• Mediaweek, Tuesday, July 14, 2009 11:21 PM

In the first of several e-commerce partnerships it plans for its Web sites this year, Condé Nast is allowing users to buy wine at its food site Epicurious.com. Content from the site comes from sibling magazines Gourmet and Bon Appétit.

The deal calls for wine site Snooth.com to provide wine suggestions for Epicurious' recipes. When users click on a wine pairing, they'll get more information on the wine and will be able to click through to a retailer to buy it. Winemakers can pay to have their wine offered as an appropriate choice for a given recipe.

Condé Nast will get a small portion of the retail sale, but the moneymaking opportunity will come from selling ad sponsorships of the wine-pairing widget, says Sarah Chubb, president of Condé Nast Digital. Visa, for instance, is sponsoring the widget at launch today. "We see it as a way to bring in business that's commerce- versus brand-advertising," Chubb says.

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