Can Palate Club Blend Algorithms and Sommelier Expertise Into a Wine Club? (Actually, No, But They Are Not Alone.)

 

DISCLOSURE: Wine Industry Insight Publisher Lewis Perdue has designed and implemented 4 wine recommenders over the past 25 years, beginning during the time he was the founding publisher of Wine Business Monthly. With each implementation Lew learned the source of how the system failed. Then he built another system correcting the newly discovered problem.

 

He has continued the search because he got sick of losing to the house in the Vino Casino.

 

Each system got better as he determined more accurate methods.

 

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This article asks: “Can Palate Club Blend Algorithms and Sommelier Expertise Into a Wine Club?”

 

The answer is: “no.”

 

Given that genes determine that no two people taste the same wine the same way, systems like this one that rely primarily on flavor profiling and matching are doomed.

 

There are other significant reasons for the failure of this and other current recommendation methods.

 

Those were examined in detail in the six-article, Wine Industry Insight series: The Path To Netflix-Quality Wine Recommendations Leads Through The Doors of Perception.

 

Perdue also tested the system (Profile matching: a test of the Palate Club system) and Club W (How sensory taste profiling stops short of individual recommendation accuracy) found them , and every other other club system so far inacccurate — Rating The Rating Systems

 

Lew has been writing about rating systems for the past seven years at Recommendation Insights. The six-part Wine Industry Insight series is an updating and summarizing of the Recommendation Insights articles.