Liftoff with Keith Newman: For Founders looking for a new growth playbook and further inspiration. · Former Journalist, Startup + GTM exec Keith Newman

How CruTrade Is Fixing the Broken Fine Wine Market with Blockchain & Provenance

·29 min·1 clip

The wine industry runs on technology built in 1985.

The wine market sounds messy. Devin Ferreira lays out a business shaped by middlemen, distributors, collector risk, and the old problem of knowing where a bottle has been. Keith keeps pulling the idea back to earth. He frames Cree Trade as a technology layer for collectors, then asks how the business actually works. Provenance sits at the center. Devin says the company can trace a bottle from source to wine lover through uniquely identified labels, with tags under consideration over time. Sensors come up as a next step. Temperature tracking is the plainest example, especially during transport, when a bottle can drift outside the right range. Keith then pushes on revenue, customers, and what the company is now versus what it could become. Devin brings it back to friction. The main idea is to shorten the distance between wine lover and winemaker in an industry full of intermediaries. Direct sourcing is the hook. The company gets wine from producers and sells it to collectors who already know what they want, which gives the model a curated feel. The parent company, Crew Rated, is presented as a way for top collectors to get better allocations and stay closer to producers. Selection risk matters too. The pitch is access, but also help with quality, provenance, and trust in the bottle's path. Keith keeps it loose, admitting he loves wine without acting like a sommelier. The episode ends with Devin saying the team is still early, and Keith sending listeners to CreeTrade.io to look around.

As heard by us

A founder story about cutting wine-market friction through direct sourcing and traceability.

Liftoff with Keith Newman gives the episode a clean read on a wine business built around middlemen, provenance, and trust. Devin Ferreira lays out CruTrade as a way to shorten the distance between winemaker and collector by buying directly from producers, selling to collectors,…

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Why you'd press play

A wine startup story that turns provenance into the product.

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