Eric Cooperman has tasted a lot of wine in his life.
The advance sommelier recently sat down to test for a chance to become a master sommelier, of which there are just 269 in the world. The knowledge and skill required is extraordinary. These are the “wine stewards” who, with a single taste test, can name the type of wine, who made it, when they made it and what conditions occurred during the creation process.
“I know in my world, I’ve seen the refrigerated trucks pull up and sit there and see chicken coming in at room temperature, just thinking to myself, ‘This is how people get sick.’” -Eric Cooperman.
The global supply chain
For Cooperman, who spent 10 years running the wine program at the Cliffs and later started the wine program at Urban Wren, with all that wine-tasting came a deeper insight: the global supply chain isn’t friendly to products that, by design, require balance to maintain their original qualities. As a result, by the time most beer and wine arrives at its final destination, it’s been jostled, damaged or spoiled.
“In my quest to pass this exam and studying and tasting wine for the bulk of 10 years, I got sick and tired of tasting obviously flawed beers, obviously flawed wines,” he said. “I know a lot of these winemakers that put their heart into creating the best wine and a lot of times when it comes to market, it’s not how they intended.”
With no prior business or entrepreneurial experience, Cooperman left his day job to found Bottle Titan, a startup that uses monitoring technology to bring solutions to the multi-billion-dollar problem of beer, wine and produce spoilage.
GVL Starts
Cooperman recently took first prize in the Demo Day pitch event at GVL Starts, the entrepreneur mentoring program from which he recently graduated, which he calls “life-changing.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t have done it without GVL Starts,” he said.
An offshoot of Furman University’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, GVL Starts brings together a cohort of entrepreneurs from different walks of life and guides them through the process of transforming an idea into a viable business.
Bottle Titan recently completed its first beta test of its system, one that combines modern monitoring hardware with easy-to-use software, allowing for producers and consumers to monitor the shipping of products at every phase of the supply chain from their computers or phones. Small monitoring devices are shipped with the product, which track aspects of the shipping conditions relevant for each product. For beer and wine, that means the temperature, the sunlight exposure, the shipping time and more. With real-time monitoring, improper conditions can be fixed on-the-fly, ensuring that no product gets to market diluted, tainted or spoiled in any way.
“We have the data and analytics in watching it go to market,” Cooperman said. “We’ve all had skunk beers or sour wines. But right now with technology we have the ability to fix that to make sure it never happens again.”
Because he’s been submerged in the wine world for so long, Cooperman can’t help but make a wine-related analogy when discussing Greenville’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. He compares it to the Willamette Valley, a region in Oregon celebrated for its more than 600 wineries. When the winemakers first came to the area decades ago, they were creating something entirely new.
“They knew a long time ago and had the humbleness to understand that without each other, they’re going to get nowhere,” Cooperman said. “And I feel that here in Greenville. Nobody does anything alone. And I’ve been blessed to have been surrounded by people who know 10 times more than I do about things, and that’s got me where I am now.”
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