Since Winescorecard.com launched about 6 months ago or so, we’ve received many questions about how it works and how to use it better.

The concept behind PalatePrint^TM is to keep track of what wine you have enjoyed in the past, and which wines you didn’t think were so good. We store your “taste history” - your PalatePrint^TM in our database. We can then compare your PalatePrint^TM to another user’s, sort of like how the FBI searches for fingerprint matches. When we find a match it implies that your palate, what kind of wines you enjoy, are similar to another user’s preferences.

We use those similarities to generate a score for every wine in our database based on how often someone with a similar PalatePrint^TM enjoyed it. These scores are then used to suggest a wine to you. Keep in mind that the exact algorithm is actually pretty complicated, and is available only at Winescorecard.com.

The trick to getting better wine recommendations is to add your own personal wine review to our database. By adding to our growing database of wine reviews, we build more confidence in what you like and dislike. After about 5 or 10 reviews on your part, you are quite likely to enjoy a new wine that PalatePrint^TM recommended to you.

At the very least, it is important to rate wines on our 1 to 5 scale lets us know if you liked them or not. So, even if you do not want to do a written review, take the time to enter wines into our database and rate them. It only takes a few seconds.

And a great side benefit is that other members of Winescorecard.com can read your wine reviews and learn about wine along with the rest of it.

So think of Winescorecard.com and PalatePrint^TM as your own personal Sommelier that pays attention to what you have liked in the past.