Wine futures company Vinsent, formerly VinX Network Ltd., announced today the official launch of its app that will allow customers to buy from a library of more than 20 wines using distributed ledger blockchain technology from a curated list of over 10 wineries across the world.

The Vinsent app accesses a marketplace where wineries would offer wine futures to customers. This would allow wine buyers to prepay for expected bottles of wine shortly after harvest and have them delivered once the winemaking and bottling process is complete.

The objective of the marketplace is to shore up an inefficiency in the wine industry’s funding process where wine is produced in seasons and wineries make money only when wine ships. By allowing customers to connect directly with vintners and purchase wine at the beginning of the process, it means that wineries would have more stable income.

“Vinsent brings consumers in direct contact with wineries early in the winemaking cycle, giving early access to fine wine for consumers, and providing greater cash flow for wineries throughout the process,” said Jacob Ner-David, Vinsent’s chief executive. “Simply said, we are reinventing the way wine is bought, owned and experienced.”

Medici Ventures, a subsidiary of Overstock.com Inc., invested in Vinsent in October, citing how the use of blockchain technology would deliver a radical change in the way wine is distributed to customers.

Blockchains work by providing a distributed database infrastructure that registers transactional data in a cryptographic record that resists tampering. Vinsent uses a blockchain to record not just the purchase of a specific bottle of wine, but allows the network to track the creation of the wine from cask to bottling.

Each bottle is also marked with its own unique identity, which is connected to the customer’s purchase record. This means that every time a customer orders a bottle of wine, that person can know that a real bottle exists and that bottle is theirs. They can even authenticate the wine’s journey from within the app.

“The wine industry is ripe for blockchain disruption, as the technology solves significant problems with supply chains, transferring ownership and establishing provenance,” said Jonathan Johnson, president of Medici Ventures. “By building its platform with blockchain technology, Vinsent is establishing a secure marketplace for global audiences.”

The company also hopes that this high-transparency model will engender increased loyalty in customers who then can become part of the experience of the making of the wine sitting on their dinner table. And, for wineries, being able to offer wine futures direct to customer globally for the first time, the app would also allow vintners to contact customers and receive feedback in a way never attempted before.

“Vinsent is the first truly international direct-to-consumer futures program,” said Jeff Morgan, owner of Covenant Winery in California and Israel. “I have great confidence in their ability to bring an Old World tradition into the high-tech marketplace.”

The Vinsent app is available now for Android and iOS devices in an early-access program with a signup on the company’s website.

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