Category Archives: App Reviews

May14

Maclean’s Wine, an app about Wine in Canada

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Maclean’s Wine, an app about Wine in Canada

Maclean’s has a new wine app out, and it’s all about Wine in Canada. Maclean’s Wine, brought to you by Rogers – they of cell phone fame who own Maclean’s, they of words-on-pages fame – explores all things about wine in Canada, including the people and the places that matter, tasting notes galore, and insider tips about where to go and what to do when you’re looking to get in on the wine action north of the 49th.

Made with the screen real estate of the iPad in mind, It’s first and foremost an ebook, but a glorious and ever=changing one at that. The imagery is gorgeous and the information, well, informative. These are early days for this fresh-fased addition to the wine scene, so I’m looking forward to seeing timely updates that will prevent this e-tome from being relegated to the category of out-of-date wine guides. More development towards interactivity and community would also be welcome, though this isn’t clearly the primary mandate of this app.

What’s more, the app is available not only in Canada but also the United States from the iTunes App Store.

Did you get yours yet? What do you think?

Jan30

Wine Apps for Blackberry 10

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Wine Apps for Blackberry 10

Blackberry released its new Blackberry 10 operating system today, along with two new phones – the iPhoneish Z10 and the more traditionally Blackberry-style, keyboard-laden Q10. In the release, Blackberry announced that there are over 70,000 apps immediately available. So this got me wondering how many wine apps are there? So we did some digging, and here’s what we found (and most of them are not your usual suspects).

Mobifusion has been busy for this release, and among their apps are a couple noteworthy wine apps, Instant Wine Expert, with a $5.99 price tag and which is by the sound of it is a 1WineDude-esque “tool for working out what’s what in the world of wine, without pretentiousness or pomp”, and Top Wines of the World, a “companion guide for wines from Australia, California, France, Spain, Italy, Chile, Argentina, and [elsewhere around the world]. Both these apps sound bookish, but that is the case with many wine knowledge apps across platforms.

Cytrus has put out a crowdsourcing type wine app called Top12Wines  that you can download here.

The new version of the Vivino Wine Scanner (also familiar on iOS and available in the iTunes App Store) released today to be compatible with OS10, allows users to take a photo of any wine, and the app will automatically match it against an online wine database of more than 500,000 wines.

Wine Secretary looks to be a new app on the Blackberry platform, made specifically for the OS10 release. With it, you can guide your wine purchases using ratings, prices, and reviews from an archive of 1 million+ wines.

So where are apps from the Wine Spectator, Snooth, Nat Decants and others that are staples in iOS? Let’s hope they join the BB10 party soon!

We’ll keep updating as we find out about more wine apps, so keep checking back…

 

 

Jan29

App Review: Pocket Wine

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App Review: Pocket Wine

PocketWine1In this week’s app review, I’m taking a closer look at Pocket Wine, an app that, in the words of the developer, “unlocks the complex world of wine” and “enables you to easily navigate, explore and gain a clear understanding of all the major grape varieties and blends”. Pocket Wine’s main features are a wine Style guide, a listing of Grape varieties, a Food section that allows you to find a suitable wine match for whatever you’re looking at making for din-din, and My Taste (a taste profile feature that’s seriously fun).

The design is warm and inviting. The text pops out well, and the icons are distinguishable and memorable, so they’re doing their job. The navigation is traditionally iOS’sy and as such intuitive for anyone familiar with the platform.

The Style feature is a great access point into finding wines that suit my style (or what I think is my style – more on this below), and going into reading about a wine variety that I find interesting opens up so much information about everything from the variety’s origins, regions where it can be found, potential food pairings, and even a place to put my notes. The one thing that could open it up even more is a link from a proposed food pairing back to that food’s page in the Food section, so that maybe if I don’t like, say, Pinot Grigio with that fish, I can go to the fish’s Goof section page and find other potential wine matches.

The Grapes feature is a more direct link to what I just talked about above, and its inclusion on the menu is a great choice on the part of the developer as its an oft-needed reference not only for beginners but for more seasoned wine lovers wanting to venture into that more unfamiliar territory manned by the Arintos and Assyrtikos of the vine world.

PocketWine2My Taste, a feature that allows you to create a taste profile, is interesting and fun especially when comparing with friends while sharing a bottle and a few laughs. But more than that, it’s truthful. It doesn’t give you a Facebook game-like result of “You are a Cab Man!” but instead sliding-scale results for how you could potentially like multiple wine styles. And you know what? It was pretty spot on with my tastes – I do like smooth reds even if I’ve got a thing for powerhouse Cabs on occasion. What this feature may be missing is a direct link out of My Taste to a wine style. When I saw 80% compatibility to Smooth, I tapped on “Smooth” but nothing happened. Having said that, it’s not a long jaunt back to the Style view, but in this world of multiple access points, that direct access is something that would be a nice-to-have feature.

Pocket Wine is designed for both the iPad and iPhone, which – although almost being a must for most apps these days – is convenient as I like to have this kind of information with me on the go on my iPhone, but when settling down for some lengthier reading on grape varieties or that food-wine match for this Saturday’s dinner, the iPad is easier on the eyes.

All in all, this is a great wine app for both newbies and as a reference tool for veteran wine geeks, and definitely a step up from the various competing free apps that are out there.  It’s available on the US App Store at Pocket Wine – USA and on the Canadian App Store at Pocket Wine – Canada.

Rating: 4 stars

Oct16

App Review: Lot 18

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App Review: Lot 18

US iTunes, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store

Though for the most part, BBC’s Top Gear is all about Aston Martins, Lamborghinis and a lust for Jaguars of all stripes, the lads have to buckle down once in a while to review a car that is more… “down to earth”, as one might say. And that’s sort of what we’re doing today with a review of the Lot 18 app for iOS.

Lot 18 is visually and functionally like most other sales tool apps – no fancy navigation, no folds or hiding menus to maximize screen space, nothing to titilate the app geek. It’s a meat and potatoes app. But it works. It does it’s job well.

Functionally, Lot 18 fully-loaded. Each wine comes with reviews, descriptions, potential pairings, more about the winery. What’s also great is that after you select your state, the app filters to display wine available to your state. No messing about and finding out during Checkout that you can’t buy the wine you’ve already begun drooling over.

Sharing is standard as it should be, you can view your past orders (we didn’t place any orders so we’re not sure how easy it is to re-order something you’ve once bought, which is an important feature), and you can send invites to friends to use Lot 18 and get some wine-buying credit in the process.

Where it gets a bit dodgy is the list types. You can select to view all list types, or just staff picks, featured items, etc. on its own. But on that list is Select and Mobile, and there is no explanation as to what these are. Go to the FAQ page of the app and it only deals with the buying process, not at all with site features. It’s beginning to feel like a car with no instruction manual, which is fine if everything is self-evident but it’s not.

Something I also experienced is that when I lost the network, tried to update the product list, when the phone refound the network, the app had a terrible time bringing up results no matter which list I selected. This may be a bug, and I’d be interested in knowing if other Lot 18 users are experiencing a similar loss of functionality related to jumping in and out of a network and losing connection mid-browse or mid-purchase.

So, Lot 18 may prod you into a bit of Sherlock Holmes detective work. and it may not handle connection issues with the grace of Barishnikov. But all in all it is a solid app that offers quality content (i.e., good wine for a good value). With a clean design, rich feature set, and content with a solid QPR, Lot 18 is a good choice for the wine lover on the go.

3 1/2 stars

Lot is available for free on the iTunes Store.

Note: Lot 18 is only available in the United States. We will be reviewing the BC Liquor Stores and LCBO wine apps next week for some of our Canadian readers.

Jun7

3 Wine Apps Under the Microscope

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3 Wine Apps Under the Microscope

A lot of wine apps have sprung up these past two years so we decided to put three wine apps on iOS under the microscope. Let’s see how they fared.

Vintage Chart is Wine Spectator’s first app. It is definitely the most heavily used and has garnered a respectable score from over 270 ratings while most wine apps are only getting ratings in the single digits if that. The concept is simple, offering the user an easy and convenient way of getting a general idea of how vintages played out around the main wine regions in recent years. The user is given two navigation options: Quick View and Map View, which are both easy to use – though the map view feels overly simple, and integrating wine-growing region boundaries into the maps would add to the experience. Swiping left and right allows for easy movement between screens, and transitions work seamlessly. Aside from a couple minor design glitches such as the line running through the last item on most lists (c’mon guys, easy fix!), and notable wine-growing regions such as New Zealand and Austria missing from the catalog, this is definitely an app I’ll keep on my device and use at the wine store. I hope Wine Spectator continues to improve this app, and expand on the catalog.

3 1/2 stars

 

Wine Notes by William Lindmeier is a digital replacement for the classic wine notebook. It provides an easy layout for entering data and photos on the wines you taste. The initial offering of varietals and countries – even such staples as Malbec and Pinot Gris are missing – is lacking and requires the user to do lots of work to enter additional items in these categories. The ability to add wine by bar code is a good feature, though some have said it does not work for them, so the jury’s out as I haven’t tried it yet (I’ll update this review once I’ve gotten there). The sharing is easy and an important component, so kudos on that. I would like to see the possibility of voice entry to speak notes right into the app – this would be very beneficial when tasting through dozens of wines in a day, and the developer should spend more time creating a more encompassing catalog of items for each category, to allow the user to spend time on notes on the wine itself and nothing else. –If anyone has tried any other wine notes apps, I’d love to hear your thoughts and recommendations.

2 1/2 STARS

WSET Wine Game from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust is an app I like! What a great way to spend idle time testing my wine knowledge. With a cleanly arranged user interface, and game design combining wine knowledge with reflexes, even more veteran winos will have a challenge on their hands. The game is geographically slanted, but this makes for a more interesting, and less text heavy game. A game’s longevity, though, is often judged on the developer’s motivation to continue the experience, so I’m hoping WSET keeps pushing hte envelope on this venture, and adds more levels and scope to an already great game. And true to form for the WSET, beyond the first level, this isn’t a beginner’s game – you need to know your regions and then some. I’d love to hear how far you’ve gotten, and how you’re enjoying it!

4 1/2 stars