We’ve all been there: rushing to a party or friends’ place and needing to pick up a bottle of wine last minute, or needing to find a quality wine that is guaranteed to impress even if you’ve never tasted it yourself. Finding a place that sells wine: not super difficult. Finding an actual wine shop or cellar that knows their stuff: more difficult. Knowing which wine you should grab amongst all the aisles of bottles: much more difficult.
A new Boston location-based iPhone app, RedWhiteBOS, aims to help you in just this type of situation. How is this app different than other wine recommendation apps like Hello Vino? RedWhiteBOS is honing in on the actual location – those full-fledged wine shops with staff that actually know their stuff, versus your every day City Convenience on the corner. The app surfaces wine shops in the Boston area based on your current location. The company is working with owners at these locations to craft content, in-person events, and surface a handful of wine suggestions straight from the experts’ mouths.
With RedWhiteBOS’ location-centric content, when you enter these shops with vast and often intimidating selections, the app offers a handful of recommended and featured wines you know will be exceptional. You can then quickly purchase one of these and be on your way, or ask someone in the shop for others that compare, or perhaps that are at a slightly lower price point. And moving forward, RedWhiteBOS will be creating even more content, like videos, helping you learn more about different aspects and selections within each wine shop.
From a business perspective, the idea is to “close the loop” for wine shoppers, bringing them to wine shop doors and then helping them make a great purchase before leaving that will draw them back into the store the next time they’re shopping for wines. We spoke with founder of RedWhiteBOS and 365daysofwine.com, Cathy Huyghe, to learn more about where the company, which she launched in October, is in terms of development and her vision for RedWhiteBOS app moving forward.
Huyghe’s recent focus has been uploading video content to the app, which are also available online through their website. So far these videos have been conducted with two local wine shops: Wine Bottega and Colonial Spirits. The videos offer content from wine shop owners and attendants speaking to aspects of their shops or particular wines. In this video with Colonial Spirits, for example, the attendant dives into why the shop actually offers a small selection of beers that wine lovers who dislike beer will actually enjoy.
Huyghe has also been creating real-life community around the app with her Red White Tasting Crew, which kicked off this January. The group of 30 dedicated wine lovers has already had several meetups hosted at and by local wine shops. ” We meet once a month to taste, tweet, network, and generate buzz about the wines and shops,” Huyghe shared. The next meetup will be March 2nd from 6-7:30pm.
Aside from this content and meetups, Huyghe has also been partnering with local outlets like BostonChefs.com, where she offers beverage features. Most recently she partnered with VinTank in Napa, a digital think tank for the wine industry, and is looking forward to doing more work with them.
And Huyghe isn’t stopping in Boston. In fact, this spring she will be launching RedWhiteSanFran and this summer RedWhiteNY. And she has more upcoming features to release on the app, including a RedWhite Wine Club. “This will leverage the power of our network of partner stores to put wines in the hands of wine lovers in Massachusetts that we don’t usually have access to,” explained Huyghe.
Next time you’re looking for quality recommendation turn to RedWhiteBOS! Download their iPhone app here and their web-based app for Blackberry, Android, and other smartphones.
