Renowned critic acquires crowd-sourced wine review app
Antonio Galloni just struck another deal to expand his high-tech wine empire.
The world-renowned wine critic has acquired Delectable — the popular smartphone app that allows users to pull up crowd-sourced wine reviews by snapping a photo of the label on the bottle, The Post has learned.
Terms of the acquisition couldn’t be learned, but a source close to the talks said Galloni scooped up Delectable, along with Banquet, the wine-buying app launched last year, “at a fire sale price.”
In an interview with The Post this week, Galloni declined to discuss terms of the deal.
Still, the celebrated critic confirmed that the merger is happening — and said his plan is to expand the editorial content for Delectable users with articles and reviews from Galloni’s own wine Web site, Vinous.
“If you go to Delectable now, you’ll see the [professional] content is a little light,” Galloni told The Post.
To be sure, Delectable boasts a rich trove of reviews from amateur tasters, and also from more than 7,000 sommeliers and wine buyers.
The app’s journalistic deficiencies, however, had become embarrassingly obvious in recent months.
On Wednesday, the top-featured articles on Delectable (one about direct wine purchases, another about “Burgundy’s hidden gems,” and a third on a natural-wine fair in Brooklyn) were at least eight months old.
That’s despite the fact that Delectable is among the most heavily trafficked wine apps, with more than 120,000 monthly unique users, Galloni said.
Under the umbrella of Galloni’s Vinous site and app, wine lovers will be able to get drunk with insight as Delectable will gain access to articles, videos, interactive maps and a library of more than 200,000 professional wine reviews from some of the world’s top critics, including Stephen Tanzer, Josh Raynolds — and Galloni himself.
Delectable had raised upward of $10 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists since its founding in 2011, according to sources close to the company.
Deep-pocketed backers included PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and controversial tech investor Joe Lonsdale.
Delectable ran into cash problems this year, however, after heavy investments in technology failed to generate revenue, as the app remained free.
While Delectable is “great for vicarious pleasures” — namely, checking out what other people are drinking — Vinous “seems very independent in its thought process, unfettered by advertising or corporate intervention,” said Tim Farrell, wine buyer at the Brooklyn Wine Exchange.