If you have one of the Wi-Fi enabled wine bottle sleeves from the startup Kuvée, you may want to buy all the bottles you can. The startup that makes a Wi-Fi-connected wine bottle complete with touchscreen, has announced it is shutting down its operations.
The Kuvée wine system is essentially a combination of wine sleeve, Internet connected touch screen and proprietary metal wine bottles that keep wine fresh. Kuvée said that its system would keep wine fresh for 30 to 60 days. Upon inserting the metal bottle into the sleeve, the touchscreen displays information about the wine, like the varietal, tasting and pairing notes. The initial purchase of the sleeve that included four wine bottles costs $178, with additional bottles — that could be purchased through the touchscreen — priced between $15 and $50. Wineries such as Pine Ridge, Coppola, Bonny Doon and Girard and others signed on most are now out of stock.
There was significant initial interest in Kuvée, early bird pre-orders on Indiegogo sold out in three hours, however, it wasn’t enough to keep the company going. In a goodbye note, Kuvée CEO Vijay Manwani pointed toward the difficulty of educating the public about the product and says that “last year’s Napa fires affected our ability to scale our customer base over the holiday season and hence our ability to raise the funds required to continue building awareness of Kuvée.”
Manwani says in the note that Kuvée will continue to seek a partner that can “acquire or leverage the Kuvée technology and bring it to market at part of their own business model,” but all of its business operations are ceasing today, just about a year and a half after it initially started shipping. That means if you have a Kuvée system, it’s going to be useless once the company’s remaining stock sells out. From now through March 26th, Kuvée is selling all wines at 50 percent off with code LASTORDER.
