It has been said that we are all products of our
environment, maybe that’s why it seems like half the people I know are trying
to develop an Iphone App for wine. Having a wine business based just
outside of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area gives me access to new
and exciting wine applications for the Iphone.
Snooth Wine Pro
If I could have only one
wine app on my Iphone, this would easily be the one. To start, the search
function for any given wine actually works. That’s a bigger thing than
most people realize since there isn’t a standard way to list vineyard
location, wine name, varietal and the other information that you’d need to find
a bottle of wine in their system. Secondly, Snooth brings together an interesting
combination of user reviews of wine, professional review information and
stores. Stores are able to upload their inventory onto Snooth for a small
monthly fee, therefore when you’re looking at a discount at the grocery store,
it should be pretty easy to check and see if that’s actually a good deal or
not!
Pair It
Let’s face it, wine is
best consumed with food. Most people also buy wine on the day they’re
planning to open it, so it behooves you to be able to pair your wine with the
food you’re planning to make for dinner. As an example, if you’re having
shrimp most people are going to purchase a Chardonnay. Did you know that
Grenache Blanc is probably a better pairing though? Pair It allows you to
either upload your own recipes and gain pairings that way, or to use their set
lists of food choices. Most people that I know, love the Vegas slot
machine style of matching. It allows the system to select a good pairing
seemingly at random, so you don’t end up drinking the exact same types of wine
every week with your favorite meals.
Wine Events
Local Wine Events is by far the best resource for
finding local tasting events, so it makes sense that their Iphone App leads the
category in social sharing and allowing you to find other wine drinkers and
wine events. I like that it uses your current GPS location which allows you to
see if any local wine bars or wine stores have current tasting events on the
schedule. My wife and I use this extensively when we’re actually in San
Francisco or Napa Valley since there are so many listings in those two places.
Wine Enthusiast Guide
Wine Enthusiast is
seemingly gaining market share among the major wine reviewers as time goes
by. Part of that gain is coming because they make their information more
accessible than does Robert Parker, or Wine Spectator. This app is a
simple way to see their tasting guides and information about the wines that
they have reviewed in their past few episodes.
Wine lover’s are really
lucky that it seems like wine and technology are increasingly going together.
Never before has more information been more freely available than it is
today, make use of it!
Author Bio:
Mark Aselstine is the
owner of Uncorked Ventures, an online wine club based just outside of the city of San
Francisco. As a millenial himself, he understands the need to combine
wine and technology together.