Wednesday 14 March 2012

Mood and wine matching

Forget food and wine matching, 2012 is all about mood and wine matching. Wine retailer Oddbins has launched a new website where customers can select wines according to their mood. As reported on thedrinksbusiness.com, the site features suggested wine pairings for times of passion, contemplation and even adversity, along with wines suited to staying in, going out, or celebrating.

After a bad date, the site suggests drowning your sorrows with a bottle of Morellino di Scansano Ventoso 2010, preferably while listening to Portishead. It also recommends “writing your life story” with the help of a bottle of Bourgogne Pinot Noir 2009 Nuiton-Beaunoy, and a zippy Quinta de Azevedo Vinho Verde 2010 while watching motor racing.

The quirky new site offers a music pairing for each of its wines, from Taylor Swift (above) with Montemar Malbec, and Elbow with Grange Des Roc Blancs 2009, to Abdullah Ibrahim “after a long birthday dinner” with Churchill’s 10 Year Old Tawny Port. For less mood-driven consumers, the site also features the more conventional categories of country, grape, price and style.

The retailer plans to increase the number of wines on the site from 100 to 500 in the coming weeks. "E-commerce is an extremely important part of the new Oddbins. The design and content of the new website is in keeping with the Oddbins philosophy of making wine as accessible as possible for consumers,” said managing director Ayo Akintola.

Love it or loathe it, Oddbins is at least making an effort to inject a bit of fun and humour into wine buying. Wine desperately needs to reach out to younger consumers, and music matching is an ideal way of making wine more appealing to a younger audience. Most of us pick wines to suit our mood, albeit subconsciously, in the same way a song will strike a chord one day and jar the next. I’ve yet to put the music and wine matching theory to the test – have any matches worked for you?

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