How To Use Your iPhone to Enhance Your Wine Knowledge: GUEST BLOG

How To Use Your iPhone to Enhance Your Wine Knowledge

Drinking wine and using your mobile phone is rarely a good idea. You might dial an ex-girlfriend and mouth off about why you left her, or drunkenly roam the internet for hours searching for that elusive answer to the debate that you and your friend have been squabbling over and end up with a huge bill at the end of the month. However, with the development of the iPhone, there are now iPhone apps that can help you enhance your knowledge of wine and enjoy the experience of tasting your favourite tipple.

For example, Pocket Wine, ($3.99) is a fantastic new app that encourages you to expand your knowledge of the wine world, whilst simultaneously matching your tastes to specific wines. By listing all of the main Table Wine grape varieties of grapes and blends, Pocket Wine offers you a clear understanding of these wines, allowing you the opportunity to learn a great amount about the world of wine at a fraction of the price of a sommelier course or ten years of drinking in wine bars. The good thing about this app is that it never pushes any wine on you or tries to sell you individual bottles, but rather it matches potential wines to your palate through a series of questions aimed at identifying your preferred tastes in the My Taste section. It also matches and pairs different foods to particular wines and grape varieties, meaning that you will never again have a meal that doesn’t match your wine.

The Wine Enthusiast Guide, ($4.99) is based on the popular wine magazine of the same name, and lists thousands of professional reviews of individual bottles, constantly updated by a panel of experts. As well as being able to search for every wine regarding to grape variety or blend, style, price, variety and region, you can also enjoy the twenty illustrated tutorials that guide you through the art of unlocking the secrets of wine. If you like the lesson, you can follow links to hundreds of pages of web content that will help further your wine knowledge. You’ll never be embarrassed by a snooty waiter in a restaurant ever again!

Now, anybody who has been a tourist or a long-term visitor in the wonderful world of wine is bound to have come across a wine snob. These guys can be pretty unpleasant at the best of times, let alone when they’ve had one too many and they are bubbling with arrogance and disdainful sniffs. However, the iPhone app that shares the same name as these haughty characters provides you with enough ammunition to challenge them when they try to disparage your best efforts in wine-based conversation. Wine Snob, ($1.99) is a particularly sophisticated iPhone app that allows you to track and rate each wine that you try, whilst searching for recommendations, definitions and food pairings. The descriptions of the wines are the apps strong point, separating it from other apps of the same ilk; sometimes its like reading a wine-based novel, giving plenty of vernacular to impress and defeat you snobby opponent.

There are plenty of apps out there for you to collect and select, but these three are an excellent starting point. Above all, the most important thing is that you enjoy your wine, and take pleasure in recommending wines to others; if your iPhone can help you expand your knowledge of wine, then you should utilize this tool and treat your taste buds to the technological advances in the wine world. Now, who said that technology had to be boring?!

Guest author David Harfield blogs at iphoneappcafe.com about iPhone apps, accessories, and also provides tips to get the most out of your iPhone.