For many, choosing a bottle of wine is like walking into a grocery store blindfolded and throwing random items into your cart hoping they taste good.
Most of us know next to nothing about wine. We select bottles based on the aesthetic of their packaging, price or recommendations from our more urbane friends and relatives.
This process can be stressful and time-consuming, and worst of all, you often end up going home with a $20 bottle that tastes like grape juice gone bad.
Back in 2010 Richard Yau (pictured below) encountered this problem frequently. He was earning dual bachelor’s degrees in finance and music at MIT, and like many of his college friends, he was “pretty into wine.” 
Since he had never taken any classes on wine, however, Yau said he chose bottles by looking at labels and the prices and buying whatever seemed most reasonable for his wallet.
After graduating from MIT, Yau began cultivating two of his biggest passions: entrepreneurship and wine. He worked for health and wellness startup NutraClick for a few years and enrolled in a couple of Wine Studies courses at Boston University, even taking the Level 1 Introductory Sommelier Course & Examination.
By 2014, Yau was itching to launch a startup.
He and his friend Joe Laurendi, a fellow wine lover and MIT grad, had an idea: “Most people who are 25 aren’t going to take two semester-long classes to learn about wine,” Yau said. “We thought, ‘Maybe we can create something that helps people learn about wine.’”
Blending Yau’s business acumen with Laurendi’s background in mathematics and computer science, Bright Cellars was born.
Bright Cellars is a subscription wine experience that matches members with personalized monthly selections. Users take a “Wine Quiz” with questions that help Bright Cellars’ unique algorithm build their flavor profile using 18 attributes.
Based on their answers, Bright Cellars then matches users with four wines, which are shipped to them for $60 each month. Months can be skipped and memberships can be canceled at anytime, but the more wines users review, the more accurate their matches will become.
That’s because users are encouraged to review each wine, marking their favorites as well as the bottles they don't like.
The quiz is what sets Bright Cellars apart from most wine subscription memberships, Yau said.
“We ask people non-wine related questions to create a starting place for their taste profile,” Yau said.
These include questions about sweetness, bitterness and astringency, as well as the user’s opinion on flavors like green apple, cherry and white chocolate.
What excites Yau is Bright Cellars’ ability to connect users with wines they would never have experienced otherwise.
“What do people drink when they’re coming out of college?” Yau asked. “They’ve heard of Barefoot and Yellowtail, but there is so much other wine out there. If customers say, ‘This is the only cabernet I’ve ever liked and I never would have tried it without this quiz,’ that’s exactly what we want to hear.”
Aside from helping users explore new wines, Yau said Bright Cellars makes the world of wine –– traditionally seen as “snobby and inaccessible” –– much more democratic.
To this end, Bright Cellars abstracts away from what a wine is called or what its label looks like and instead focuses on users’ flavor preference.
Through user feedback, Yau said the company has discovered interesting flavor nuances that surprised Bright Cellars. For example, users preferred merlot to the more popular pinot noir, and didn’t seem to care whether bottles had screw-off caps or corks.
Today, Bright Cellars has procured about 300 different wines, which are constantly in rotation.
Yau thinks the future of Bright Cellars is, well, bright. He said he hopes to leverage the rich user data the company is gathering to change the wine industry.
“I think we have a fantastic opportunity with this data-driven approach to wine,” Yau said. “We’re able to discover and help our members find their favorite wine. Seeing which ones are winning items could change which wines we see in restaurants in a year.”
Photos via Shutterstock
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