Heini Zachariassen – Founder Vivino

Vivino

The app that changed the world of wine

Having trouble selecting the right wine to buy? Vivino is the world’s largest online wine marketplace and most frequently downloaded wine app, powered by a community of millions of wine lovers.

Vivino’s unique wine shopping experience uses community data to suggest personalised wine recommendations, making the discovery and purchase of wine fun, accessible, and effortless for wine drinkers at all levels.

Enjoy life through drinking wine or Long live the wine are just two interpretations of “Vivino”, the name of the wine app that heralded a new era in buying wine.

How it all started

In 2008, serial entrepreneur Heini Zachariassen was on his way to a dinner party in Copenhagen when he stopped at a supermarket to buy a bottle of wine. Choosing the right bottle from this wall full of wines proved intimidating and mystifying. “I was thinking, ‘What the heck do I buy?’” says Zachariassen. At that moment, the seeds were planted for creating an app that would make the world of wine more accessible, and a bottle of wine as easy to evaluate, understand, and purchase as a book or movie. In 2010, within two years of this epiphany, Zachariassen had teamed up with a former colleague, the product developer Theis Søndergaard, and together they launched Vivino.

A hell of a success

Aimed at acting as a “sommelier in your pocket”, Vivino was created to simplify the wine-buying process and make it less daunting. “The main driving force behind building the app was that original feeling of ignorance I had as I aimlessly stared at the wall of wine,” Zachariassen explains. Having previously worked for a cybersecurity software company, he was well versed in tech, and felt his lack of wine expertise would play to his advantage while creating an app for similarly novice consumers with an interest in wine and a thirst for finding out more.

Wine explorer

Recently, the app launched the Wine Explorer feature that allows users to search for a wine by price, style, taste profile, country, grape, and food pairing. The smartest feature of the Vivino app is the Label Scanner, which can bring up all the information you need about a bottle of wine by simply downloading a photo of its

“EVEN FOR WINE CONNOISSEURS, THE APP OFFERS A BOUNTY OF DATA AND RECOMMENDATIONS”

label. While trying to make a snap decision in an off-licence or supermarket, you can find out if the bottle you are holding would be a good deal, and whether it, for instance, has the smoothness or dryness you are looking for in a wine. While planning a meal for the weekend, you might choose from wines that would pair best with pasta, or read up on categories like “Fantastic South African reds” or “Great value whites”. With over 300 distinct styles, the app will show you how many you have tried, and you can sort the wines by everything from grape type to food pairings. Even for wine connoisseurs, the app offers a bounty of data and recommendations.

When you started, did you connect with experts in the wine world?

“Honestly, no. The people that did know the wine world said to me: “’You’re insane! First and foremost because there are so many wines out there. You should start with Bordeaux and only do Bordeaux.’ But I liked the naivety of saying ‘Hey, no, we’re going to do this’.”

Users can now buy wines using Vivino. Was that always the plan?

“It was definitely in our head from day one, but we started doing it in 2016, slowly. It was a tricky thing to start up. We thought we’d just find some wine stores, put them in there, and it would all be amazing. It was not. Figuring out which partners we should work with took us at least a year. Now we’re probably the biggest online wine seller anywhere in the world.”

Buying the right wine every time…

“You take a photo of any wine label or restaurant wine list, or search by wine, and you will instantly see the wine’s rating, reviews, price, tasting notes, and suggested food pairings. With one click you can purchase your favourite bottles online; in the app or on our website. And then the fun part starts: add your ratings and reviews, keep track of the wines you like, and discover new recommendations. Save the bottles you purchased in your virtual cellar, so you always know what you have on hand. And with the largest community of wine drinkers, a lot of great advice is available on Vivino. Our real ratings will help you pick the best wine every time. To showcase our tremendous success,” founder Heini Zachariassen smiles, “these are the stats: • 53 million app downloads; • 20,000 new users every day; • 14 million wines; • 1.6 billion wine labels scanned; • 77 million reviews; • 215 million ratings; • 237,000 wineries featured; • 700 retail partners in 17 countries.”

The ranking of the Aaldering wines

Gert-Jan Posthuma: “We are proud that we always score between 4 and 5 stars with our wines. We really appreciate these ratings because they come from individuals/end users. And not from a tasting panel of a wine competition. Aaldering is often among the 2 or 3% best wines of Stellenbosch and among the 7 or 8% best wines in the world.”