• About
• The Team
• Media Coverage
• Press Releases
• Partnerships
  • Wineries
  • Merchants
  • Importers, Distributors,
    Critics, Bloggers, and Others
  • Sponsorship Opportunities
  • Snooth Analytics
  • Affiliates
  • Common Questions
  • Resources
• Advertise
• Employment

The Team

Philip James

Founder

Philip James founded Snooth in 2006. Formerly, he was Executive Vice President at the Wine Messenger, a leading national online wine retailer, where he focused on general management and operational issues.

Philip's background includes three years in Technology Investment Banking at Merrill Lynch, as well as time in the Venture Capital industry. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a Masters degree in Computational Chemistry from Oxford University. In 2003 Philip played an instrumental role in the world's highest altitude rescue, on the North Face of Mount Everest.

Philip is a self-confessed data fiend who is obsessed over factual correctness. He has put his obsession to work at Snooth, the world's most comprehensive wine database, which brings together all the disparate sources of information on each and every wine and offers users the tools to make more informed choices.

The idea for Snooth first came to Philip when he began working in the wine industry and realized just how complex wine was. Even customers who were seasoned wine collectors frequently became confused over whether a particular Bordeaux chateau was right bank or left bank. He realized that the wine industry was hopelessly fragmented — with neither a standardized naming system nor a centralized repository of information. Philip decided to change all that. He founded Snooth with a simple goal: to make wine information freely available.

Mark Angelillo

CTO

Mark was previously a senior developer at Reflexions Data where he worked on sites such as Vivastreet.com - the largest classifieds ads site in France and a major presence in 11 other countries. Mark also played an instrumental role in the development of Smylesandfish.com, the online home of Smyles & Fish Magazine. Mark's areas of expertise include application development, Linux systems administration and web/database architecture. Prior to joining Reflexions Data, Mark founded Gradient Solutions, a software consultancy firm. At Snooth, Mark's focus will be on building the site, maintaining the database and creating algorithms used to generate the recommendations. Mark received his BA in Computer Science from Swarthmore College where it is rumored that he took part in the development of a soccer playing robot.

Gregory Dal Piaz

Community Manager

After pursuing his passion in wine for over two decades, Gregory Dal Piaz has found a home with Snooth. Most recently the Wine Director with New York City's Astor Wines & Spirits, Gregory's life long journey with fine wines began in his formative years while spending summer months in Italy. So while he is most at home discussing the minutiae of the terroirs of Barolo, he is equally intrigued by the vintage variations of classic California Cabernets or the rankings of Bordeaux classed growths. Not one to fall easily into the traps of wine criticism, Gregory is a proponent and admirer of a broad range of wines and styles. During his decades of collecting and tasting he has discovered that a wine need not cost a fortune to drink well.

Gregory has now joined Snooth as Community Manager and we hope you all will get to know him well as he prowls the forums, answers your questions and organizes events to unite our Snooth community.

Mike Solomon

Creative Director

Mike brings to Snooth an uncompromising design sense with a passion for usability, backed with a solid foundation in traditional advertising and marketing. Before joining Snooth, Mike was the group creative director at DCF Advertising where he was involved in creating some of New York City's most memorable public health campaigns, namely the NYC Condom and the "Give the homeless the kind of change they can really use" campaign. Mike holds a BS in Advertising from Boston University's College of Communication and has spent time in London studying British advertising and judging finalists for the One Show Interactive Awards.

Mike is also an accomplished drummer and percussionist, having played in various blues and funk bands throughout the New York City music circuit, including a performance playing tympani at Carnegie Hall. It was terrifying.

Chris Carpita

Senior Engineer

Chris is a senior engineer at Snooth. Having long-term experience with Perl, PHP, database management, and systems administration, Chris applies his comprehensive skills to a wide variety of technical challenges. He designs the inner-workings of most of the features on Snooth and frequently jumps tracks into data management and maintenance of systems. Before coming to Snooth, Chris was a bioinformatics programmer and analyst at Cornell University, where he conducted evolutionary research and designed web applications for colleagues.

An avid reader of books, blogs, and anything else with the printed word, Chris also enjoys cooking in his spare time and has become an even greater lover of wine since joining Snooth.

Yves Petinot

Senior Software Engineer

Yves comes to Snooth with a strong background in Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing, having contributed to several large-scale search-engine systems, including CiteSeer, Feedster and Ask.com. At Snooth, he develops algorithms and systems that mine, clean and organize the wealth of wine-related information available from all over the Web, gathering wine inventory, prices and just about any information that allows Snooth users to find better wines and better deals. Yves holds a Masters in Computer Science from PennState University and a Diplome d’Ingénieur Généraliste from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France. In his spare time, Yves is finishing his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University in New York City, working on novel Web summarization algorithms.

Nicki Gigliotti

Digital Sales Manager

Nicki is the Digital Sales Manager for Snooth.com. Graduating from Penn State University in 2004, Nicki has worked in media advertising sales for nearly 5 years with sales roles at TV Guide Magazine and the NYPost.com. One passion of Nicki’s is in wine. She is fascinated by wines’ history, the making of, the cultural pertinence, and the way wine continues to evolve in how society is today. Nicki recently received Distinguished Honors through WSET’s Advanced Wine Certificate Course. She is excited to combine her sales career experiences with her love of wine.