Vivino

Wine Journals are an old favorite for keeping track of wines one drinks and of their aroma, appearance, and taste. These journals allow one to record their impression of the wine, while jotting down enough of the label to identify the wine later. Some of these journals (like this one) are too big to be carried around and used while wine tasting at a party, a winery, or a tasting room.

But nowadays, nearly everyone has a smart phone and with as little as a text editor, can use this as a wine journal instead. But that still leaves the problem of recording enough of the label for the notes to be useful. That's where the app Vivino comes in. Available for Android and iOS, this apps allows users to take a picture of wine bottle, rate the wine, make comments about the wine, and share this with others. But the most compelling feature is it's ability to auto-match the wine label to a record in its database. With this, the user can take a picture of the wine bottle and add comments and ratings later. In some instances, this auto-match has brought over more information than would have been able to determine from the bottle, such as its vintage and the variety of grapes that went into it. For instance, the record for Oliver Winery's Soft Red is a 2008 vintage made from Concorde grapes.

Of the wines I've tried with this app, about 8 out of 10 are eventually matched by the application. Older versions of the app did not allow the user to enter the label information themselves, but the latest Android version does allow users to enter this information manually. This was my most anticipated feature they've added and they've done so while keeping the application simple and easy to use.

Whether you have a wine journal or not, are a serious wine drinker or just a casual one, I highly recommend the Vivino app to track the wines you taste. With so many bottles out there based on so many different grapes made in so many different ways, it takes some trial and error to find wines suited to your tastes. A wine journal or an app like Vivino can aid in finding the wine suited for you if used properly.