Published June 2016
Wine + education + fun + engagement + accessibility = win
It’s a simple formula, but one which many companies have tried and failed over the years. Le Petit Ballon reckons they’ve got it sussed.
Formed in France in 2009, Philip McNee of Le Petit Ballon says the company had a simple aim: to help people “discover [...]
Le Petit Ballon
Published June 2016
Wine + education + fun + engagement + accessibility = win
It’s a simple formula, but one which many companies have tried and failed over the years. Le Petit Ballon reckons they’ve got it sussed.
Formed in France in 2009, Philip McNee of Le Petit Ballon says the company had a simple aim: to help people “discover [...]
How to build a killer product
Published May 2016
Every product and project is different, but there are still a few key rules that increase your chance of success. I was lucky enough to be able to share some of these at ICCWS this week.
The premise of my talk was that we should only produce things that people need, not what we think they need. This applies to websites, app [...]
An addictive game
Published April 2016
I’m not one for Candy Crush or such distractions, but I have to admit that I’m slightly addicted to a game on my iPhone at the moment: the WSET Wine Game.
Made by Moonshine Media on behalf of WSET, the game has six levels of increasing difficulty and asks players to locate the wine region on a world map. For example, leve [...]
Vivino: the best wine app ever?
Published February 2016
I think I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for: an app that gives you enough information about nearly any wine at the click of a button. It may not be perfect or all-encompassing, but for 99% of people, it will be more than enough 99% of the time. Vivino is not new (it was founded in Denmark in 2010), but it has [...]
New domain names to challenge GIs?
Published 4 January 2016
The two gTLDs of .wine and .vin become available in January 2016. As well as having financial implications for the wine industry, some say it challenges national and regional classification systems too.
What is a gTLD?
Every website has a unique address (aka a ‘domain name’) which references a specific ‘resourc [...]
Bigpinots is going to sleep for 2015
Some of you know that my day job is coaching businesses (particularly software teams). In 2014, I set up my own business. Anyone who has their own business knows that it can be quite time-consuming. So, I have taken the difficult decision to focus 100% on my business and set Bigpinots (the blog and the person) on hold until 2016.
Thank you to [...]
Made by Jacob
Published 27 March 2015
How does a large wine producer connect with the wider public? Normally, they produce a nasty, gimmicky website which has little substance, style or value.
Jacob’s Creek currently has a campaign, called Made By, that is actually pretty good though. Using the knowledge that people love answering questionnaires abou [...]
Restaurant markups uncovered
Selling a bottle of wine in a restaurant for three times what it cost is pretty normal in the UK. However, would you want to pay 600% the cost? How do you know which wines have bigger mark-ups? With difficulty.
Until now.
Raisinable is a new app available on iPhone and Android that gives you an idea of the markup being added by a restaurant. [...]
The ultimate corkscrew?
@CoravinUK Do you insert gas into the bottle after extracting wine? Otherwise, if you drink 50cl of 75cl, won’t oxidisation start?
I thought that I had found the ultimate corkscrew: the Coravin™ System inserts a “thin, non-coring, medical grade needle” to pierce the cork (and capsule) in a bottle of wine, which [...]
Gordon’s Alive
Published 30 July 2014
Which state in America am I?
The first vines were planted here in 1825 by the Hudson’s Bay Company
I have more glaciers than any other state.
I do not levy a personal income tax
amazon.com is based here
Jimi Hendrix was born here
Starbucks was founded here
The world’s richest man, Bill Gates, lives here
The answer is [...]