How To Make Buying Wine Online Ridiculously Easy
Sommelier Sarah Tracey buying wine online.
I love this new free tool: Sippd! Read on to learn how it works.
I’ve spent a lot more time buying wine online these days, and wine.com has become one of my go-to wine shopping sites. They have a great selection, and they ship pretty much everywhere-- as a sommelier who’s been organizing virtual tastings for wine lovers all over the country, that’s essential! I’ve selected a lot of wine for clients from the site, and their customer service is truly fantastic. Knowing that any issues with orders will be fixed right away helps make the online wine buying experience feel less stressful.
Seeing so many endless wine options is exciting for a wine professional like me; I’ve had the opportunity to taste thousands of wines in my career, so I usually know what I’m looking for. But, the vast selection can be intimidating if you’re just an everyday wine lover that wants to try something new! Because I can’t personally advise each of you on your online wine purchases (there would need to be a lot more of me!), I was excited when the team at Sippd invited me to test drive their new free tool that connects directly to wine.com to help you find the bottles that match with your own tastes. It kinda feels like online dating, but for wine! I was really impressed by how it works, and would definitely recommend it for any curious wine lover who’s just getting into buying wine online.
The Sippd Chrome extension makes buying wine online easy.
Here’s how Sippd works:
Install the free Sippd browser extension from the Chrome Web Store here. (P.S. If you're not on your laptop just yet, create your mobile profile now.)
Easy peasy!
Choose the wine styles you like
This part is simple… are you into California Red Blends, or are you more of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape lover? If you just know you like Chardonnay, you can select that. Go very specific (getting into regions) or as broad as you like (i.e., grape varieties you’ve enjoyed in the past) with this step.
Rate three wines you’ve tried in the past
If you’ve shopped on wine.com before, Sippd will ask you to pick three wines from your past orders and give them a 1-5 star rating, and say whether you’d buy it again! If you don’t have a history with wine.com, you can choose famous wines from a list or search for specific wines. Your ratings will start to create your ‘taste match.’
Browse your Taste Matches (I told you it was like online dating!)
This is where it gets really cool… you’ll get wine recommendations powered by the Sippd algorithm, and the more wines you rate, the better the tool gets at predicting your best matches! I was honestly crazy impressed: the first wine recommended for me was Ciro Picariello Fiano di Avellino 2018 (I’m obsessed with this wine and have had it on my wine lists for more than one restaurant!). The second was San Felice Il Grigio Chianti Classico Riserva 2016, which I also love. You can order these wines with more confidence that they fit your palate, and you can also filter by price, region, grape variety, or even food pairings!
See those purple percentages? That’s Sippd at work, showing you how likely it is that the wine will be a match!
Save wines to your Wish List
This is a cool feature I really like. Sometimes I’m not ready to purchase a wine just yet, but I want to remember it for a future occasion (you can even sign up for notifications when the wines on your wish list go on sale!).
View your Ratings History
Another killer perk of Sippd… sometimes I have a hard time keeping track of the wines I’ve tasted and what I thought of them, so this is a great way to document your wine journey!
Is Sippd right for you?
At the end of the day, of course, there’s no one hundred percent foolproof way to guarantee you’re going to love every wine you buy online, but Sippd is an excellent tool that will make buying wine online less confusing and more fun! I know it even helps me as a sommelier to better understand the taste preferences and palate of my new clients, especially during times like this where we can't meet in person...
I truly believe the real key to enjoying wine is decoding your own palate and learning what wines you like. Point scores from wine critics are useless if you don’t share that critic’s tastes, and crowd-sourced wine ratings are unreliable (some apps are like Yelp for wine-- I’m not sure how trustworthy all those reviewers are!). What you want to focus on are the wines you’ve personally enjoyed, and find more of those! Using Sippd is a great way to start.
Sippd is an excellent new free tool for buying wine online.
Thanks to Sippd for sponsoring this post.