About Us
The Mission
The mission of taste56 is to demystify and democratize how consumers buy wine in-stores and online. taste56 curates the best wines across all styles and then gives you the tools to curate on your own.
The Catalyst
We started taste56 because shopping for wine is intimidating, confusing, and dated. It was clear to us that there is a better way than what currently exists.
Wine is a dynamic and complicated subject. There are different grape varietals, terminology, geography, and foreign-sounding brands, making wine an exciting journey, but retail navigation both in-stores and online is neither intuitive or educational, adding to the frustration and the fear of looking silly.
Through thoughtful digital, physical, and hospitality design, we have created a shopping experience whose by-products are education, fun, and approachability providing you the unique benefit of learning about what kind of wine you like, and why!
Our Solution:
Empowerment & Personalization
Unlike the current retail wine world, you no longer have to shop by label, or risk uneven recommendations. taste56 not only curates the best brands, but also empowers you to curate your own experiences and learn what wine is best for YOU, rather than being told what you should like.
Who We Are
taste56 is an innovative physical and digital retail model that combines uniquely designed stores with tasting rooms that feature a rotating selection of 56 wines organized by our proprietary taxonomy, ‘Palate Character’, with every wine available to taste.
Our Palate Character based organizational model makes wine shopping more approachable, intuitive, and navigable than by grape varietal or region—the predominant and flawed approach used by the vast majority of wine retailers today—and neither of which tells you much about what is in the bottle.
What is Palate Character?
Palate Character is a much more natural and intuitive way to organize wine than the more conventional approach of grape varietal or region. It refers to the style of wine, rather than the grape varietal or where it was grown.
As you begin to shop using Palate Character not only will you receive targeted recommendations, you will learn more not only about wines you like, but more broadly about the world of wine, empowering to explore new wines with the knowledge that they fit YOUR Palate Character.
At the core of our Palate Character design is our proprietary algorithm recommendation system which was researched to determine the most important and objective attributes of wine that can most meaningfully predict personal preference.
The power of the digital sommelier
The Digital Somm is a powerful recommendations system that empowers you to curate on your own and learn what wine is best for you, rather than have someone tell you what you should like. Think of the Digital Somm as a fashion or music recommendation app, but rather than introduce you to music or clothing that fits your taste, it creates a digital fingerprint of the style of wine you prefer based on how you rate wines you’ve tried. You will never have to shop uneven recommendations again.
Wine is a dynamic and complicated subject. There are different grape varietals, terminology, geography, and foreign-sounding brands, making wine an exciting journey, but as you know, it is also intimidating and confusing. Retail navigation – both online and in-stores – is neither intuitive nor educational, adding to your potential frustration and fear of looking silly. Even if you are lucky enough to receive knowledgeable assistance, they do not know all of the wines, and they certainly do not understand your preferences.
The Digital Somm is the answer to that problem. Based on your ratings, the Digital Somm not only provides personalized recommendations, but also, the more you use it, the better it understands your preferences, and the more tailored the recommendations become.
