Most wine lovers have been in a situation where they are out for dinner or visiting friends, taste a really great wine, write down the info on a piece of paper which can never be found later. Thankfully there are several technology solutions out there. For starters, how about using your smartphone to snap a photo of the wine’s label?

What if you could get all the tasting notes and reviews from friends and experts around the world about the wine that you are drinking, or conversely, the wine that you are about to purchase? Sounds too good to be true, some might argue — but, it’s not!

Wine apps

The term ‘app’ is shorthand for ‘application’, and refers to small downloadable programmes for hand-held computing devices and smartphones. Wine apps are available for all types of devices for prices ranging from FREE to US$5.00.

These apps fall into categories ranging from reference information (vintage charts, definitions, grapes), retail (where to buy the wine – mainly in the North American market), wine locator systems, and perhaps the largest category journalling and cellar management (keeping a tab of what you own, have tasted or are about to buy). I did a search on wine in the iPhone app store and over 500 wine-related apps were found. I downloaded a few of the more popular ones and here are my thoughts:

Vivino

“Take a photo of any wine label to tap into the wisdom of more than six million wine lovers,” is Vivino’s promise. The free version is enough for most people, but if you want to load up your entire collection then you will need the premium paid version for US$5.00. This app has a strong social aspect to it: you can follow friends, they can follow you, anyone can submit reviews for the wines that are loaded in the system. The app is available for iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile. This might be the most popular wine app globally, with a few hundred users in Jamaica.

Drync

With similar label-scanning and recognition technology at Vivino, Drync is a mobile software application that enables consumers to purchase wine at the moment it is most relevant to them while they are drinking it. Drync allows consumers to quickly and easily purchase wines they love on their mobile phone for home delivery. This is for the US market. Drync is free and available for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Cor.kz

This might be the main app for the wine geeks, the one per cent of wine lovers who desire intimate details about every wine they own and have ever tasted. Cor.kz is the only app that taps into the main global database that many of these serious wine collectors use

CellarTracker

CellarTracker is the world’s largest collection of wine reviews, tasting notes and personal stories from people who love wine. While Vivino and Drync are mainly based on label recognition technology, Cor.kz might require some more manual work, even though it now has a built-in barcode scanner plus loads of wine details and reviews — definitely not for the casual sipper.

Other great apps out there include Nat Decants, Hello Vino, AG Wine, Delectable, Wineratings+, Wine Simplified and Plonk. If you are travelling and want to be part of the wine action, check out LocalWineEvents.com.

Christopher Reckord — Information Technology Entrepreneur & Wine Enthusiast. Send your questions and comments to creckord@gmail.com. Follow us on twitter: @Reckord