch disk. And it was

715
00:43:19,420 --> 00:43:23,060
a test. They got a beta of the software and they never produced it.

716
00:43:23,060 --> 00:43:26,600
But I've been using that software ever since. And I wrote it into Windows

717
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:30,480
finally. But I was in DOS forever and I just

718
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:34,200
found it fascinating. Now it's just obviously very archaic. I don't use it anymore. But

719
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:38,480
you solved the problem, your own problem with this piece of software. And now you

720
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:41,360
have to sort of keep your ear to the ground as to what other issues

721
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:45,080
are coming up. And you know, the dynamic of the wine collectors changed,

722
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:47,880
the consumers changed, the technology.

723
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:52,320
The technology's changed, right? Like I built a very simple

724
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,850
website. I never imagined, you know, a smartphone

725
00:43:56,010 --> 00:43:59,770
and that this would be the dominant way that people would experience technology. I never

726
00:43:59,770 --> 00:44:03,610
imagined a camera. We don't do location based things yet, but I

727
00:44:03,610 --> 00:44:07,330
think increasingly it's not inconceivable

728
00:44:07,330 --> 00:44:10,930
that we want, we do want to do more to help people Just record their

729
00:44:10,930 --> 00:44:13,610
wine journey. So if you visit a winery or just when you're out at a

730
00:44:13,610 --> 00:44:17,450
restaurant, or imagine you walk into a restaurant and based on your

731
00:44:17,450 --> 00:44:20,670
location, it knows the wines that are there in the restaurant not.

732
00:44:21,550 --> 00:44:25,390
And it also knows because you know if you're using it what you like

733
00:44:25,550 --> 00:44:29,190
and it's bringing up for you, hey, here are the top 10 most interesting

734
00:44:29,190 --> 00:44:32,790
wines on the list that are a good deal and match well against what we

735
00:44:32,790 --> 00:44:36,430
know you like. Like, you know, like. It sounds. That's phenomenal. It

736
00:44:36,430 --> 00:44:40,190
sounds. We're not delivering that yet, but sort of rest scenarios like that's in

737
00:44:40,190 --> 00:44:43,990
reach. You're. Yeah, you're discussing it and imagine the

738
00:44:43,990 --> 00:44:47,590
database of, of videos of people. You'll the. We talk about the

739
00:44:47,590 --> 00:44:51,150
experiential part of wine and here you are sort of virtually creating that

740
00:44:51,150 --> 00:44:54,590
experiential part by, by showing up virtually in a restaurant

741
00:44:54,910 --> 00:44:58,710
that somebody else had been to in your database. And do you use. Do

742
00:44:58,710 --> 00:45:02,550
you do that? Where the user's experiences are being conveyed

743
00:45:02,550 --> 00:45:06,150
to each other as to what. What might happen? Like, you

744
00:45:06,150 --> 00:45:09,830
know, like the problem I have with Vivino, for instance, is I

745
00:45:09,830 --> 00:45:12,510
don't know what if that guy. What is it that rating? What does he know

746
00:45:12,510 --> 00:45:15,750
or she know about wine? But that, you know, that I would listen to them.

747
00:45:17,750 --> 00:45:21,310
Because seller tracker has grown very methodically over

748
00:45:21,310 --> 00:45:24,790
22 years. And because the original use case was really

749
00:45:24,790 --> 00:45:28,230
targeting collectors and wine geeks who were going to

750
00:45:28,230 --> 00:45:32,070
tastings and really meticulously writing about those, it

751
00:45:32,470 --> 00:45:36,070
for better or for worse, created a filter where it's more wine

752
00:45:36,070 --> 00:45:39,550
geeky. It's people who are really paying attention. You know,

753
00:45:39,550 --> 00:45:43,310
Vivino, I think they have 70 million app downloads. We have

754
00:45:43,310 --> 00:45:46,390
a million, you know, so. And again, about 10 million visitors a year to the

755
00:45:46,390 --> 00:45:50,150
website, et cetera, which is substantial. Yeah, it's. It's big numbers relative

756
00:45:50,150 --> 00:45:53,990
to the industry, but it's still small. But it's. Ours is more skewed to

757
00:45:53,990 --> 00:45:57,750
a more authoritative audience to a more geeky, more collectory audience.

758
00:45:57,750 --> 00:46:00,870
And not, not in a snobbish way, but it's a set of people who are

759
00:46:00,870 --> 00:46:04,590
really paying attention. And you know, look, there's

760
00:46:05,630 --> 00:46:09,430
people on there whose reviews I disagree with a great deal. There's people whose reviews

761
00:46:09,430 --> 00:46:13,270
on there I think are unbelievably insightful. And so the more that the tools and

762
00:46:13,270 --> 00:46:16,990
the technology can help me figure that out and present voices

763
00:46:16,990 --> 00:46:20,670
to me that are interesting based on my preferences and what I like

764
00:46:20,670 --> 00:46:24,390
and the similarities between the things that other people like and that I mean

765
00:46:24,390 --> 00:46:27,790
we're not at that level of suggestion yet. But the tasting notes in Solitrekr are

766
00:46:27,790 --> 00:46:31,110
public. People know they're public. There's about 12 million of them now.

767
00:46:32,470 --> 00:46:34,790
And so for the public facing information,

768
00:46:36,030 --> 00:46:39,870
absolutely. Using that to help filter and find voices and

769
00:46:39,870 --> 00:46:43,670
then therefore discover wines and producers that would match to

770
00:46:43,670 --> 00:46:47,390
what I care about is great. And then for the different kinds of

771
00:46:47,390 --> 00:46:51,150
AI and recommendation tools, you know, people, privacy

772
00:46:51,150 --> 00:46:54,990
is super important. It happens in a past life when I was at Microsoft building

773
00:46:54,990 --> 00:46:58,710
this error reporting stuff. Later on I was running security and

774
00:46:58,710 --> 00:47:02,110
privacy for Microsoft Office at the point where it was about a $20 billion business.

775
00:47:02,110 --> 00:47:05,820
So I'm a real stickler about that kind of stuff. So people can make their

776
00:47:05,820 --> 00:47:09,460
sellers on Seller tracker completely private, completely locked down,

777
00:47:09,620 --> 00:47:12,780
or they can open them up and let their friends see them or just have

778
00:47:12,780 --> 00:47:15,820
it open to the community. So you can go on Seller Tracker. And if you

779
00:47:15,820 --> 00:47:19,220
figure out who I am, user number one, Eric, you can see my collection. It's

780
00:47:19,220 --> 00:47:23,060
all there anyway, all the recommendation

781
00:47:23,060 --> 00:47:26,900
stuff. It has access to my data. The community as

782
00:47:26,900 --> 00:47:30,420
a whole doesn't necessarily. We have to make sure boundaries matter a lot lot.

783
00:47:30,580 --> 00:47:34,260
You can build that yourself. You can build into your own account what. Yes,

784
00:47:34,260 --> 00:47:38,020
Visibility. Very, very simple switches there. I had to. This is

785
00:47:38,020 --> 00:47:41,740
fascinating and amazing only not because I came from that

786
00:47:41,740 --> 00:47:45,500
industry and understand the headwinds to doing that in a much more simple

787
00:47:45,500 --> 00:47:49,100
way back then, but when you consider the idea. If you ask

788
00:47:49,100 --> 00:47:52,740
the Wine Institute of America how many people drink

789
00:47:53,220 --> 00:47:56,420
wine, they would probably say something like, they used to say something like

790
00:47:56,420 --> 00:48:00,130
25,000 people would raise their hand of a hundred. So if you take

791
00:48:00,130 --> 00:48:03,970
75000 people out of the equation, and I used to use this number for

792
00:48:03,970 --> 00:48:07,690
the subscription model because yeah, 25000 people raised their

793
00:48:07,690 --> 00:48:10,930
hand, they drink wine. But that includes the guy that goes to the, the woman

794
00:48:10,930 --> 00:48:14,650
or man that goes to Olive Garden orders the house Chianti. They, they drink

795
00:48:14,650 --> 00:48:18,410
wine. But they certainly want to. They certainly weren't a, a suspect or

796
00:48:18,410 --> 00:48:20,810
a prospect for the wine of the month club since they were going to be

797
00:48:20,810 --> 00:48:24,540
a subscription. And that would kind of apply here that there, there's

798
00:48:25,100 --> 00:48:28,940
what you've done to get 10 million visitors a year from an industry

799
00:48:28,940 --> 00:48:32,380
that, where most people raise their handy. I drink wine. But none of them,

800
00:48:32,860 --> 00:48:36,220
another 95% of those people would not consider software

801
00:48:36,460 --> 00:48:39,220
to run anything in their lives when it came to wine. And Here you have

802
00:48:39,220 --> 00:48:43,060
10 million visitors a year at least raising their hand to see what, what this

803
00:48:43,060 --> 00:48:46,580
thing is that's pretty phenomenal. Really? Yeah. I mean, for a lot of people, they

804
00:48:46,580 --> 00:48:49,900
may not even know they're on Solar Tracker because they're just typing into Google and

805
00:48:49,900 --> 00:48:52,060
we're what comes up because we're a big source of information

806
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:57,800
for us. The key differentiator for someone who can potentially benefit

807
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:01,600
again is what I would call curiosity. They're open, they want

808
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:05,440
to learn. They recognize that wine can be a journey. It's an

809
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:08,840
exploration, and there's always something new to learn. And so I think

810
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:13,080
for anyone in that frame of mind, Cellar Tracker can be just a

811
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:16,360
godsend to help make wine sort of more exciting, more approachable.

812
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:20,200
Well, I know I'm excited about going home and checking it out because,

813
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,040
you know, just when I put the ladder up yesterday, I had to move a

814
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:27,620
bunch of stuff away from this vintage view so I wouldn't crush it in case

815
00:49:27,620 --> 00:49:31,260
the ladder fell or leaned against it. And so now they're.

816
00:49:31,260 --> 00:49:34,820
Now the whole thing's screwed up. There's, you know, there's Barolo's next to Bordeaux.

817
00:49:34,900 --> 00:49:36,500
Who do I. You know, this is a mess.

818
00:49:38,900 --> 00:49:42,420
That's true. I'll start with the B. This has been fascinating conversation. We're already out

819
00:49:42,420 --> 00:49:46,100
of time, but I think we could easily run another 45 minutes without

820
00:49:46,100 --> 00:49:49,860
even thinking about it because of the intersection of technology and wine.

821
00:49:49,860 --> 00:49:53,590
It's a huge subject now anyway, with trying to help. Help

822
00:49:53,910 --> 00:49:57,630
the industry be more efficient. There's software out there

823
00:49:57,630 --> 00:50:01,470
where, you know, you can start a case of wine on a

824
00:50:01,470 --> 00:50:04,070
website and tell your friend that, you know, go fill it out, and he goes

825
00:50:04,070 --> 00:50:06,670
on, or she goes on and adds six bottles to that case, and all of

826
00:50:06,670 --> 00:50:10,150
a sudden you get the benefit of, you know, the volume and you split a

827
00:50:10,150 --> 00:50:13,790
case and it gets shipped differently. All kinds of interesting pieces of technology are

828
00:50:13,790 --> 00:50:17,350
happening, and I always wonder if they're just trying to. In your case,

829
00:50:17,350 --> 00:50:21,190
it's not. I'm not directing this comment at that because you're. You have

830
00:50:21,190 --> 00:50:24,970
a different approach, but I'm always wondering when it comes to

831
00:50:24,970 --> 00:50:28,730
the industry, how they're going after. I suppose

832
00:50:28,730 --> 00:50:31,130
it's trying to make it more efficient so people are

833
00:50:32,410 --> 00:50:35,970
involved with the industry. I don't think it's going to make them drink more. And

834
00:50:35,970 --> 00:50:39,569
I don't think it's going to raise the level of. Of

835
00:50:39,569 --> 00:50:43,210
interest in wine if you produce a better logistics system and get the wine

836
00:50:43,210 --> 00:50:46,170
shipped better. This product gives you

837
00:50:46,810 --> 00:50:50,610
more curiosity. And as you dig deeper into the things you're

838
00:50:50,610 --> 00:50:53,380
doing and into your cellar and all of a Sudden you learn, you know, where,

839
00:50:53,540 --> 00:50:57,100
you know, Canube Hill is in Barolo. You know, you

840
00:50:57,100 --> 00:51:00,940
obviously figured that out because you were playing around with Cellar track, and that's. That

841
00:51:00,940 --> 00:51:03,700
part's really cool. I think it's really cool. Yeah.

842
00:51:05,300 --> 00:51:08,499
Thank you for the time today, and I hope we can do it again. Absolutely.

843
00:51:08,499 --> 00:51:12,220
Yeah. As I said, things are moving and changing quickly, so there will always be

844
00:51:12,220 --> 00:51:15,860
more to talk about. And I think hopefully I lived up to sort of the

845
00:51:16,020 --> 00:51:19,820
way I sold myself of being a geek. But I, you know,

846
00:51:19,820 --> 00:51:23,400
I love wine, I love technology. It's. It's very fun to bring them together, and

847
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:27,400
it's fun accidentally having, you know, vine in my name.

848
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:31,400
So that. Which is very clever on your own, but I'm not going to

849
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:35,080
call it geeks anymore. It's passionate. Yeah. I'm. I'm tech

850
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:38,920
passionate and I'm wine passionate. As a little kid, I got

851
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:42,120
labeled geek early on, and I wear it as a badge of honor. But, yes,

852
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,720
I am passionate. And. And again, wine is.

853
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:50,040
I just. Just again, I can remember that first trip, but

854
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:53,760
wine is. The world is complicated, and

855
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,640
I think there is nothing better than sitting down with friends and family, nice meal,

856
00:51:57,640 --> 00:52:00,800
nice bottle of wine from a producer, you know,

857
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:04,880
winemaker you've met. You know, like, it's, like, it's just about being

858
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:08,600
social and maybe making the world a little less complicated.

859
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:12,400
So solar Chair helps people along the way, then.

860
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:16,040
Awesome. I've done my part. Therein lies the rub of a good glass of

861
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,560
wine. I'm going to call it an honest glass of wine indeed.

862
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:21,320
Cheers. All right, cheers.