Best Apps for Wine Lovers
Marianne Rogerson – Mom on the Move
Impress your friends and family with your superior wine knowledge by downloading these wine apps:
Plonk
Aimed at the wine novice, the Plonk app contains a wealth of information about wine, including grape varieties and styles, together with food pairing guides. Search via grape, country or style, or discover “new and interesting” grapes. It even has a pronunciation guide, meaning you will never make a fool of yourself in front of the sommelier again.
Vivino
Take a photo of any wine label for instant information about pricing, ratings, reviews, food pairing suggestions and recommendations from more than 10 million wine lovers worldwide. The app can also search for wine merchants in your area and reveal pricing.
Corkbin
Always forgetting the name of the wine you enjoyed in a restaurant last week? Use Corkbin to take a photo of the wine label, record your own tasting notes and add it to your digital wine collection. A simple but effective way to keep track of wines you enjoy.
Wine Spectator WineRatings+
A wealth of knowledge from heavyweight wine magazine Wine Spectator is bundled up in this app. Free content includes vintage charts, educational articles, videos and daily news. Real wine buffs can upgrade to the paid version, where for a monthly subscription fee you can accesss more than 300,000 wine reviews, editor’s scores and tasting notes, release prices and drinking windows.
Raisinable
Raisinable compares the prices of wines in a restaurant to its average retail price, so at a glance you can see how much bang you’re getting for your buck. The app finds your current location in the city and shows you nearby restaurants with great wine lists, and can search further afield to give you restaurants’ wine lists at the click of a button. The downside? Raisinable only covers London and New York at the moment – but they will be adding new cities soon, so definitely one to keep an eye on.
Freelance writer Marianne has been an expat all her life, having lived in such diverse places as Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica. Becoming a mum to two active children hasn’t dampened her wanderlust – but instead of trekking up the Himalayas or white water rafting in Peru, these days she’s more likely to relish the opportunity to kick back on a Hong Kong Junk with a glass of wine in hand. She writes for a range of magazines and websites and edits the family travel blog Mum on the Move.