Delectable, an iOS app that lets you find and share wine recommendations, has announced a $3 million Series A round led by Deep Fork Capital (early investors in Trulia and Oodle), DN Capital, and Ceyuan Ventures. Other investors include Max Levchin, David Sacks (the founder of Yammer), Joes Lonsdale, and Gary Vaynerchuck. Delectable will use its new funding to grow its engineering team and technology.
The app has two main functions. The first lets you take a photo of a wine bottle label and rate how you liked it. Then the app uses proprietary technology to identify the wine, label it, and refer you to other reviews. If you see a promising recommendation from another user, you can purchase the wine directly through Delectable. The company says it currently has two million wines in its database.
Delectable’s competitors include Drync and Vivino, both of which TechCrunch has covered before. All apps let you scan labels, share wine recommendations with other users, and find places to buy your new favorite vintage.
One key way in which Delectable differentiates, however, is by offering recommendations from professional sommeliers. This means that even if you don’t have a lot of friends on the app, you can still pick up some ideas for your next bottle.
Furthermore, since 856 million total wine gallons were consumed in the U.S. in 2012 (or 2.73 gallons per version), a number that has increased every year since 1991, there looks like there should be plenty of room to grow for apps that serve connoisseurs.
In a statement, Delectable founder and CEO Alex Fishman said, “Building the data set of every wine and ensuring highly accurate label recognition are just the beginning of enormous challenges we are addressing. This round of funding enables us to continue building the most talented team of engineers to ever work in this space.”