Social wine site Uvinum uncorks in the US

[Spain] Just last week, Uvinum a Spanish grown social wine recommendation portal took their first step into the English speaking market with the launch of the UK version.

Today Uvinum uncorks in the US, in a further effort to reach into mature ecommerce markets as part of their very quick, international expansion.

Uvinum, led by founders Nico Bour, Albert Garcia and Albert Lopez (all ex-Softonic), launched in Spain barely 3 months ago, with a current database of 7,400 wines and claiming 30,000 monthly visits.  The concept is very similar to US centered Corkd and Snooth.

What’s interesting about Uvinum, however, and ought to make it attractive both to wine lovers and to online wine shops and wine producers is their proprietary recommendation technology.  The technology evaluates user behavior, interaction, reviews and preferences and compares them with those of other users, to find similarities,  and then make segmented recommendations to help with wine discovery.  This of course also happens to be the foundation of their business model. They sign on advertisers and offer Uvinum as a specialized affiliate for online wine shops that integrates directly with the shops’ inventory.

CEO Nico Bour is humble. He knows that the US market isn’t anything like Spain.  Born to wine makers himself, he’s well aware of how entirely different wine culture is from country to country. As a result, the company plans to adapt to each market differently. For example, in order to ensure the reliability of recommendations for each market, only US residents will be able to score and leave their reviews on the US website.