A new smartphone app claims that it can accurately guess which beer and wine flavors you will enjoy before you taste it.
The idea for the app started with a bad recommendation of wine.
Next Glass CEO Kurt Taylor came up with the idea for the app when he was out to dinner with a group of people who couldn't decide what bottle of wine to order. The waiter suggested a wine that they ordered and "none of us really liked the wine at all," he tells USA Today.
"At that point, we were trying to figure out what happened. What we realized is there is no universal language for describing taste," Taylor said. "That is where the whole idea came up that if we could define how wine and beer objectively taste, then we could provide great recommendations and help people learn to discover all sorts of new things."
Those with the Next Glass app are prompted to make a "taste profile" where you select your favorite wine and beer flavors. This is the most important piece of the app, as it uses the tastes of your selected drinks to determine if you are going to like a new one.
After your "taste profile" is completed the app can tell you if you will like a new drink by scanning its label through the app. Next Glass compares the ingredients and taste of the flavors in your profile to the newly scanned one to determine if you would enjoy it. Once you try the new drink you can rate it in the app, further teaching it what types of drinks you prefer so it could direct you better in the future.
Next Glass has a data base on 23,000 bottles of beer and wine, USA Today reported. The number will continue to grow as people use the app and scan new labels.
