About OpenCru

Wine has a snobbery problem. Most people who enjoy it were never taught its words, and the words are used as a gate: you’re expected to know what a cru is, what “good legs” mean, why one bottle costs four times another. Ask, and you get a score, a sales pitch or a look.

OpenCru takes the snobbery out. The name says it: cru is one of wine’s fanciest words, and open brings it down to the ground.

Plain words first

Every wine in OpenCru starts with one plain answer — what it’s like, what to eat with it, when to open it — in words you already have. Nothing to decode, nothing to memorise.

More whenever you ask

We don’t decide how much you know. Every page is the same for everyone, and the depth is always one tap away: why it tastes like that, what the words on the label mean, where it’s from and what the year was like. The questions are the steps; you climb as far as you like. Next time, you already know a bit more — and you’re the one at the table who can answer when someone asks what to order.

No scores from us

A number tells you what someone else thought, not why. We explain wines instead of rating them. When a critic has scored a wine, we show it as theirs, with their name and a link, and we never sort your wines by it. Our explanations aren’t for sale, and they aren’t copied from the producer’s marketing.

Wine as good company

Wine isn’t the point of the evening — the evening is. The right bottle just makes it a bit nicer. OpenCru is for people who want to choose well and enjoy it, not for collectors keeping score, and not a course to become a sommelier.

What’s next

The app comes first: your own wines, explained. Next, this site grows into an open catalogue of wines and what’s in them, for anyone to browse.