No One Asked for This $200 Wi-Fi–Enabled "Smart" Wine Bottle

Wine is already pretty good. After millennia of experimentation, the process of turning fermented grapes into nuanced, sophisticated alcohol has been more or less perfected by this point.

While there's always room for improvement, some tech projects run the risk of taking the rustic charm out of drinking one of humanity's most ancient elixirs—like replacing human bartenders with more efficient robot ones and using agricultural droids to fine-tune the process of winemaking. We can now add the "smart bottle" to that list.

Tech startup Kuvée will soon be releasing a $200 Wi-Fi–enabled "smart bottle," which replaces antiquated paper labels with a full-color LED touchscreen.

The screen allows wine drinkers to access not only the usual label information, like region and grape, but also the history of the estate and biographies of the winemakers. The Kuvée screen, when connected to Wi-Fi, also makes it possible for users to order bottles of wine online, and even rate them.

Beneath its sleek, black exterior is a hollowed-out space that allows tech-savvy winos to refill the smart bottle with equally sleek aluminium cartridges designed specifically for Kuvée, which promise to lock in the freshness of the wine for a month. Kuvée offers 48 wines from 12 wineries, which gives customers plenty of time to try them all without compromising freshness.

"You want red, but he wants white," Kuvée ponders. "Don't compromise. Go ahead, open both. Kuvée wines stay fresh for up to 30 days after opening, so everyone gets what they want. With Kuvée, you can enjoy a glass of cab on Saturday, sauvignon blanc on Sunday, and a pinot on Monday, and never worry about spoilage."

But for all of this electronic wizardry, there is only one truly surefire way to make sure that wine doesn't spoil, and it requires no technology whatsoever: Just finish the bottle in one shot.