Get ready to elevate your wine game because we’re diving into the revolutionary Sommo app!

This cutting edge tool is not just about keeping track of your favorite bottles; it's like having a personal sommelier in your pocket that learns your tastes over time. During our chat, Gökhan Arkan, the brain behind Sommo, shares how this app harnesses AI to recommend wines that perfectly match your palate and even what you’re planning to eat.

Whether you're a casual sipper or a wine aficionado, Sommo's got features that cater to you, including a unique journal function to help you remember your favorites and discover new ones.

Plus, stick around to hear about an exciting offer exclusively for our listeners that will give you free access to this incredible app for a year. Cheers to that!

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Learn more about Sommo and download the app here!

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Sollevato Wines: Nikki and Michael's first ever rosé — a single-barrel Grenache with a touch of Sangiovese is now available, as is their new exclusive wine club, Il Circolo.

Their 2023 Petite Sirah (bold, inky, and great for BBQ season) is also coming this fall. Sign up for the mailing list at sollevatowines.com to be the first to know. use code PODLISTENER for 10% off all of Nikki's wines on sollevatowines.com

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That's something that I use very frequently because it always surprises me.

And once I add that to my journal, it basically enriches my entire palette, and I can get more recommendations out of it, which is, I think, the real power for me as a user. Like I said, I'm the first user of this application, so it's one of the superpowers that I have inside my pocket.

Basically, you have a few superpowers, my friend. Hello. It's Nikki Lamberti coming to you from Sonoma County, California, and I am so happy that you're here. Thanks for listening in.

When I finished the interview with this week's guest, I was beyond excited about what I learned and then thinking about you, hearing it and learning, because I feel like what he has created truly solves for some very regular challenges that people have when it comes to understanding wine, picking wine, buying wine.

You've heard me talk about all of these things before, and honestly, this challenge is why I've chosen to focus on this niche of teaching you all about wine so that you can feel more confident.

So when I found out there was a new wine app, I was first a little bit skeptical, because you've all heard me sing the praises of Vivino, which is a fantastic app that I've been using for some time now. And. And I always love that you can scan the label on a bottle, and then it will give you information and show you where to find it, how to buy it.

So when the Samo app came onto my radar from its creator, Gokan Arkan, who is originally from Turkey and currently living in the uk, I was a little bit skeptical, like, hey, I already have a great wine app. What's this really gonna do? Holy cow, you guys.

Have you ever been in a restaurant and looking at the wine list, and you're like, okay, I've already picked out. I'm gonna have the Cacio e Pepe, or I'm gonna have the Bolognese, But, God, this wine list is a little overwhelming. What wine should I order?

And maybe you're in a restaurant that doesn't have a sommelier, because they're always a wonderful resource when they're there. And maybe your server is not the most educated when it comes to wine. Some are, some aren't.

Wouldn't it be amazing if you could just pull your phone out and scan the wine list and tell it what you're gonna eat? And it's up. Of all the wines on the list, this is what you should have.

And it's telling you that not Only because of the principles of food and wine pairing and what's gonna play well together, but also because this app has learned your palate through the magic of AI and is making a recommendation to you. Either, hey, Nikki, this is your comfort zone, so you should get this wine or. Or, hey, Nikki, you want a little surprise?

You want to change it up a little because this wine will also be great with your Bolognese. That's exactly what Samo does.

So in our conversation, which happened very early, it was 6:30am My time here in California, because Gokan is currently traveling and was actually in Hong Kong. So we had a 15 hour time difference.

So it was early in the day for me, late in the evening for him, and we had such an exciting conversation as you'll hear. First off, we talk about just why he created this, because this is not someone who's just cranking out app after app.

He actually has a full time job and this is his sort of side passion project, which I can also relate to. I have a few of those, don't I? And so we talk about why. Why wine, right?

Why this application of AI to wine when there's so many other areas where it could be useful.

He shares a little bit about how he got into wine and then what were some of the things that he was experiencing in his life as a new wine drinker, where he said, I think I know the technology that will solve for that, that will help me to stop picking bad wine as he talks about. So I'm not gonna give too much away about what it does.

But one of the very fun things that was a surprise for me is that it will even review all of your preferences as you're adding things in there and tell you what your wine spirit animal is and what your wine character is. And I am still learning all of the things that Samo can do.

I've had the app for just a couple of weeks, but one of the functionalities that I was the most excited to learn about right now is how you can use this in a wine tasting setting. As I'm getting ready to roll out Sip with Nikki, the tasting room, the membership you all have heard me teasing, dropping hints about.

For gosh, about a year, it has been in my head, it has been on my heart.

But I had some obstacles trying to figure out how to execute my idea, which was what if I could send a box with wines that I've picked on a certain theme, wines from all around the world, and send them to your doorstep, and then we get on Zoom. And we taste them together and we talk about them.

I have finally figured out how to do it through partnering with a company called Vinebox that has these really cool 100 milliliter tasting vials, which is essentially a healthy pour for a tasting. And then using the Samo app to scan the wines that we're gonna taste right into your app.

And then you can just say, like it, love it would buy it would not, and keep track of all the wines that we're going to taste together throughout the year. I was like, oh, my gosh, thank you for creating this, because I couldn't figure out what that piece looked like, the journaling did.

I have to create a digital tasting journal for all of you to use. And that just seemed overwhelming to have to create that. So timing was perfect. I'm really excited for you to hear what this app can do.

Whether you are a casual wine drinker wanting to learn a little bit more, or whether you are a true student of wine and studying for your sommelier or WSET exams, or maybe you're somewhere in between, this app is groundbreaking and I'm so excited for you to learn a little bit more about Samo.

If you're not already on the mailing list for Sip with nikki, go to sipwithnikki.com and sign up for the mailing list because you'll be the first to know when the membership is live. And I can't wait for you to join and sip with me and and keep track of our wines with the Samo app. So here we go.

Thank you for making time in your travels to talk with me. Coming up on 7am here in California. Coming up on 10pm for you in Hong Kong.

I'm just so excited, personally and selfishly to learn more about the work that you're doing, but also to share it with our listeners and to potentially fold it into this membership that's getting ready to roll out. So thank you for reaching out to me.

Of course. And thank you very much for also responding and processing this as fast as possible. I really appreciate it and I'm really excited to be here.

Yes.

I don't know if I told you this when we initially spoke, but I do get a lot of weird emails from the podcast of people reaching out, and a lot of it's very spammy or, hey, I want to do SEO optimization so your numbers are better and whatever. And so when I initially started read your email, I was a little cautious.

And then the more I read, I was like, oh, it's a wine App and I was like, wait a minute, let me see.

So I literally go and I download in the app Store Samo and I open it up and after about five minutes of just poking around in the free version, I was like, oh, oh, I need to talk to this guy. So very quickly I realized the work that you're doing is amazing. And my listeners know. And I've already told you this, full transparency.

I have always been a big cheerleader of Vivino. No affiliation, no sponsorship or anything like that.

Just something that I've always loved because I enjoy the scan feature of the label and I tell people to do it all the time. My friend, you have that and way more, which we're going to get into.

But I would love to read something from your website and then you take it from there, because this is about you. So you have on there.

It's an independent wine app made in London with no dark partners, no aggressive monetization, and just a passion project for people who pour. Awesome. Tell me how we met here. How did that come to be?

Yes, it all started with Vivino. Actually, it was an inspiration for me. So my dad introduced Vivino a few years ago and I was blown away with the features. And it was pre Covid.

It's probably more than seven years ago. The thing about Vivino that I did not like is the data is crowd sourced, which means the data is standardized to a human being.

For me and for summer, what I wanted to do and wanted to envision was like, every person is unique, everyone has different tastes. And the taste is not a point in a place, but it's a curve.

Which means five years ago you may not like coffee, and now you may like coffee at the same time. Probably. Maybe during summertime you may like champagne, but during the winter times you may not like champagne. So I want to know.

We like champagne365 every season, every temperature. Let's just be honest about that.

But what is different for taste is. Taste is cultural.

That means as a Turkish person, I can probably taste different things from a meal from the same meal with you, and you taste different things from the same meal. That's why people eat different things. A French person eats different things and a Chinese person eats a different thing.

And because of that, the taste is very much a personalized data.

And what I wanted to do is I wanted to create an app that actually learns your palette and learns what you like and what you don't like and learns what you may like in the future.

And that's how it came to me, I think wine is a very complex subject and as a software engineer, the first instinct for me is splitting, dividing it into a smaller problems. Thankfully, with wset, it already came with some structured data already and it was years ago that they came up with this finish.

Body, sweetness, acidity, tannin. So data like this was already available for me.

What I wanted to do is creating a location of each taste so that you can pinpoint what you like, what you don't like, and you can see what I would like tomorrow, what I would like in the next year or so. And this is what I wanted to envision for summer. And I deliberately left a lot of feature gaps.

I have a lot of features that is not available and a lot of features that immediately available.

And I kept that deliberate because as a person, I am a user of my own application and sometimes I use it, I find something good to have and I implement it immediately the next day.

Sometimes my user will come to me and ask for something like a seller feature and I implement it on the go because I feel like this is an app that I envision to have personalization, slow living, but at the same time, like you said, no dark patterns, no VC whatever, no investment, no trying to hypergrowth into things. Selling you bottles, selling you premium or whatever. It's just for you to learn, digest information and become better at something.

And in this case, it's wine.

Wow.

I also saw, and I've already noticed this in the two weeks that I've been looking at it and using it and playing with it, there's already been multiple updates. And on your website you say it's refined every week. So it's a work in progress. Right.

And you're taking feedback from people and maybe me or my listeners one day will suggest something like, oh, can it do this? And then sounds like it's not static, but it's ever changing and ever growing, which is amazing.

Exactly.

And as a one person company, but I have the power of the decision making, which a user comes to me and asks for something and I can immediately say, yes, there is no product manager, there is no.

Source map. And you're like, let me sit down and do some code and.

Exactly. And this is the beauty of it. I speak with my users very frequently, they email me all the time and we are just brainstorming on things.

I always say I am my own product manager, but at the same time my users are product managers as well. And we basically come together and we make decisions.

You can implement things immediately because it's Just you. But you're still gathering along the way. Before we dive deeper into the amazing things that Selmo can do, I want to talk about you for a moment.

So you already mentioned that you are from Turkey, and I know that you reside in the uk. You happen to be in Hong Kong as we're speaking now.

But one of the things I was cautious and not leery, but curious about when you did reach out to me and I said, okay, this guy's a software engineer. I'm sure he's brilliant and smart and technical, but does he know wine? Does he like wine?

And if you remember, that was one of the first things I asked you on our phone call. I was like, are you a wine drinker?

And so you have a long history with wine, with your family, And I think our listeners would love to hear a little bit more about that.

Yes. Like you said, I'm from Turkey and originally I'm from Istanbul. And we have three regions now, and Turkey is rediscovering their history with wine.

So there are now three close regions to Istanbul. We still have Thrace, which is an excellent region for wine, and I'm originally from Malatya and Elazz, which is the region of Kgezi.

Okuizgezi is a grape almost all wine drinker Turkish people drink. It's a very standard wine, but it's just something that you can compare with almost everything.

And we grew up with stories where Akj was initially planted by Noah himself to the Mount Ararat in the mist. Growing up with stories and also drinking and also being influenced by my own family. I started liking wine, I think about five years ago.

Like before that I was not a wine drinker, to be perfectly honest with you. But it all started when I joined a company based in Paris and I did some frequent travels and whenever I'm there, I was trying out new wines.

We go to dinners together. And the co founder of that company, he is a French person also, he was quite interested in wines and he was always bringing in their blood.

It's literally a part of their DNA, right?

Yeah. And he was always picking really nice wines and everything.

And I asked myself, whenever I pick something, it's always bad, but whenever he picks something, it's always good. Like, how can I record this?

And then I started really getting interested in this because of the complexity, because complexity for me means a problem also. And it basically sparkled something inside me. And that's how my interest grew for wine.

Also, right away, when you say I was always picking something bad that is a real complex problem that wine drinkers struggle with. And I know it's why so many people that I teach about wine and interact with and they're like, I like cab.

And I'm like, you just drink one grape, Cabernet Sauvignon. That's it. It's because it's what they know and they're not drinking out of their comfort zone because it's risky.

And if you spend money and pick the wrong thing and it's bad, it sucks, it's disappointing, it ruins the meal, or you bring it home and you open it and you're like, that's going down the drain. Right. So people find the things they love and then they latch on and they drink so narrowly because it's safe.

Yes.

And that is a problem that I see my teachings and your app solving for. Because now people can, especially as it gets tuned to them and they enter what they like.

The risk, I feel like, is being minimized and people are less likely to make bad decisions.

Exactly.

Which is amazing. Okay, so you said five years ago you got into wine. When did this Apple release? How long has it been out there?

It's not too long really. It's almost six months. Because it was not an app in the past, I was actually building AI models in my free time.

And you may ask, what kind of hobby is that?

Well, as a software engineer and because AI is changing how we work nowadays, I got quite interested in the development of AIs and how can I actually create my own model on something like a complex problem like wine?

Or I could have created something about tea or cigars or whatever, but I wanted to pick something that I can use in my day to day lives because like I said, I just wanted to have something personalized to my experience. So I started building these AI models, fine tuning them.

And I don't want to mention all the tech, all the technicalities, because not everyone is technical in this field.

But I am not. So I'm not. I feel like, what?

So I've been working for a while on this to make sure I can actually create a model that answers my questions accurately. And once I have this model that powers my application at the moment, I knew for a fact that I had to have an application for this.

I had to have something that people can benefit from because it's knowledge out there and I want to make people connected to it.

Obviously there are multiple ways to connect connect to this source, but not everyone's willing to do something like opening their computer, calling this Website and just checking and getting data. But instead, the first instinct that we have is just opening the app. And so that's how I open an.

App for everything else.

Exactly.

Actually stop and count in a day. Like, how many apps do I open and use?

I know, I know.

This morning we've been walking, But I think 15 or 20 minutes and I think I opened seven or eight different applications like Google Maps, ChatGPT, if ChatGPT does not answer to me. I opened Gemini. I then opened.

When we're traveling in different countries, currency exchange, probably. I was on that.

Right, exactly.

We're so trained to go to an app and get quick information, which is why you making this in an app forum makes total sense. Because it's natural for people now.

Right, exactly.

And to answer that question, I think it's almost six or seven months old, so it's a very new app, but I already have thousands of users using it, which is a sign for me that it works in their lives. And that's why I was just quite confident to email you about this and, you know, speaking about that.

Yes. As you should be. So I learned very quickly just in the free version and now that I'm a premium member and everything has been unlocked and I'm still.

Literally before we got on this morning, I was like, looking around in there again. I was like, oh, I just found another feature that I hadn't stumbled upon yet. And so it's amazing. And I'm not just saying this. I'm so impressed.

As someone that is a wine educator and really has dedicated to helping people understand wine, taking away the pretension, taking away the confusion, so they can just make better choices and have more joy. It's corny, but it's who I am. This is so aligned with that. It's amazing. So we've already talked about the scanning function. Right.

So scanning the label and getting immediate information about a bottle of wine that you might be at a friend's house, and you want to know where did it come from and what is the price point. Yes. I will totally second what you just said.

One of the most quick and obvious noticeable differences between Vivino is I am not getting ads and I am not getting buy this wine. Buy it. Here's a sale. There is not that monetization.

What has replaced the monetization piece that a lot of wine apps have is the education piece, which makes my wine educator heart happy. But then the scan function that you have goes way beyond a label.

Yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the other things that people can scan and get immediate information.

Exactly. So we have different type of scans.

It's not just scanning the label, but if you are going for a date and if you are actually bringing a wine with you, you can just go to the shelves and you can say it's for a date, it's for my anniversary, it's for business meeting or whatever. You can just take a picture of the shelf and you can get the best results for that occasion.

Or you can scan a menu in a restaurant or in a bar so that you can immediately get your personal life for each wine and you can make a decision. Or you can pair with your meal based on the menu, based on a list, or based on your own seller, which is in your home.

And you can basically create multiple cellars in multiple places. As a person who travels frequently, I have different wine racks in different places. Like in the Istanbul home, we have a different rack.

In the London home, we do have, we have a different rack.

Must be nice. That is amazing. That's everyone's dream. Awesome.

It's nice to pair something. I can just immediately say, I'm having salmon tonight, pair it with something from my London flat and it automatically finds something. Yes.

It's taken a few minutes to scan everything that's in your wine fridge. So it knows what you have right now. And then. Yeah. It'll take from your inventory that's in your house and tell you this is what you should have.

And I did this the other night multiple times. And I have to say that as someone who knows a little bit about food and wine pairing, it's a big passion of mine. It was spot on.

And so then I'm like, how is he doing that? Like, how does it know? Right. We all know. There are some guiding principles in food and wine pairing. And this app nailed it.

I want to go back to what you said about scanning the shelf. So do you just mean the shelf in your wine cellar or can you also do the shelf in a shop?

Yes, shelf in a shop. And you may be very much surprised because recently I tried scanning, I think about hundred wines in one go. And it answered in less than 10 seconds.

And like you basket and there's rows and rows of wine and it's one one photograph on camera. 100 Bottles were in there and it returned you information on everything.

Yes. The only problem is, and I can talk about the good things and bad things.

Sure.

When there is 100 wines, it basically fails to match the vintage, fails to match or understand the year, because for some wines, the year is just not on the label or not on the.

Or on the back or.

Right, exactly. But apart from that, it worked perfectly. And I was blown away because it's less than nine seconds.

Wow. Now. Mind blowing. I haven't done it in the store yet, so that's my next thing. Menus. So this was amazing.

And I was doing this with like, you sit down and they give you the wine list, and you're like, I know we're going to have margherita pizza, and we're going to have a sausage calzone. And then here's the wine list. And you can scan it and say what you're going to eat.

And it looks at the wines that are available in that restaurant and says, this is what you should get.

Yes. And it's not just that, but it can also give you a premium option or a surprise option.

Surprise option is something like you usually get, let's say a Cabernet, but like, you want to get something different and it automatically recognize that you like these type of wines. Why not try this for the change? And that's something that I use very frequently because it always surprises me.

And once I add that to my journal, it basically enriches, which is my entire palette, and I can get more recommendations out of it, which is, I think, the real power for me as a user. Like I said, I'm the first user of this application, so it's one of the superpowers that I have inside my pocket.

Basically, you have a few superpowers, my friend. But yeah. Okay, so I want to go back to what you just said about the journal.

So I've been playing with this, but can you talk a little bit more about the journal function?

Exactly. So the journal function has two types. You can have a basic entry and also the advanced entry. The advanced entry is for students.

Like, you can have the SAT entry, and you can automatically pick up all the details, all the more advanced topics. And once you actually add an advanced entry, it will analyze your entry. You can say, I get some tannin from this, more than, you know, I anticipated.

And AI can automatically grade you based on what you tasted. A lot of students use this feature, but the main reason of the journal is basically using the basic functionalities as a basic user. Because this is.

This is a wine drinker, not someone who's going through SOM or WSET certifications and things like that.

Exactly. But I wanted to keep that in mind that beginners use this application.

But at the same time, some very professional People are actually already using it.

Me, certified wine professional winemaker. Yes. Yeah. The spectrum is amazing.

But in essence, almost all users, like 90%, 95% of my users, they're actually using the basic version of it, which is solid choice, would buy again or did not like it. And this is a very important piece in the application because this is where I personalize things from the Satant.

You can, once you have this, like the snapshot of your taste in time, the app can analyze what you have for multiple parameters and they can place you in a location. And I'm not talking about a region location, but a taste location. I have a grid which is multiple.

It has multiple dots and it places you on somewhere.

And do you mean this fingerprint?

Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's your taste DNA.

The web, we've. We use these maps in winemaking studies where you have a web and then you shade for acidity, tannins in body intensity. Sweet.

But then you have a new little point on there, which is adventure, which I love.

Yeah.

So I can see my fingerprint based on the things that I have entered and rated and scored, which is not a ton of things yet, because I just got my hands on this, but it gives me a visual of, like, where I sit as far as my palette and my preference.

It's exactly.

It's mind blowing.

It's, by the way, a spoiler alert. But I'm improving the character analysis and taste DNA with.

So you will have loads of data from your experiences, like your seller data, your journal data. But at the same time, I will be revamping with grape information. You will get more regions, more grapes to taste.

And based on your broad location, if you're connecting from a US ip, it basically assumes you are from US and wines that you can find in US that you may like. And like I said, this is very much personalized.

No advertisement whatsoever, no affiliation with any of the producers, but it will genuinely offer you what to taste, where to get and things that you can find.

And get access to based on where you are. Because in the US we have very different, you know, access to. Of course, we have all the US Wines.

But like, exactly in China, where you are right now, you go into a wine shop, it's a very different selection that's available to you.

And yeah, I got this idea from one of your episodes with Andrea, who is. Yeah. Who's residing in Turkey.

She recommended you a Pashayli wine, and you basically looked for places in California and you actually found the current.

It was hard. There was one, but luckily it was actually here in my town that had it. Yeah.

So it does not make any sense to recommend Pascheli to a person who's residing in the side of Norway.

Search online and have it shipped. And that gets expensive. And so recognizing where people are and then guiding them towards things that they have easy access to.

Exactly. Exactly.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay, do you want to hear my wine character?

Yes.

This is so fun. So this is my character reading based on the things that I've inputted. This is so spot on. It, like, freaked me out.

I am the Sonoma to Spring Mountain seeker. That's my title.

You are a discerning explorer who balances a love for crisp, high acid Italian whites like the Altamare Falangina with a deep appreciation for structured elegance of California reds. Hell, yeah.

Your palette shows a sophisticated evolution, moving from the light watermelon kiss notes of your boutique to the rich, silky depths of the Keenan Merlot. You clearly value wines that offer clean, bone dry finish, showing a consistent preference for precision over sweetness in every glass.

Boom.

Drop the mic. Are you peeking into my house and getting to know me through this app? Do I need to be concerned about privacy? Because I was like, this is so spot on.

This is me. And that was only putting in maybe 20 wines or so so far, and it's already spot on. It's crazy.

That's great. And learning your palette actually starts from three wines and more.

And the data that you can get from just three glasses or three bottles is just amazing. So adding 20 wines is just a milestone. Not many people actually adds 20 wines in. In a month or two. Two months. And I'm not saying you.

You are an alcoholic or anything like that.

Wine is a part of our daily life here. We own it. No shame. We're proud. We live in wine country, and I work in the wine industry. Like, wine is the daily part of life.

So 20 wine. It gives you a lot of data. And speaking of.

Because you mentioned privacy, one of the things that I'm most proud of Summer is it's a very private application. I'm not sharing any data with any places in companies or whatsoever. I don't care what you do in the app.

I only record what you want it to be recorded, which is like your journal entries or your RAC information or whatever, because it's basically essential data for you to progress.

But apart from that, I don't care what you do in the app, because if I do that, then the next time I would be just implementing stuff that will keep you in the app, which I don't want.

And that's not authentic and genuine.

Exactly.

And I came to that realization because a few weeks ago I had the streak feature because I thought maybe I can bring people, more people to the app because some people were just installing and not coming back anymore. And then I realized, oh yes, I'm just forcing people, I'm just becoming duolingo to say come to the app and you don't. And what's the point of that?

I asked myself, literally, I got that notification myself and I said, what's the point of this? I'm not drinking wine right now. Why do I get this notification? And I immediately deleted it. And this is basically what I'm obsessed about.

This is very much a social slow living application. You have that reliably in your pocket whenever you open it and it answers all the time, as accurate as possible.

It's in your pocket and you are under control of this app. The app is not controlling you.

Brilliant. I know, I just keep saying like amazing, awesome, brilliant. I need to find more words. But I'm just, I'm in awe. I really am.

So you just told me about this. It's telling me my wine spirit animal, which is the lynx.

Sharp eyed and agile, you effortlessly navigate between delicate high acid wines and bold silky reds with grace. And my motto is this is amazing. Seek the silk, embrace the acid, and always it sounds. You have to make sure you pronounce it right. Embrace the acid.

Always pour with purpose. How cool is that?

You will have a prophecy as well there. But I would like to keep it for yourself because you know, prophecies, they are not meant to be shared.

Okay, so like a birthday wish. I won't read this part, but what is your wine spirit animal?

Currently my wine spirit animal is falcon, which is sharp eyed and precise. You soar above the common crowd to support the most structured and elegant bottles in the cellar. And.

And I think this is because I have a lot of barrel oats just aging in my cellar. Yes, just thinking about that.

Yeah, Some of my favorites. So cool. One technical question, I want to go back to scanning menu.

So I actually pulled up a local restaurant menu online like their website yesterday and I was doing that and it worked. I didn't have to be sitting there with the menu in my hand. Just a nerdy question.

When you talked about being able to scan 100 bottles on a shelf on a menu, if it's multiple pages, do I just have to do page one and then turn it and page two and Then turn it. And they're all separate scans.

Yes. Unfortunately, right now it is a little bit cumbersome. So you have to pick multiple pictures. You can send multiple pictures in one go.

So you don't need to just use it and get some information and use it again. You can just send multiple pictures.

But I am currently working to create some sort of automation where you can just say, I'm in this restaurant and recommend something. It is a bit of a work because for some countries, it's really easy. You can get the menu information directly from Google Maps restaurant.

My lists are often changing too. Based on inventory. Right, Exactly.

That's another thing. And for going into that complexity, I have to partner with the restaurants, which is just a very big step right now.

But what I'm trying to do is, you know, starting to give more information, more input for the application to get more information from multiple places. Like I said, like Google Maps to get the menu information. But like you said, wine lists, they always change.

And it's a complexity that I am trying to solve. So if you have an answer, if you have a feedback, I'm happy to take it. It can be something very simple that I don't see and I am happy to listen.

Okay. If my 3am brain starts rolling this around and I come up with a solution or a suggestion for you, I know I have a direct line to you.

I want to go for a minute to what we call a listener question. Listener question.

So I shared with some friends and family and some of my wine club members and podcast listeners that we were doing this and shared just high level about the appsamo and asked them, what would you want to know?

So I have a question here from Jessica in Los Angeles and she wanted to know, does this just keep track of wines and tell me what I should be drinking or will it teach me about wines?

That's a very good question. And when I started building this, like I said, my interest in wine is. Is a very young thing. Like I said, like 5 years old.

So I wanted to learn more about wine myself. Not just understanding what I like, but understanding why I like these things. Exactly.

I always say it's about understanding why you like what you like, why you don't like, what you don't like, and then how to make the decisions from that.

Yeah, exactly. And then I created a quick course for myself, like a wine 101.

And I put that into the app also, so I can quiz myself, I can learn about the basics, and I can go into an advanced level. Then A friend of mine said, oh, I'm preparing for WSET to level 2.

I would like to have that kind of information so that I can train myself into level two and eventually getting level three mainly. And I thought about, but what can I do about this?

And then I realized I can do the same quiz and study plans and other things onto the certification level and divide it by the levels. I can create cheat sheets so that it can automatically create you a plan, it can automatically quiz you on things and it can give you.

Okay, you are good at history, but you are just lacking in some bits of.

You need to look at a map, Nikki, and like understand, you know, like Bordeaux versus Burgundy and where they are.

Exactly, exactly.

And the interactive map function is amazing where you can click and look at all the regions within the world.

Thank you. I'm improving that too as well. But yeah, on the education side, like you said, it's learning why you like this stuff.

And that's where what I implemented first learning bit, but then WSET and now we are going through all these AI driven features also in that part so that AI can monitor you.

You can say, I am not feeling good with these, with this part of the flashcards and it automatically create a quiz for you so that until you know 100% of that part.

So yeah, to answer Jessica's question, I think education is one of the biggest part of summer because like I said, I wanted to envision something that you can use it daily, but you can also digest with the wine so that you learn more about all these things.

Yeah, again, I already said this at the start, but as someone who loves to teach about wine and who has been through multiple of my own courses and certification, this feature blew me away because the questions are really, they're good. Like it's. I've done other things where it's quizzes and things and it's just eye roll, but this was really pertinent information. But it's quick.

I am already a level five core connoisseur. Just so you know, I should be higher than that, but I need to spend time in there.

But again, I love that you said this could be for Jessica in la, who's just wanting to learn a little bit more so she can be more comfortable in the wine shop. Or it could be Michelle in Florida who's studying for WSET Level 3.

Your catchphrase on your website about this is an independent wine app for serious drinkers, students and the curious in between.

Exactly.

And love that beautiful marketing, by the way. But spot on.

And I think the majority of my regular sip with Nikki listeners for the last two years, they are the curious in between, like notes, but not enough, but want to branch out. And I'm guiding them on that. And so I think that's beautiful. And that education part makes my heart happy. The last thing I want to check in with.

Can we just talk a little bit about how people would be able to use this in a tasting setting?

I know that you mentioned that you had shared this with someone that was recently in Napa Valley doing a tasting, and they actually opened it up and used it during the wine tasting and then told other people about it who were like, yeah, we need this too. I love that.

And where my mind is going for this is, I told you, I'm getting ready to roll out a virtual tasting membership sip with Nikki, the tasting room.

It's a virtual tasting, but with actual wines, where I'm going to ship these wines from around the world to my members and then we're going to get on Zoom every other month and do a tasting. And so immediately I was like, could this be a tool for that?

Is this something where we could all be looking at and evaluating the wines using the built in function here so I don't have to create it? So tell me about that and how that would work.

Yes. So good thing is it's already built.

In the application, we have a wine tasting note where you can scan a list, scan a flight menu, or scan multiple bottles in front of you and it will automatically analyze them and it will automatically create you a swipe. Style cards, not flashcards, but cards so that you can immediately put your input into the wine.

Specifically, you can talk about the three rules, which is, I like this, I don't like this. I would buy this again. And you can also immediately say, this is in my cellar now. Or you can say, I love this. This is my favorite.

You can basically edit your entries with where you taste it, when you taste it, and you can immediately put everything into your journal.

So whilst you're actually doing this wine tasting and whilst you're adding your input and engaging with people in the background, you're enriching your journal, which means you're actually creating a history for your palette so that the application is getting stronger for you.

So it's already built in and you can immediately send them a list, they can scan a picture of it and it's so smooth because we tested this multiple times with multiple people. So you can't imagine like a month ago how this feature looked like. And how is it looking like right now?

Because some people said, I would like to clarify which is my favorite, which is not, or I would like to arrange the list. And one person actually said, this is an AI driven app.

What if once I conclude my tasting, what if the AI can individually rank all of my bottles, all of my tastings, and at the same time it can give me a general feedback about the outcome of this tasting session? And it is working quite well right now. That person, Napa Valley, they actually tasted about 35 wines in one go.

And she was blown away with how fast and how accurate the feedback was,.

How easy it is because in the moment when you're tasting, you don't want to be like so deep in your phone. So I feel like it needs to be quick and easy to be able to capture the information too that you're not pulled focus from. Exactly right.

Wine tasting to me is like driving a car. If you're looking at your phone and you shouldn't, you should enjoy your experience.

But if you have to look at your phone, you have to have some sort of user experience where it is easy to navigate. That's what I envisioned when I created the wine tasting mode. So it's like your Google Maps, your Apple Maps.

You have some buttons, they are big for this exact reason. So that you are not basically away from that session.

Instead, you are enjoying your time with your friends, with people around you, and you are experiencing it rather than going into a pen and paper or going into an app and between a session it starts selling you or advertising you some stuff, it's not doing that. You only put your opinions and you can go ahead and enjoy your wine tasting session.

I love that so much because one of the goals of me creating this membership and us having these live tastings on Zoom is community and just spending time, even if it's virtually with other wine lovers and meeting new people. And so I feel like this will support that.

And yes, it will help people keep track of the wines and what they liked and all of that, but I didn't want them to be pulled away from the community live experience that I'm trying to create too. And I think this will fit beautifully in that last technical question.

The special kits that I am sending to my members has a sleeve around the box and then when you cut the sleeve, it lays down and it becomes a tasting mat and it has the little circles and then in each one it'll have the names of the wines of the box that I've created. Do you think that will scan?

Yes, I think so. You can send me a picture of it. I can also test it, but I have a good confidence that you can pick it up as long as it is written in a nice way.

If it's written digitally, the OCR will handle most of the work.

Yeah, they're printing them for me, customized for my members. So I'm like, oh, how cool would this be?

If they could just scan that and already it's got the name of the wine and the vintage and some of those things, then they can just pop in their thoughts and preferences and what they like.

It should work. And also we can extend this feature with you together, so people who are subscribed to your membership can send you their opinions.

Like, we can have an export of their tasting and you can see and it works for you and it works for them as well. So we can definitely create something together with you also on this so that everyone can benefit from it.

I'm getting emotional here, and my listeners know this. I. I'm a joy crier. Like, I always say, joy falls out of my eyes sometimes, but I'm just like, two things.

This is making what I'm trying to do so much easier because I was trying to figure out how to create these tools and. And create a PDF journal that they download for our tastings, and I'm not good at graphic design and I need to hire someone and blah.

And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, that's solved for. Thank you. And then this is where I'm going to get really a little emotional here.

But you reached out to me at the perfect time. Like, literally, like, if it was a year ago, this would have been great and we would have had an amazing interview.

And a year from now, it was as well.

But I told you, literally, like, I'm just getting ready to roll this out and I'm looking for that last tool and resource to give to people, and you've created it and you found me, and I just. I'm a nerd and I'm just. I'm so excited. I'm so grateful to the work that you've done. I'm so impressed by you.

I know we're new friends, but it sounds weird to say, like, I'm so proud of you. Go, Ken. I'm so proud of you and what you've done, but I'm just excited to see where it can go.

And when you were just talking, I had one last thought, which is maybe we should do. Because this is always changing and Evolving and you're looking for feedback.

Maybe we do every couple months or every six months or every year or something. We do another episode and we talk about what the updates are.

Or maybe you come into the private Facebook group that I'm creating for my members where we're gonna be sharing tips and information in between our tastings. And maybe you're a guest one time and they get to ask you, hey, can it do this? Or how do I do that?

Like now the wheels are turning about because you're always growing and evolving and adding to this, which is just fantastic.

Exactly, exactly. I would be so happy to join to these sessions and I would be.

Well, I just volunteered you. I didn't, I didn't even ask you. So you're doing it. Thank you.

Taste is an evolving subject, so SOMO is also an evolving application. So I would be happy to talk about six months later what we had six months before.

And I'm 100% sure it would be surprising because we will come a long way because the last six months was a journey for me. By the way, it's I. We haven't mentioned this but Summer is a side project of mine.

I have a full time job outside of my work which is about AI, but at the same time I am actually, you know, properly doing some work in Oxford University with knowledge graphs which is for interested they can contact me about this. But grounding AI with more information and making getting accurate results.

So SOMO is a passion project of mine, but at the same time it's a passion project of mine which is every day, whatever I do my in my full time job or my studies, I always think about how can I improve this along the way. And I am quite proud of the last six months because we have come a very long way.

We created multiple versions, we trained AI into a next level for the wine niche but at the same time there are so many places that we can improve even better and I'm pretty sure we will find more stuff and in the next few episodes when I come back in, I can say, oh, why didn't we see this, why didn't we add this, why didn't we bake this into the app?

It is all driven by the feedback and I will be happy to take that opportunity and do an aftermath with you but at the same time contribute to also your audience and your listeners about their feedback and get to listen to them.

And this is the idea also mutually beneficial, right? If my podcast listeners and my members and hopefully there's in a venn diagram. That's a lot of overlap between podcast listeners and members.

Because listeners, you're who I'm creating this for.

If we can be of benefit to you by being like a crowdsource and using it and giving you tips, it would be our honor to have some influence in the amazing work that you've already done. So it goes both ways.

Thank you. Thank you.

I think we should share with the listeners the very kind offer that you have made to integrate this into the membership. I'll let you share the exciting news.

Yes. So I'm excited to share that for your founding members. I'm giving out free SOMO subscription for a year so that they can enjoy it.

I'm excited to be part of your community, but at the same time, I'm excited to give a complimentary subscription with your memberships.

That is amazing. That is generous. That is kind. That is exciting. Thank you so much for that.

I'm so excited to be partners with you and whatever that's going to look like moving forward. But to be able to offer that to the initial members because the premium is $30 a year, correct?

Yes.

Yeah. So wow. Thank you for that.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Personally, on my side, I had a good time. It's a lovely way to finish the evening. I had my evening tea.

I think I can proudly go back to bed and sleep because it's almost 11pm right now in Hong Kong and.

We have a wine tonight. We're not finishing the day with a little wine or cocktail. You're calling it a night after tea.

Tomorrow is a drinking day for me.

Okay.

And probably on Sunday as well. Wife is insisting on going to these cocktail club by the harbor in Hong Kong.

It's basically a rooftop bar and they're going to have a session for seven or eight hours. That means a lot of alcohol.

So just call it a night with your tea.

Exactly. At more.

Hydrate. Hydrate. It sounds like you guys have a great weekend planned in Hong Kong. Thank you again for squeezing me in and making time.

This was fantastic and I'm so excited about Samo. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So now you're dying to know what your wine spirit animal is, right? Well, go ahead and download the app. You can start with the free version. In fact, don't pay right away for the premium. Just get familiar with it.

Because if you are one of the founding members of the SIP with Nikki, tasting room membership coming soon. You heard him. Share that. We will be including the premium paid membership which is $30 a year within the membership fee.

By the way, I just got my hands on the first tasting mat that will be part of our first tasting kit this summer. And I scanned the mat that had each of the wines that we're going to be tasting together, and it worked.

It pulled it right in, and then it made a little card for each wine with the information. A spot for you to say, love it. Don't put your notes in. And I'm so impressed about how.

And I'm so impressed about how easy it's going to make it for you to keep track of all the beautiful wines that we're about to explore together through the membership. And I just want to say a quick note about AI.

I know that it's a very hot topic right now, and people feel strongly one way or another that it's great or that it's evil or, you know, is it going to be replacing humans one day? So I'd be remiss if I didn't say that there is real and true value of a human sommelier.

When you are in a restaurant, they are beautifully trained there to guide you through the menu and food and wine pairing, and hopefully this will never, ever replace that. But you don't always have that somme with you in your house. Maybe you do. Maybe you're dating a psalm. I don't know, maybe you're married to one.

So when you are trying to figure out what wine to pull out of your wine fridge that you've been building as you've been learning about wine and what's gonna pair well with the menu that night in your kitchen, this is almost bringing your own personal psalm to you, just in your pocket. Download the app, start playing, start scanning, start building your foundation in there.

And coming this month, I'll be opening up the doors to sip with Nikki, the tasting room, a virtual membership with actual wines. Thank you so much to go, Ken, for making the time to share with us what he's been up to. I can't wait to.

To meet him one day and give him a big hug, to thank him for the work that he's been doing and how it's making wine less intimidating for everyone and bringing more joy into people's lives. And you all know that's what I'm all about. And whatever you do between now and our next time together, I hope that you sip well.