The Best Wine "App"

iPhones, Blackberries and Droids are being sold at a record speed and these smart phones are quickly digitizing the way we carry on day-to-day business. One of the nifty things about these phones are the applications that can be downloaded to them for a variety of functionality, connectivity and just plain fun. As a passionate pursuer of wine, I'm more than positive you guys with smart phones have ventured into a couple of apps for wine.

There is a myriad of apps that do everything from comparing prices, aggregating ratings and providing reviews and suggestions.
I've explored a few of my own, both purchased and free downloads, and originally wanted to write a post reviewing a couple I got to experience, to help you make a better choice in wine apps. But, after a few weeks of road tests, I just want to reflect on how useless these really are. Wine apps boast their ability to turn you into a connoisseur, hunt down the best prices, find the best rating, suggest the best pairing and everything in between. But the best app isn't on your smartphone and wasn't developed by some programmer; the best app is the staff in the wine store, who will converse with you, get a sense of your taste, the occassion and your interest, and be able to show you the wine that you need. (Or in some cases, never knew you wanted!)

Okay, so I'm being a little dramatic; not all apps are useless. We all want to save money and the apps that help me assess and compare QPR are the ones that I found most useful. But please take heed; these apps are only tools for helping you choose that perfect bottle. (I dare say, in wine, there are no perfect bottles, only perfect memories.) They should not make the decision for you. No one should walk into a wine store and shut-out the merchant -- they, above any app you can download, have the best knowledge about what they're stocking, how their bottles are drinking and how it might please you. Consumers have a notion that all wine sellers are trying to get you and make theirs. If you encounter a wine shop or a salesperson like this, please find a new store. One with a knowledgeable staff you can talk to, who want to get to know you and know your palate. This is the connection that is lost if we blindly look up every bottle in consideration on our phones.

But having reviewed apps for weeks, I thought I might as well share my findings. Across the board, I found that most apps did not deliver. Consumer reviews on all of them were very brief and non-descriptive (not too many people post their tasting notes from their iPhones I assume) and a lot of times the wines being searched were not present in the databases. Most of them claimed to be able to do a lot of things, but rarely delivered. I found a lot of apps that were good at one thing but lacked in all other areas. I suppose you could hunt those down and have five different wine apps to go through, but what's the point? A few stood out, in my humble opinion, and were worth noting. Also, please keep in consideration that I used these apps only a few times to get a feel for how they work, so they are not thorough, wine-professional reviews; just me, a normal guy, walking into a normal wine store with some apps trying to buy wine:

The Wine Ratings Guide by Nirvino -- Apple Apps Store, $2.99 --
I included this app because of their very impressive and extensive database of wine. I found most of the wines I searched for and their average prices. But I had to say that the app name is a bit misleading; The ratings are on a five-star scale and there are no consumer reviews, which sort of make the app useless unless you just want to find the average asking price. Sort of expensive for a one-trick pony.

Wine Snob by 9mmedia -- Apple Apps Store, $2.99 --
Although the database seemed very limited (only 2 of the 12 wines I searched in the store came up) I had to add this because of its cool Geotag feature - every wine entry is logged through Google Maps with GPS Coordinates so you can literally trace your wine. The reviews were not very useful, and it does let you put in your own tasting notes... So, it's nifty and different, but not too great at the wine part...


R-Vintage Lookup by REGARD Solutions Corp. -- Blackberry App World, $3.99 --
I was disappointed to find no apps on the Blackberry that really was worth this post (if this post is worth anything at all...) but I did find this useful app. As the name suggest, R-Vintage shows you vintages, varietal, region, 100-point rating and a drink or hold status. This was helpful to me to see what years were good and helped me to stray away from some bottles that they came from less than preferable years. The layout was simple but again, this is a one trick pony; it doesn't have reviews, you can't see individual bottles, so at four bones, this was a disappointment...Way too expensive for what it offers.

Those were just a few of the many I road-tested. Here is a list of the rest --
Apple App Store:

Wine Ph.D
Wine Pad 2
Wine Enthusiast Guide

Blackberry App World:
Wine of the Day
10 Top Wines
Nats Decants Wine and Food Matcher

I wonder, has anyone tried any of these apps? What were your opinions on them? Do you have a wine app you use frequently? Please comment and school me!

As you can tell, although most apps did offer some helpful tools, an all-in-one app that can satisfy my need for consumer reviews, QPR, extensive databases and the ability to understand my palate, my personality and my wine-curiosity has not been developed... yet. Until then, I think I'll try the un-digitized version of finding quality wine; Stacy, a knowledgeable and helpful staff member at the local store :) Thanks for your time!

Love and Cheers,
-Tatum