Photo courtesy Vivino
“Wine is complicated, and Vivino was created to help people drink better wine,” says Heini Zachariassen, who created the app in 2010 with cofounder Theis Søndergaard. The idea was sparked after Zachariassen, a self-proclaimed industry outsider at the time, found himself standing in an aisle of a wine store and feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly endless options in front of him.
“Being outsiders is truly why I believe Vivino is such a success—we had no preconceived notions to hold us back,” he says. “I wanted to build a product for the ‘everyday’ wine drinker. We understood that feeling of facing the wall of wine in a supermarket [and] could understand that anxiety, and I wanted to help solve that problem.”
Historically, ratings and reviews by wine critics have served as a North Star for wine drinkers around the globe. But there’s a different appeal in the often more straightforward language of peer reviews—a central focus for Vivino, which is now the largest wine app in the world.
