Cookies and similar technologies
Strictly necessary technologies are always used. Functional technologies, statistics, personalization and marketing only with your consent. You can use the Digital Sommelier (AI-supported wine recommendations) to its full extent only with statistics and personalization. You can change your choice at any time via "Cookie settings" in the footer.
Wine & Social is an online marketplace. This page carries the information an online marketplace operator owes consumers: the main parameters determining the order of offers, the roles of the sellers and of the operator, the contact point under the Digital Services Act, and the procedure for reporting illegal content.
Wine & Social presents offers in an order mainly in five places: the wine list, the events list, the list beside the Explore map, the answers of the AI wine advisor, and its suggestion rows (“Personal suggestions” and “Most viewed in the last 7 days”). These five do not work the same way. Two of them order solely by the criterion you choose yourself, the events list always by start time. The AI wine advisor's answers score how well results match, order by distance when you ask for something nearby, and are additionally guided by the course of the conversation and by the page where you ask. The “Personal suggestions” row selects by your purchases and, with your consent, by your reviews, communities, RSVPs and viewed wines, and ranks wines by similarity and events by start time; the “Most viewed in the last 7 days” row ranks by the number of visits. Each place is described separately below.
The order is determined solely by the sort option you choose. There are exactly three sort options, and each is a single, unambiguous criterion:
Where two offers reach the same value on the chosen criterion, the more recently listed one comes first, and after that a fixed technical identifier of the offer decides. That identifier carries no meaning in itself. It is what makes the order the same every time the page is loaded. Offers with no variant marked as available have no price and come last in both price sort options.
Your search term and your filters do not change the order, only which offers are shown at all. The search term is matched case-insensitively against the name and description of the offers in the respective language version. No scoring of how well results match takes place in the wine list. Within the narrowed set, the chosen sort option continues to apply unchanged.
Event tickets are offers. The events list offers no selectable sort option. It is always ordered chronologically by the start of the event, the next one first. The search term and the date filters only narrow which events appear; they do not change the order.
In the list beside the map, the chosen sort option alone determines the order: for wineries alphabetically by name, ascending or descending; for events by start time, ascending or descending, and alphabetically by title. Which part of the map is in view and which filters are set decides which entries appear, not the order they appear in. No sort by rating is offered.
You open the AI wine advisor on every shop page with the “Ask the sommelier” button at the bottom right or with one of the suggested questions, for example on the pages of wines and businesses. It presents wines, events and businesses as clickable cards that lead to the respective page. The rules for the three lists above do not apply to its answers. When a conversation starts, it also shows two rows that are ordered differently (below). The order of its answers comes about in two steps:
The advisor's answers are generated automatically and can be inaccurate in individual cases. Which data is processed in the course of this is set out in the privacy policy.
When a conversation starts, the AI wine advisor shows up to three suggestions in the “Personal suggestions” row, alternating a wine and an event, each with its reason. Wines are ordered by how similar they are in content, measured by the text of the offers, to the wines you have bought; wines from your orders do not appear unless the order was canceled or never paid. With your consent to the personalization category, wines you rated four or five stars also count, wines you rated one or two stars do not, even if you bought or viewed them, and rated wines do not appear. If you have also consented to statistics, the wines you viewed or clicked in a list in the last 90 days, from your personalization consent on, count too and do not appear themselves. Events are ordered by their start, the next one first, and by a fixed technical identifier where the start is the same. They come from businesses you bought wine or tickets from and, with your consent, from businesses whose community you belong to or whose events you have RSVPed to. Events you have RSVPed to or declined do not appear. Only wines in stock and running or upcoming public events appear. You see the row only if your date of birth shows that you are at least 18. The “Personal suggestions” switch above the row or in your account turns it off.
This list orders wines by the number of distinct visits in the last seven days in which they were viewed, clicked in a list or added to the cart. It orders events by the number of distinct visits in the last seven days in which they were viewed, clicked in a list or given a response about attending. A visit ends after 30 minutes without activity. Only visits by people who consented to statistics count. A click on a card of the AI wine advisor does not count; viewing the page it leads to counts like any other view. Only what came up in at least three distinct visits is listed, and only wines in stock and running or upcoming public events. Where the number is equal, a fixed technical identifier decides. When a conversation starts, the AI wine advisor shows at most three entries, alternating a wine and an event, if your date of birth shows that you are at least 18; it also uses the list when you ask what is popular right now. The content of the list is the same for everyone and contains no figures and no information about individuals; the row only leaves out entries already shown to you as personal suggestions.
The businesses taking part in a session appear alphabetically by name. On a business's page, the events it takes part in appear by start time, the soonest first. In the directories of wineries, event organisers and municipalities, businesses appear alphabetically by name; your search term there only narrows by name and region. In the business search, for example the winery filter in the wine list, businesses whose name or a word in their name starts with your search term come first, then businesses whose name contains it, and then businesses where only the description contains it; within each group, they appear alphabetically by name.
The following do not affect the order in any of the five places. They are named explicitly because taking them into account is common in the market and their absence may therefore be unexpected: other customers' ratings, service metrics of businesses, delivery time, sales or conversion figures, unit price or value for money, and the level of commission a business pays the operator. By way of exception, views, clicks, cart additions and responses about attending count in the “Most viewed in the last 7 days” list. Availability counts in both rows, and your age decides whether you see them. Only in the “Personal suggestions” row, whose entries the other row leaves out, do your orders, your yes or no to events and, with your consent, your own ratings, community memberships, the events you said yes to and the wines you viewed count.
In the wine list, the events list and the Explore list the order is not personalized: with the same sort option and the same filters, all users see the same order. No profile of you, no earlier purchase or click behavior and no location is drawn on.
The AI wine advisor is exempt from this: its answer depends on the text of your question, on the course of the current conversation and on the page where you ask. For questions about what is nearby, it also depends on the place you name, on the venue of an event shown in the conversation or currently open, or on your location if you have shared it in the advisor. A stored profile of you and your earlier orders play no part in its answers. If you ask the advisor to show your orders or news from your groups and communities, only you see that panel; it has no effect on which offers are shown or in what order. It shows suggestions tailored to you only in the “Personal suggestions” row (above).
There is no paid placement anywhere on Wine & Social, including in the AI wine advisor's answers and suggestions. No sponsored search results are offered, no offer can be highlighted for a fee, and payment to the operator has neither a direct nor an indirect influence on the order.
For the beta, the operator also offers sellers no advertising campaigns on external ad networks. No data is transmitted to Google or Meta for that purpose.
All sellers on Wine & Social are traders according to their own declaration. As a consumer, you are entitled to your statutory consumer rights.
Your contract partner is the respective merchant; they are responsible for delivery, warranty and withdrawal. Wine & Social provides the platform; payment is processed by the payment service provider Stripe.
Whether a seller is a trader is stated on the basis of that seller's own declaration to the operator. Private sales are not possible on Wine & Social. The specific rules for consumer contracts therefore apply to every purchase contract you conclude as a consumer via the marketplace.
The seller relies on the operator in performing obligations under the purchase contract to the following extent:
These tasks give you no contractual claims of your own against the operator. Claims under the purchase contract, in particular for delivery, warranty and unwinding, lie exclusively against the respective seller.
No comparison service that ranks offers against one another and includes particular providers for that purpose is offered on Wine & Social.
No seller whose offers appear on the marketplace is an affiliated undertaking of the operator within the meaning of § 15 AktG.
Resale of already-purchased event tickets is not possible on Wine & Social. Event tickets are offered exclusively by the organiser.
Wine & Social is a hosting service within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (Digital Services Act, “DSA”).
The following address is available for direct electronic communication:
This address is at the same time the point of contact for Member State authorities, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services (Art. 11 DSA) and the point of contact for recipients of the service (Art. 12 DSA).
Communication is possible in German and in English.
Requests sent to this address are not handled solely by automated means.
Any individual or entity can report content and offers they consider to be illegal (Art. 16 DSA). Notices are submitted electronically via the notice form. You can submit a notice without a user account.
Report illegal contentJudicial redress is available against a decision of the operator. Independently of that, you can contact us via the point of contact named above.
No internal complaint-handling system under Art. 20 DSA and no out-of-court dispute settlement under Art. 21 DSA are provided. Under Art. 19(1) DSA those obligations do not apply to providers that are micro or small enterprises; the operator is a micro enterprise in that sense.
Where an offer or a piece of content is removed, disabled or restricted in its visibility, the person affected receives a statement of reasons under Art. 17 DSA. It names the measure, its territorial and temporal scope, the facts relied on, the legal ground or the term of the terms and conditions relied on, the use of automated means, and the redress available.