Wine Steward
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
I just found a new app for my iPhone and its called Wine Steward. It was only $1.99 and is much better than other programs that retail for more. I suspect this is an intro rate since the app should be selling for at least $4.99. The idea is simple, you can search for any food and it will give you a wine pairing based on your choice. It only gives you grapes not actual brands but its enough to help you narrow down your wine selection. The database is full of many types of food so you will find what you are looking for with just a few letters typed in.
Other features are your wine cellar and the use of Cover Flow. Unfortunately you need to manually type in your collection and while the database does some of the type ahead for you don't expect it to find everything. You have to build the wine profile with the name, region, grape etc but the one feature that stood up was the integration of the iPhone camera. You can take a picture of the label/bottle and when your iPod is turned sideways you can flip through your cellar like you do with albums. I really find this feature quite cool and one that I would definitely utilize. As with most wine apps you cannot take an existing wine cellar database and upload it into the app or even through a web interface. I don't have the time to sit down and type each bottle in, if I were able to upload a spreadsheet I wouldn't mind snapping photos and using this feature. Until then I will just use it for my pairings and wait for further application updates. You can check out the app at the website below. You can also play with the wine pairing portion on the web.
http://smartywine.com/
Posted by mardenhill 4/01/2009 07:14:00 PM
Labels: Technology, Wine
