Terms & Conditions

1. Who we are

Alex by INSomm ("Alex", "we", "us") is a digital food and wine pairing service operated by INSomm, based in the United Kingdom.

Our full legal and trading details, including our registered company number where applicable, are set out at the foot of this document. You can reach us at any time at hello@insomm.co.uk, and we will reply to service, billing and legal enquiries at that address.

These terms form a contract between you and INSomm. Nothing in them affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

2. Age and responsible drinking

Alex is strictly for adults. You must be at least 18 years old, or the legal drinking age where you live if that age is higher, to create an account or use the service. We ask you to confirm this before you enter, and we may close any account we believe belongs to someone underage.

Alex does not sell, supply, deliver or broker alcohol. It offers information and opinion about food and wine only.

We encourage moderate, responsible drinking. If you are pregnant, taking medication, driving, or have any medical reason to avoid alcohol, please do not rely on Alex as a prompt to drink. UK readers can find independent guidance at drinkaware.co.uk.

3. Your account

You need an account to use Alex. Accounts are personal: one account per person, and you may not share your login or let anyone else use your membership.

You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done through your account. Tell us straight away at hello@insomm.co.uk if you think someone else has access.

For security, the email address on an account can be changed once every six months.

You can ask us to close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, abuses the service, or is used unlawfully.

4. Welcome pairings for new accounts

New accounts receive two complimentary pairings so you can try Alex before joining. These are a one-time welcome only: they do not renew, they do not roll over, and they cannot be topped up.

To keep this fair, we record a one-way cryptographic fingerprint of the email address used to claim the welcome pairings. This lets us prevent the same person claiming them repeatedly without us keeping a readable list of trial emails. Creating extra accounts to obtain further free pairings is a breach of these terms.

5. Membership levels

Alex offers two paid membership levels, each available monthly or yearly and priced in pounds sterling. The current price of each level is shown on our home page and membership page at the time you join, and that is the price you agree to.

Prices include VAT where it applies. We may change prices for future billing periods and will tell you before a change affects you; your current period is always charged at the price you agreed.

• The Curator — unlimited pairings, flavour discovery and your personal digital wine journal.
• The Sommelier's Table — everything in The Curator, plus The Sommelier's Lens (menu and bottle label scan-and-pair) and priority curation.
• Bottle label scan-and-pair through The Sommelier's Lens is available only on The Sommelier's Table. Curator members may scan labels solely to log bottles in their Wine Journal.

6. Payment, renewal and cancellation

Payments are taken by Stripe, our payment provider. We never see or store your full card details.

Memberships are paid in advance and renew automatically until you cancel. A monthly membership is charged on the day you join and then on the same date each month; where a month has no such date, we charge on the last day of that month. A yearly membership is charged on the day you join and then on the same date each year. All charges are in pounds sterling.

If a payment fails, Stripe will retry it over the following days and we will email you. Your access stays open during those retries; if payment still cannot be taken, the membership ends.

You can cancel at any time from your account page. Cancelling stops all future charges. Your membership and its privileges continue until the end of the period you have already paid for, and we do not give partial refunds for the remainder of a period.

Changing level takes effect through Stripe's own confirmation screen. When you move up, the difference for the remainder of the current period is charged at that point.

7. Your 14-day cancellation right, and why you may lose it

As a consumer buying online you normally have 14 days to change your mind, under the UK Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and, for members in the EU, the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU.

Alex is digital content supplied immediately. If you ask for immediate access and acknowledge that you lose the 14-day right once that access begins, the right no longer applies. We ask you to tick a box confirming this at checkout — it is not ticked for you, and you do not have to agree.

If you would rather keep your 14-day right, do not tick the box; email hello@insomm.co.uk and we will arrange access after the 14 days, or refund a membership you have not used.

This section does not limit your rights if the service is faulty or not as described.

8. Wine advice is opinion, and Alex is provided "as is"

Alex draws on INSomm's own curated cellar library, sommelier pairing rules and appellation references. Digital tools supplement that library where a dish is not yet covered, and help read menus you photograph. Every recommendation, drinking window, serving note and tasting description is a matter of taste and opinion offered for your interest and enjoyment. It is not professional, dietary, medical or purchasing advice, and it is not a promise about how a bottle will taste.

Alex is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. A dish may be interpreted differently from how your chef prepares it, a wine detail may be described imperfectly, or text on a dark, blurred, angled, handwritten, stylised or foreign-language menu may be misread. Vintages, availability, appellations and producer details change and may be out of date.

Please treat everything Alex tells you as an informed starting point and check anything that matters with the venue, the merchant or the label — especially allergens, additives, sulphites, alcohol strength and provenance. We do not accept responsibility for a bottle you did not enjoy, a purchase you regret, or a decision taken on the strength of a pairing.

Alex recommends wine only. Beer, cider, sake, spirits and cocktails are outside the service.

9. What you upload

The Sommelier's Lens lets you upload photographs or PDFs of food menus and wine lists. By uploading, you confirm you are entitled to do so and you give us permission to process that material in order to produce your pairings and to keep your scan history in your account.

You must not upload anything unlawful, offensive, or containing other people's personal information. We may remove any upload and suspend accounts that misuse the feature.

10. Our content and your use of the service

The Alex name and crest, the INSomm brand, the site, the software, the curated pairing library and the appellation reference are ours and are protected by intellectual property law.

You may use Alex for your own personal enjoyment. You may not copy, scrape, harvest, resell or redistribute our content or recommendations, use the service to build a competing product or train another model, or attempt to access parts of the service you are not entitled to.

Tasting notes and journal entries you write remain yours. You give us permission to store and display them back to you, and to use them to shape your future recommendations.

11. Availability

We work to keep Alex available and accurate, but we cannot promise uninterrupted service. Features may change, and maintenance, updates or problems at our suppliers may cause interruptions. Where an outage is significant and prolonged, contact us and we will put it right, usually by extending your membership.

12. Privacy and cookies

How we handle your personal information is set out in full in our Privacy Policy, and the small amount of storage Alex places on your device is explained in our Cookie Policy. Both form part of your agreement with us and are written to meet UK and EU data protection law.

Please read them at www.insomm.co.uk/privacy and www.insomm.co.uk/cookies.

13. Liability

We do not exclude or limit our liability where it would be unlawful to do so, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

Subject to that, we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of opportunity, wasted expenditure, or any indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount you paid us for your membership in that period.

Alex is supplied for personal use. We are not liable for losses arising from use in a business context.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the service develops or the law changes. The current version always appears on this page with its date. Where a change materially affects you, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Alex after that point means you accept the updated terms.

15. Law and complaints

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live elsewhere in the UK or in the EU, you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections of your home country, including the right to bring proceedings there.

If something has gone wrong, please email hello@insomm.co.uk first — most things are settled quickly and directly.