Terms

Classified Cask is run by Paul Williams, trading as Classified Cask (“we”, “us”). These terms are the agreement between you and us when you use the app. By creating an account you accept them. Our privacy notice explains what we do with your personal data and forms part of this agreement.

The app is for people aged 18 or over. It is about drinks that contain alcohol, and you must not use it if you are under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will close it.

• An account is for one person. Do not share it or use someone else’s.
• Give your real date of birth. It is asked once and cannot be changed afterwards except by us, on request.
• Keep your password to yourself. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.
• Do not create accounts automatically, in bulk, or to get round a suspension.

Your tasting notes, photos, comments, reviews, club posts and other contributions stay yours. So that the app can work, you give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, display and adapt them (for example to resize a photo or show a note on a bottle’s page) for as long as they are in the app.

You choose who sees a note: only you, your club, or everyone. Public notes are visible to other members. Brands can read public notes about their own bottles, together with ratings and flavour tags, but never who wrote them.

If you delete your account, we remove your identity and settings. Contributions others rely on (public notes, club records and catalogue additions) stay, shown as by a “Former member”. The privacy notice explains this in full.

Only post what you have the right to post. A photo you took, or a note you wrote, is fine. Someone else’s article, photo or tasting notes copied in is not.

You must not use the app to post, share or arrange anything that:

• is illegal, or encourages or helps someone to break the law;
• threatens, harasses, bullies or stalks anyone, or is hateful towards people for who they are;
• is sexual, violent or graphic, or exploits anyone;
• involves anyone under 18, or encourages them to drink;
• encourages drinking to excess, drink driving, or drinking competitions;
• sells alcohol, or offers it for money or anything with a money value (see section 6);
• is spam, a scam, advertising you have not been allowed to place, or pretends to be someone else (a person, a brand or us);
• shares someone else’s personal information without their permission;
• infringes someone else’s copyright, trade mark or other rights; or
• attacks, overloads, scrapes or tries to get round the security of the app.

Some words are blocked automatically in notes and comments. That filter is a help to moderators, not a promise that everything you read here has been checked.

Anything other people can see in the app has a Report button. Use it for anything that breaks section 4, and above all for anything illegal. Reports go to our moderators, who are members we trust to look after the app; their identity is never shown to other members. You can also report by email to paul.williams1978@gmail.com.

Illegal content (for example threats, hate offences, intimate images shared without consent, fraud, or material that sexually exploits children) is removed as soon as we find it or it is reported, and where the law requires it, or someone is at risk, we pass it to the police or the relevant authority.

Everything else is never removed silently. If something you posted breaks these terms, you are told what and why, and usually given time to change it yourself before a moderator acts. We may also hide content, limit what an account can do, suspend it or close it, depending on how serious or repeated the problem is.

You can appeal any moderation decision about your content or account from the notice you receive, or from Appeals in the app. An appeal puts the decision on hold and goes to an app administrator, who looks at it afresh.

Complaints. If you are unhappy with how a report, a decision or an appeal was handled, or think we are not meeting our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023, email paul.williams1978@gmail.com with what happened. We will look into it and reply.

Tokens are a thank-you for taking part: logging tastings, helping with the catalogue, moderating, or taking part in club and brand activities. They are not money.

• Tokens have no cash value. They cannot be bought, sold, cashed in, or exchanged for money or anything with a money value outside the app.
• Tokens can never be exchanged for alcohol, including in a swap. They can be spent on merchandise, perks and experiences that are not drinks.
• A brand or club that offers a perk for tokens is responsible for providing it. We remove any perk that breaks these rules.
• We may change how tokens are earned or spent, or withdraw them, and we may remove tokens gained by mistake, by abuse or by breaking these terms.
• If a club closes, tokens a brand gave it go back to the brand and the rest are shared equally between its remaining members, as explained when tokens are given to a club.

Members and clubs can arrange swaps: a bottle for a bottle, or tokens for tokens. No money changes hands for alcohol, and a bottle is never swapped for tokens. We do not sell alcohol and are not a party to any swap. The people swapping agree the details, hand over the bottles themselves, and must both be 18 or over.

Club owners and admins run their own clubs. They decide who joins and are responsible for what they post and organise, within these terms. Meetings, tastings and events are arranged by the people hosting them, not by us. Look after yourself when you meet people you know from the app, and never drink and drive.

Bottle details, official tasting notes, festival dates and shop listings come from members, from brands and from public sources such as distillery and shop websites. We work to keep them right, but they can be wrong or out of date, so check anything that matters (a date, a price, an allergen, a strength) with the source. Use the Report button to tell us about a mistake.

Links to shops and other websites take you away from the app. We do not sell alcohol and are not responsible for those sites or what you buy from them. Where we may earn a commission from a link, it is marked as one next to the link, and it never affects the order in which shops are listed.

Nothing in the app, including drinking tracking, is medical advice. If you are worried about your drinking, free and confidential help is available from Drinkline on 0300 123 1110 and at drinkaware.co.uk.

Using the app is free. We are improving it all the time, so features may change, be added or be withdrawn, and it may sometimes be unavailable. We try to keep your data safe and backed up, but please export anything you could not bear to lose (Settings lets you download your data).

Supporter is an optional paid extra, and our merch is sold by a print-on-demand company. What you get, the price, how to cancel and your refund rights are in the terms of sale and refunds, and set out again before you pay. Nothing that is free today will be moved behind a payment.

We may update these terms. If a change matters to you, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. If you do not agree with a change, you can close your account.

You can delete your account at any time in Settings. We may suspend or close an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms, or where the law requires us to. Except where that would be unlawful or put someone at risk, we tell you why and you can appeal (section 5).

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit, and nothing affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

Otherwise, because the app is free and run for personal use, we are not responsible for loss you could not reasonably have expected when you started using it, for business losses, or for what other members post, swap or arrange between themselves.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales, or, if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, in the courts where you live.

The app is run by Paul Williams, trading as Classified Cask, of Woodbridge, IP12 4LY. For anything about these terms, email paul.williams1978@gmail.com.