Meet Swirl, recommending wines based on your own taste

From left: Marcus Henningsson (Head Sommelier), Jade Arana (Co-founder, leading product, design and growth), Emil Hed (CTO & Co-founder).

The problem

Choosing wine often means guessing based on the label, the price, or someone else’s rating.

None of these tells you how well a bottle fits what you enjoy.

What Swirl does

Swirl learns what you like and helps you understand why. A few questions establish your initial taste profile, while your ratings help refine future recommendations.

Behind each suggestion, Swirl’s proprietary engine connects your preferences with structured wine data to find bottles suited to your palate. Along the way, you can scan labels, save favourites and learn more about what’s in your glass, making every choice a little more informed.

Where the data comes from

Our wine data comes from producers’ technical sheets, giving us a clean, reliable foundation of information about each bottle. From there, we combined the expertise of a robotics engineer and a top-level sommelier to identify which characteristics of a wine matter most to individual taste.

The Swirl team

Why trust it

Trust starts with the information behind each recommendation.

The more Swirl learns about your palate, the better it can predict whether you’ll enjoy a bottle before you open it.

How it started

When we hosted dinners, I cooked and Emil chose the wines. Over time, we noticed our friends becoming more curious about what they enjoyed and moving beyond choosing bottles by price. During a trip to Zanzibar in summer 2024, we built the first version of Swirl.

Jade Arana, co-founder

Why this team

Co-founder Jade Arana brings a decade of experience building and scaling mobile apps, including Lifesum and Preglife, and leads product, design and growth.

CTO Emil Hed combines a background in robotics and machine learning at KTH with ten years in hospitality and experience as a sommelier.

Head sommelier Marcus Henningsson brings experience from venues including Frantzén. Murat is their frontend lead with many years of experience building mobile apps.

Why Sting

They successfully launched Swirl and gained early traction. Now they’re entering a new phase focused on growth, and they want to build on that momentum with the support of an accelerator.

Sting felt like the right fit for this next chapter. They’re based in Sweden, and they see real value in its network, expertise and connections here.

Swirl is one of 21 startups in Sting Core Fall 2026. Meet the rest of the cohort in Meet the 21 startups joining Sting this autumn.