Jeff Flowers on August 15, 2016 0 Comments If anything is true about the future of established markets these days, it’s that the app is king. Even in a millennia-old sector like wine, it’s difficult to imagine growth without a proliferation of little programmable, wine-related thumbnails populating our devices like bunches on the vine. With an ever-changing economic landscape, multiple and emerging regions to learn, thousands of grape varieties and shifting trends to watch, it’s good to have a little electronic help in your corner. But as the options multiply, it’s hard to know which app to rely on for foolhardy expertise, organizational tools and easily accessed information. Luckily, we drink for a living so you don’t have to. Below, you’ll find the skinny on the best of the best in the world of wine apps – who should use them, what they’re good for and what we love about their features and capabilities. You’ll also find honest information about the pitfalls of these wine apps so you won’t be surprised when you hit “launch.” Happy downloading! 1. Best For Die-Hard Wine Fanatics: Banquet & Delectable Cost: Free for both iPhone and Android. What it offers: A vibrant community of wine geekery. Pros: Delectable has established itself as the app of choice on the pro wine circuit – you’ll find bottle shots from the world’s leading sommeliers on its Instagram-like feed, accompanied by their tasting notes and drinking history. Celebrity wine sightings aside, Delectable is a damn good app. In addition to label-recognition software that generally beats the competition, the interface is well-designed and intuitive, and the in-app purchasing feature makes it easy to snag a surprise favorite on-the-go. Cons: A big part of Delectable’s fun is in its feed – connecting with friends, wine pros and the general Delectable community. The social aspect is intended to open you up to wines your friends and wine heroes love, but if you’re not plugged into the “scene” or don’t care to be, it loses a bit of its existential cool. BONUS: Delectable recently launched Banquet, a separate app devoted entirely to purchasing. Banquet’s dedication to working with boutique retailers and producers means you’ll find way more than the usual package store plonk, and their themed buying guides make it easy to pull off in-depth home tastings with regional and/or stylistic curation. You still get the benefit of the pros’ ratings and reviews, and it’s still free. Download Delectable: Free for iPhone Free for Android Download Banquet: Free for iPhone Free for Android 2. Best for Your Bank Account: Wine-Searcher Cost: Free for iPhone and Android. What it offers: A behemoth network of retail pricing information. Pros: Wine-Searcher locks into the data stored on its popular website, where over 55,000 global retailers list their inventories. Within the app, you can scan a label and find a place to buy, compare prices to be sure you’re getting the best deal, record your favorites and get information about regions, grapes and producers. Cons: The interface is a bit clunky, and just because a retailer lists a bottle online doesn’t mean it’s still there. This can be a bummer when you think you’ve FINALLY located that unicorn wine, only to find out it really is gone forever. Download Wine-Searcher: Free for iPhone Free for Android 3. Best for Both Sommeliers & Wine Novices: Just Wine Cost: Free for Android, Not Currently Available for iPhone What it offers: A fun community and endless information for wine lovers. Pros: Just Wine is useful for wine novices and sommeliers alike. Just Wine makes our list of best wine apps because it offers so much: from wine ratings to a community of wine lovers to an easy-to-navigate event calendar…it even helps you pinpoint sales in your area for your favorite bottles! This app can help you learn the basics of how to open a wine bottle, to more advanced skills such as how to properly pair your meal with your chosen wine. For any interested sommeliers, this app can help your maintain an online wine cellar and boost your online presence as a wine authority. Cons: Some reviewers complained that certain features did not work, such as the bar code scanner. However, this app features a quality customer service team that seems dedicated to helping dissatisfied customers solve the problems they experience with the app. This app is also not currently available for iPhone. Download Just Wine: Not Currently Available for iPhone Free for Android 4. Best for Collectors: CellarTracker Cost: Free for iPhone and Android What it offers: A digital inventory of your wine cellar. Pros: CellarTracker’s app includes every function its beloved website does – in-depth, comprehensive records of your collection’s inventory, including tasting notes, reviews and drinkability timeline, all with the benefit of label-scanning tech. Cons: CellarTracker’s app includes every function its website does – and that’s a hell of a lot of information to fiddle with on your smartphone. Reports of bugs and confusing/clunky interface flow abound, too. General consensus is that the app is overly ambitious in its capabilities and needs an overall design overhaul; the idea is there, the data is there, but the execution makes it questionably worth it. The upside is that you can access your info on their website should multi-frame management frustrate you, so your data isn’t app-dependent, but then…why bother with the app at all? Download CellarTracker: Free for iPhone Free for Android 5. Best All-Around: Vivino Cost: Regular Membership: Free for iPhone and Android Premium Membership: $4.99 for iPhone and Android Pros: Vivino’s dynamic app has a lot of offer both novice and seasoned wine lovers. Featuring a label-recognition scan, large library of reviews and information, great organizational features, in-app purchasing options and robust social media component, Vivino meets Delectable’s attributes head-on. The app also relies less on a personality-focused social feed to drive the value of the experience, so if you’re a lone wine wolf or couldn’t care less about what Pascaline Lepeltier is drinking these days, you won’t feel like you’re missing out on the fun. Cons: That awesome cellar management tool? You’ll have to pay for it. In fact, if you want most of the great bonuses that set Vivino apart, you’ll have to pay the $4.99 monthly Platinum membership fee. Vivino might be the best all-around of all of these wine apps, but it’s also the only app we reviewed that charges a fee at all, which seems a little silly alongside its in-app purchasing capabilities. The app’s design could use a little help, too; all red, all the time gets a little intense after a few uses/bottles. And, though it offers inventory tracking features, if you want to get serious about your bottle counts, you’ll have to visit the website, just like CellarTracker. Download Vivino: Free for iPhone (Regular Membership; $4.99/month for Premium Membership) Free for Android (Regular Membership; $4.99/month for Premium Membership)
