WineToMatch, an app available for both Android and iPhone, features a streamlined process that allows you to select your meal’s main ingredient, type of cuisine, additional traits, and other flavors.  From there, WineToMatch offers recommendations of wines that will best accompany your meal.  And for lovers of sweets, WineToMatch even suggests pairings for dessert items, too!  Overseen by Master Sommelier Jesse Becker, the app’s patent pending engine determines how agreeable portions of your meal are with the wines in WineToMatch’s database.  The information you provide about your meal is weighted, and composite scores are generated for each wine.  Wines that pair the best with your meal are displayed in large letters.  Wines that make the cut, but that have smaller letters, also pair well, but perhaps not as “ideally” as those with larger letters.  (This is similar to a web page’s “cloud” feature, and quickly conveys which wines are a better fit, relative to others, for your food.)

The app’s creators believe that the algorithms used to generate recommendations are “the most sophisticated ever designed for pairing wine with food.”  Originally programmed to produce more than 75 billion unique pairings, WineToMatch continually adds wines to its database, making this number even larger!  Give this easy-to-use, helpful app a try, and see if you agree with its designers’ claims.  The current Apple version, 1.1.2, is available for $2.99. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch (2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation), and iPad.  It requires iOS 2.2.1 or later.  The cost is the same ($2.99) for the Android version, 1.0.

WineStein Pro Icon

Ever have questions when pairing food and wine?  With WineStein Pro, a “genius” application for your iPhone, you can select the perfect wine for every meal.  It’s like having a sommelier in your pocket, on call to offer advice.

Simply enter your meal’s main ingredients, sauces and sides, and WineStein is ready to help!  Using cutting-edge artificial intelligence, the app creates a “meal DNA” used to determine the best wine pairings.  A scored list of wines, each with a full description, is produced for every dish you enter, and you can refine the results by choosing appropriate filters that range from color to price.

The WineStein database currently contains over 2,000 ingredients, dozens of sauces, and over 600 wine types for use when scoring.  With this information being constantly added to, the app can suggest a suitable wine for just about any meal.  (Try something really unusual; you’ll be surprised!)

WineStein Pro is available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.  It requires an internet connection, and an iOS of 4.2 or later.  And did we mention that the app is currently free?

Winery Quest Pro

It’s travel time!  Remember Jake Austad’s trek through California’s wine country?  Here’s a handy, travel app specifically made so that you can enjoy such an adventure: Winery Quest Pro.  Designed for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, this informative winery reference tool gives you everything you need to plan your California wine trip.  With 20 regional maps, filters for your favorite wine interests, detailed winery profiles, and a GPS navigated trip log, you’ve got everything necessary to embark on your own journey through California’s wine country. With Winery Quest Pro, planning your trip is easy!  And with the freshest wine and winery data updated daily, you’ll be kept in the loop with current information. Winery Quest Pro requires an iOS of 3.0 or later.  Available from iTunes with rave reviews, its current price is $7.99. 

Have a favorite wine app? Tell us about it in the comments and maybe we will review it!

Happy Labor Day! Hope you’re all enjoying your day off. We’ll be sipping some wine and enjoying the remaining summer sun. Right now, though, we’re reviewing an app that will let you keep a few notes on the bottle you’re enjoying without taking up a lot of time.

Vivino v1.1

If you want a quick, simple way to remember a good wine on the go, Vivino, a free app, is for you!  Simply use your smartphone to take a picture of your wine, and give it a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” for future reference. You can go into greater detail, too, and rate and review your wine, if desired.  You can even share your wine experiences on Facebook and Twitter.  With a growing database of 400,000 wines, the application utilizes the latest image mapping technology to auto-match the picture of your wine bottle, instantly providing you with the wine’s facts, ratings, pairings, and more!  These at-a-glance “stats” will even help you make better informed decisions at your favorite wine store.  While not a massive, all-in-one app, this easy-to-use wine tool is extremely convenient.  (When viewing a wine’s statistics, the app is almost like a digital “baseball card” of the wine.)  Plus, it’s free.  Vivino is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.  (It requires iOS 3.2 or later.)  It’s also available for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows 7.  Check it out!

Almost a year ago, we wrote a blurb about Corkbin, an easy-to-use app that lets you make tasting notes and share them with your friends.  Originally for the iPhone, the app now works with all iPhones, iPod Touches (iOS 3.0 or later), and Android phones. The latest version supports new features for friending: “share your wines with your friends and see what they think.” 

If you’ve ever had a really good wine, but later on forgot what it was, Corkbin is for you!  With Corkbin, simply take a picture of a wine you want to remember, jot down a note about it, and (if desired) share it with your friends!  Copies of your wine images and notes remain in your mobile device, so you’ll be creating an ever growing visual record of all the wines you’ve tried.

The latest Corkbin versions boast improved graphics (with support for the Retina display), improved usability and consistency of the user interface, new privacy features, stability, and more.  At the time of this blog, the current version is 2.0.2.  For 99 cents, Corkbin v.2.0.2  is available in both Apple’s App Store and the Android Market.  Cheers to that!

Corkbin Screenshots

According to a recent study conducted by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona, a compound found in grapes (and grape products) may actually help protect skin cells from harmful UV rays.  Researchers “evaluated the in vitro capacity of several antioxidant polyphenolic fractions from grape, which differ in their degree of polymerization and percentage of galloylation, to protect HaCaT human keratinocytes against UV-induced oxidative damage.”

The result?  Flavonoids in the grapes helped stop the harmful reaction that destroys skin cells triggered by exposure to sunlight.  When exposed to UV rays, the skin activates “reactive oxygen species”  which then oxidize larger molecules.  Like a chain reaction, this eventually activates enzymes that destroy skin cells.  The flavoniods in the grapes, however, reduce the amount of reactive oxygen species in skin cells exposed to the sun’s harmful rays, thus preserving the skin.  “These encouraging in vitro results support further research and should be taken into consideration into the clinical pharmacology of plant-derived polyphenolic extracts as novel agents for skin photoprotection.”  Here is yet another miraculous property of our beloved grapes!  The study can be found in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Image courtesy of discover-eleuthera-bahamas.com

Although we’ve already given this app our stamp of approval back in May, its continued popularity and recent improvements have made it emerge as one of the most practical wine and food apps ever.  Renamed from Nat Decants to Natalie MacLean Wine Picks & Pairings, and updated to version 2.2 on July 19th, the app’s already convenient barcode scanning logic was vastly improved.  This means it’s even easier to use your smartphone to scan a picture of a bottle’s barcode.  You’ll then get instant tasting notes, wine scores, recipes and pairing recommendations.  What is more, you can also see how many bottles of the wine in question are available at nearby stores, better helping you decide whether to buy a bottle now, or later!

Natalie comically describes how her app can assist during a common wine-buying situation: “You’re in the liquor store wondering if you should buy the bottle with the castle on its label or the one with the fluffy squirrel.  Now you just point and click to find out if that shiraz actually is a good wine to go with your pepper steak, or if the sauvignon blanc would work with your grilled veggies. No more guesswork based on castles and critters.”

In terms of publicity, Natalie compares having an app featured on Apple’s App Store Homepage “almost as good as being interviewed by Oprah for your book.”  If this is truly the case for app developers, Natalie certainly made quite the splash; Nat Decants is also the only wine app to make appearances in both Apple’s top 10 “Food & Wine” apps and “Date Night” categories.

In summary, Natalie MacLean Wine Picks & Pairings is a free app that provides thousands of wine reviews, wine articles, and winery listings.  It also possesses the miraculous ability to recommend some of the most perfect wine and food pairings this blogger has ever tried.  In addition, all of Natalie’s pairings were personally tested.  No automated, computer-driven approximations or “tricks!”  For more food for thought, the app contains thousands of original recipes with matching wine recommendations, and you can easily keep track of your own wine cellar inventory with a simple-to-use, intuitive interface that has even won over wine lovers who sometimes feel “technologically-challenged.” (And may I mention, again, that this app is absolutely free?)

Natalie MacLean Wine Picks & Pairings is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices with iOS 4.0 or later.  It is also available for Android, and BlackBerry devices with an OS of 4.3.0 or later.

Summer is in full swing!  And during the summer, increased temperatures often cause wine cellar cooling units to work longer and harder hours.  While most cooling units are expected to last five years if running continuously, the majority of cooling units (those run only when needed) function for many, many years beyond this grave estimate.  However, the time may eventually come when you will need to replace a cooling unit in your wine cellar or cabinet.  How will you know when this is so?

There are three types of cooling systems, each with their own particular design: through the wall (e.g. CellarCool CX Cooling Units), self-contained/ducted (e.g. Wine Guardian Fully Ducted Systems), and split systems involving a condensing unit and fan coil (e.g. WhisperKOOL Split System Cooling).  If your system is not operating properly, first refer to your owner’s manual.  You’ll often find a tip in the “troubleshooting” section that will miraculously solve the problem. If the problem persists, clean your cooling system while referring to the same manual.  For through the wall systems, vacuum and clean the vents. If this does not fix the problem, or if you have a split systems or self-contained/ducted one, you may need to call your local HVAC contractor to come out and test the coolant, pressure level, and provide general service to the system.  They’ll also make sure the issue is really the cooling unit and not a problem with the thermostat, especially if there was a recent power outage.

For wine cabinet cooling units: Many times you can purchase replacement cooling units made specifically for the model of your wine cabinet.  This allows you to replace them easily, without having to fuss with modifying a cabinet.  Although cooling units can last for many years, it’s a good idea to have them tested and serviced every year.  This way, they will keep running as efficiently as possible, and will oftentimes last longer than if they were never serviced.  Just like taking your car in for routine tune-ups, giving your cooling unit yearly “check ups” helps it stay in tip-top shape.

If you think your cooling unit might be ready for retirement, give the Vintage Cellars wine storage experts a call. They can help you figure out whether you need to replace the unit, and if so what cooling system will best suit your needs for the future. Even in wine cooling, new technology happens all the time! So the unit that has served you well for years may actually be inefficient (ie, expensive to run!) or noisy in comparison to the up to date cooling systems available.

Image courtesy of violinstudent.com

When was the last time you ran a moistened finger along the rim of a crystal wine glass, making it sing?  Perhaps, after reading this post, you’ll give it a try tonight! Concerts of “glass music” produced by this same technique used to be all the rage in Europe.  There were even performers, like the blind Marianne Kirchgessner, with entire careers that consisted of playing musical glasses.  Benjamin Franklin, after attending such concerts in London, invented and perfected the “Glass Harmonica,” an instrument made of concentric glasses mounted on a rod, turned by a treadle, the size of each glass determining its pitch.  Touching the rims of the turning glasses produced audible notes, and several glasses could even be touched simultaneously to produce chords.  Although it was something of a novelty instrument, many prominent composers wrote music for it, including Beethoven and Mozart.  In fact, Mozart’s Adagio for Glass Harmonica, K.365, is one of the last pieces Mozart composed. But, like the clear beverage craze in the early 1990’s that faded by the middle of the decade, the glass harmonica’s popularity came to an end around 1815, with few instruments built after 1820.  Today, there are special manufactures who do make glass harmonicas, but professional glass harmonica players are very rare.  Still, the ethereal, haunting, otherworldly sound of the glass harmonica can be heard in several films, including Interview with the Vampire,  Mesmer,  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and popular recordings like Björk’s “All Neon Like”.  If you want to know what this instrument sounds like, all you need to do is run your finger across the rim of a wine glass.  Crystal wine glasses, like those produced by Riedel, often work best.  Be sure, however, that you use a glass with a stem, otherwise the hand holding the glass will stop the tone.  Have fun!

Several of Vintage Cellars’ products are ETL-certified (see our Education Center article about ETL for more information about the certification), but three of the new Monterey WineKeeper products are our first WineKeeper Wine Preservers & Dispensers to be tested and approved by Intertek‘s Electrical Testing Labs!

Feel confident that our Monterey 4-Bottle ETL WineKeeper, Monterey 8-Bottle ETL WineKeeper, and Monterey 12-Bottle ETL WineKeeper offer the safest way to preserve and dispense wine in your restaurant or bar. These products can cool several bottles of wine at once and they make dispensing both reds and whites a snap, especially during parties or wine tasting events. Monterey ETL WineKeepers keep your wine tasting fresh for weeks, so you never have to worry when you’re too tired for more than a single glass of wine before bed, and they reduce the risk of you filling up your fridge with half-consumed bottles.

So, consider an ETL-Certified Monterey WineKeeper. You’ll know that Intertek independently tested it for safety, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how perfect each and every glass of wine will taste and feel.