How to Get the Most out of Snooth
Why Snooth?
Here are some of the reasons why you may want to use Snooth. You can;
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- *Search the “world’s largest wine database” (1 million + ratings);
- Rate, review and keep track of the wines you have tasted;
- Receive personalized wine recommendations;
- Find new wines, and find a retailer with a click;
- Find friends with similar tastes.*
Searching Snooth
When you first arrive at Snooth’s homepage, you get a simple search box made famous and popular by Google. This may be overwhelming, “what do I search for?” Because most people aren’t used to searching for wine in this way, Snooth gives you examples of popular searches. After doing some sample searches, you get an idea of how it works. This search engine can be used in many different ways
Specific Searches: If you are looking for a specific wine and vintage, Snooth’s search engine would be a good place to start. Type in the name of the wine and vintage and see if it’s in the data base. Often times, the same wine will show up multiple times. When you find the wine you are looking for, click the link to visit that wines page.
General Searches: This is where the true value of Snooth’s search engine lies. Because there are so many wines in the database, you can use it to find new wines you may like. If you do a general search like “pinot noir,” you get thousands of results. So what does that mean to you, probably not much. But you can refine your search. Here are the features of the “refine your search” function;
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- *“All wines” or “Wines in Stock”: by picking “wines in stock” it will only show you wines that are carried by Snooth’s affiliates. That means you can visit a retailer that carries the wine with one click;
- Price: choose the wine’s price range, ie: $0 – $50;
- Vintage: you can choose a particular vintage, ie: 2002;
- Type: you can choose the type of wine, ie: red, white, sparkling;
- Region: you can choose a particular region, ie: California, Spain, France;
- Varietal: you can choose the varietal, ie: Cabernet Sauvignon;
- Tags: and you can search by tasting tags, ie: strawberry, stone fruit;*
Wow, that’s a quite a list of options to choose. Here is an example of how you can use it to find a new wine.
> Joe likes Pinot Noir. He’d heard good things about California Pinot Noir, but doesn’t know where to start. So he brings up Snooths homepage, and searchs “Pinot Noir.” Thousands of results come up. He’s looking to buy, so he picks the wines in stock option. Since Joe’s not rich, he’s looking for a bottle under $40, setting the price range from 0 – 40. Joe then picks California as the region. The results are narrowed to a hundred, and a ranked based on the wine’s Snooth rating. He now can look through the wines to find something he will like.
Rating Wines on Snooth
This is one of the most straightforward and easy rating systems I’ve used. To rate a wine, go to a wines page, then scroll you mouse over the wine glasses under the Snooth Rank icon. You can rank a wine from 1 glass to 5 glasses, with 5 being the best. Once you rate a wine, it gets saved into your profile, and you can review it if you want.
Why you should rate wines: Recommendations
Once you rate five wines, Snooth’s recommendation engine will start recommending wines to you. If you rate wines that they are not familiar with, Snooth will ask you to rate some popular wines. After doing that, the engine will begin recommending wines to you. The more wines you rank, the better your recommendations become.
Reviews
One of the great things about Snooth is that it aggregates reviews from several places. These include, but are not limited to cellar tracker, wine spectator, wine advocate, international wine cellar and wine.com. This is nice because it shows relevant information about the wine you may be considering buying.
Snooth Friends
Like many other web applications, you can add friends on Snooth. While there is limited interaction between friends, you can see what they are drinking and reviewing. To find friends, you can search specifically by full name, screen name or email. Snooth also recommends friends to you called “your nearest neighbors.” These are you people who have rated and enjoyed the same wines as you have.
Snooth Widget and Facebook Application
Snooth has recently released a widget that you can put on your website, blog or personal webpage. It shows the recent wines that you have rated. This is a good way to let your readers or friends know what you have been drinking and what you thought about it. Snooth also has a facebook application that brings all of the functionality of Snooth straight onto your facebook profile.
Summary
Snooth has the most ratings and reviews of any wine web application I’ve used. Its a good way to find new wines you may like, thought the wine search feature or the wine recommendation engine. It will be interesting to see how Snooth evolves over time. It seems that its features will only get better as more and more people use it.
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Comments & Reviews
August 16, 2007 | Big Red
They claim to have the "worlds largest database" where did they get all that wine information from? any ideas?
August 16, 2007 | Ryan Fujiu
bigred, they pull reviews from cellar tracker, wine spectator, wine enthusiast and a few other sources and aggregate them on their site. cellar tracker has over 350,000 wine reviews alone, these are the ones i feel are the most helpful when searching for wine.
July 29, 2009 | Gyeric Gonzales
I'm new to the network, welcome me in!
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