Top wine apps you need to impress your wine lover friends

Photo credit: Gregory Bourolias

The world of wine can be a mysterious one to the outsider. It centers around an alcoholic beverage after all, which automatically places it within a niche market. However, 2013 numbers indicated that, in the US, a larger volume of wine has been consumed than in France. This shows that the world of wine is going beyond its spiritual capital.

And more than just in traditional ways too. Numerous startups from around the world have begun to disrupt the way we keep track of wine, rate wine, understand wine and even buy wine from a variety of platforms. Beginning wine aficionados no longer have to venture into unfamiliar territory without proper tools, a brand-new prospective considering this is an industry where sommeliers (wine experts) have always been the main sources of guidance.

These are the cream of the crop.

Drync

Drync gives the wine lover the price, wine descriptions, availability, ratings and tasting notes, everything the user needs to make an educated purchase, also within the app. The idea is undoubtedly hardy: scan and buy wine the moment you try it. It is with this concept that founders Brad Rosen and Bill Kirtley managed to raise $900,000 from angel investors including Jack Remondi and Mark Hastings. Launched in 2008, it iterated often en-route to its current mobile app version in 2014.

Epicurio

Epicurio is one of the fastest-growing startups that allow users to scan wine and provide their own reviews and ratings. Its selling points are slightly different, however, with a social component that allows users to share any wine note or blog article (think of it as an information section for beginners), and the ability to buy wine straight from the app. It provides a rare combination of ecommerce and wine identification within one package.

Founder Clement Hochart said he wanted to bring the social and ecommerce into a single wine app. Epicurio has been steadily growing as the hip choice for wine lovers in Asia ever since.

Vivino

It is hard to go through any wine app conversation without Vivino being mentioned at least once. 14 million users regularly make use of its photo label recognition system that almost instantly brings up wine information for selections, reviews, ratings, tasting notes and all that jazz. What differentiates it from the others is the manual identification of wine from the team down at Vivino, if the app is unable to detect the vintage indicated in the scan. Beyond that, wine lovers get the full suite of staple features: reviews, places to buy from, recommendations and a premium cellar management system.

CellarTracker

Wine-Searcher

A brand new world