sommplicityWine Education · Simplified

Terms of Use

Sommplicity · DRAFT v2 · 16 October 2026 · not yet approved

DRAFT FOR GINA'S APPROVAL. This is version 2. Version 1 of 24 August 2026 stays in force until this one is approved and published. Version 2 covers friends, profiles and sharing, and no longer describes Sommplicity as a free closed beta.

These are the terms you accept when you sign in to Sommplicity. The sign-in screen says "By continuing you accept our terms and confirm you are of legal drinking age." This is what that means.

Written to be read. Where a clause matters to you, it says why it is there.

1. Who we are

Sommplicity is run by Gina Biernacki as a sole trader, based in California.

Contact: support@somm-plicity.com

Postal address: 1198 S. Van Ness Ave #40152, San Francisco, CA 94140

How we handle your data is a separate document: our privacy policy. Where the two overlap, the privacy policy governs anything about your personal data.

2. Sommplicity is still changing

What that means for you. Sommplicity is young and is being built in the open. Features will change, some will be removed, and things can break. There is no service level commitment and no guarantee of availability.

What it does not mean. It does not mean your data is treated casually. The retention periods, the deletion path and the export path in our privacy policy apply in full and are enforced by the software, not by intention.

Price. These terms do not promise that Sommplicity, or any part of it, will always be free. If we ever charge for anything, we will tell you in the app before it applies to you, and you will never be charged without agreeing to it first.

We may stop offering Sommplicity, or end your access to it. If we do, you will be told, and you can export your data first.

3. Your account

You must be of legal drinking age in the country you live in. You confirm that when you sign in.

One person, one account. Keep your sign-in to yourself. Tell us if you think somebody else has reached your account.

You can delete your account whenever you want, and everything held against it goes with it. See the privacy policy for what that covers and what it does not.

4. Content you upload, and what we may do with it

This section covers photographs of wine labels you scan, corrections you send us, notes, tasting records, feedback, and anything else you put into Sommplicity. We call all of it your content.

You own it

Your content stays yours. Nothing here transfers ownership of anything to us. You keep every right you had before you uploaded it, and you can take it with you.

What you allow us to do with it

By uploading your content to Sommplicity you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt and display it, for these purposes and no others:

  1. To run the app for you. Storing your photograph so you can see it again, showing your Wine Memory back to you, and so on. Obvious, and it is still a licence, which is why it is written down.
  2. To identify bottles. Sending a label photograph to a vision model that reads it, and deriving a fingerprint of the label so that the same bottle is recognised next time.
  3. To show a bottle's label to other users of Sommplicity, where your photograph is being used as that wine's reference image.
  4. To show your content to the people your settings allow. Your name, profile photograph, loved bottles with your photographs of them, Top 10, notes written for friends, place names and the other things listed in our privacy policy under What other people can see, to your friends, or to anyone signed in where you made your profile public. A new account starts friends only. You choose each of these in My Account, then Profile and privacy, and turning one off stops it being shown.

Purpose 3 is the one worth reading twice, so here is exactly what it does and does not allow.

What it allows. A photograph you took of a bottle's label may be shown to another Sommplicity user as the picture of that wine, inside Sommplicity.

What it does not allow, and we commit to these.

  • We will not sell your content, or license it to anyone else. This licence is not sublicensable.
  • We will not use it in advertising or marketing, for Sommplicity or for anybody.
  • We will not publish it outside Sommplicity.
  • We will not attach your name to it. A reference image carries no attribution, because a photograph credited to you is a photograph that identifies you.
  • We will not show it to anyone until a person has reviewed it. A label photograph can include a face, a room or a receipt by accident, and none of that reaches another user.

Why we ask for this at all. Wine label images cannot be licensed from anywhere in bulk, and photographing every bottle in the world is not something a small app can do. Photographs taken by the people using the app are the only practical way an app like this ever recognises a bottle. That is the whole reason, and it is the same reason every app in this category works this way.

You can withdraw purpose 3, in one tap

My Account, then Photos and data. Turning it off stops any future photograph of yours being used as a reference image and removes any of yours already in use.

Purposes 1 and 2 cannot be switched off separately, because without them the app cannot show you your own photograph or identify a bottle, which is the entire product. Purpose 4 is controlled item by item on Profile and privacy. Deleting your account ends all four.

What happens when you delete your account

Your photographs are deleted, including any in use as a reference image.

An anonymous fingerprint of the label remains. It describes the design on a wine bottle, not you. It carries no link to your account, it cannot be turned back into your photograph, and it cannot be used to work out what you scanned or who you are.

What you promise us about what you upload

  • It is yours to upload, or you are allowed to upload it.
  • It does not contain anything unlawful.
  • You have not deliberately included another person in a way they would object to.

We can remove anything that breaks this, and tell you why.

5. What Sommplicity tells you about wine

Sommplicity teaches and describes. It does not rate. There is no Sommplicity score and no aggregate rating, deliberately.

Wine information can be wrong. Producers change, vintages vary, and a scanner reading a label in bad light makes mistakes. Everything in the app is offered as information, not as advice you should rely on for a purchase or anything else. Tell us when something is wrong; that is what corrections are for and they are the most useful thing you can send us.

Nothing here is health advice. Please drink sensibly.

6. What you may not do

  • Break into, overload or interfere with the service or anybody else's account.
  • Scrape, bulk-download or copy the catalogue. The wine information in Sommplicity is ours and is not yours to take, which is a separate thing from your content, which is yours.
  • Use Sommplicity to break the law.
  • Harass, threaten or impersonate anybody, or use a name, handle, photograph or note to do it.
  • Share what a friend shows you in Sommplicity in a way they would object to.
  • Resell or redistribute access.

7. Our content

The wine catalogue, the written guides, the questions, the maps and the design of the app belong to Sommplicity. You may use them inside the app. You may not copy them out of it.

8. Ending it

You can stop using Sommplicity and delete your account at any time.

We can suspend or end your access if you break these terms, or if we stop offering Sommplicity. If we do it for any reason other than a serious breach, you get a reasonable chance to export your data first.

Section 4's licence ends when your content is deleted, which for an account deletion is immediately.

9. Liability

Sommplicity is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for loss arising from using it or from being unable to use it.

Nothing here limits liability where the law does not allow it to be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected by anything in this document.

10. Changes

If we change these terms in a way that affects you, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. The version and date at the top change whenever anything here does.

A change to section 4 will never apply retroactively to a photograph you have already uploaded. If we ever want to use your content for something not listed there, we will ask.

11. Law

Sommplicity is operated from California, so these terms are governed by the laws of the State of California and the courts of San Francisco County, California have jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer resident outside California, this does not deprive you of the protection of your own country's mandatory consumer law, and it does not limit your data protection rights. Where you live in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, UK and EU data protection law applies to how we handle your data regardless of this clause, because we offer the app to people there. Our privacy policy sets out those rights and how to exercise them.

Questions about any of this: support@somm-plicity.com. It reaches a person.