France: New association for digital wine start-ups

(Decanter) - A new Bordeaux-based association for wine start-up companies was launched this week at Vinexpo.

Wine StartUps so far has 13 member companies, all of which were formed between three months and three years ago.

It is led by Gilles Brianceau, director of Inno’vin, an ‘company incubation’ facility at the Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin at the University of Bordeaux.

The companies in the group are linked by the fact they target the wine industry, and use innovative or ‘disruptive’ digital technologies. 

Among the companies are Kasual Business, who publish the Smart Bordeaux application, a wine label scanning system that has been adopted by the Bordeaux Wine Bureau (CIVB) for its chateaux database.

Vinoreco, the ‘virtual sommelier’ system that works on smart phones and is used by several major supermarkets in France, and Wine Services, an online research and marketing company which is working with high-end classified chateaux.

Xavier Montero, director of Vinallia, a company that offers joint purchasing of vineyard equipment and other material to help smaller estates, told Decanter.com trainees and digital specialists can apply to work in any of the companies, and new startups can apply to become part of the group.