The iPad has been out in the world for a couple of months now so we thought it time to make an early assessment of the first wave of wine apps to hit the iTunes store.
Let’s start be saying that “best” is an extremely relative term when it comes to describe the early contenders. ‘Least worst’ would be a more appropriate measurement. Researching this post was a thoroughly miserable experience. Read on and enjoy our misery and remember – we do this so that you don’t have to!!
1 – Berry Bros and Rudd
As with all things digital, Berry’s are the first wine merchant to get in on the act. Berry’s consistently leave their rivals eating mulch when it comes to new technology and Simon Berry deserves great credit for putting innovation at the forefront of their marketing.
That said, this app is underwhelming. As with their iPhone offer the iPad app is simply a re-rendering of their website content. You get the wine list and the usual navigation options but there’s a real lack of rich content or interactivity . The videos for the virtual wine school link out to their You Tube channel and this contributes to an overall feeling that the app lacks a sense of togetherness. It’s a mish mash of design that doesn’t reflect their high end values.
2 – Wine HD
WIne HD is a really, really odd thing to behold. It’s pitching itself as a comprehensive guide to wine, so you have sections dedicated to tasting buying and serving alongside an uninspiring list of wines from each region (when I selected ‘California Central Valley’ and was confronted with an image of Ernest and Julio Gallo I almost un-installed the app right there and then!).
The fundamental issue with this app is that it just hasn’t been designed with the iPad in mind. To navigate the app is to walk through treacle while being pursued by a swarm of bees. It feels like a series of PDF’s scans stitched together with the most rudimentary application of the iPad’s touch capability. This app manages the extraordinary feat of tuning Apples intuitive device into a Windows Vista like quagmire
Did I also mention that the design looks like it was put together using clip-art? Avoid.
3 – Wine Pass
As a concept, Wine Pass, promises much. The creators claim that the app ‘delivers restaurant wine lists directly to your iPad in real-time’. Choosing wine in restaurants can be a real chore, not just because of the choices available but also the mark-ups we have to endure as consumers. Wine Pass is ambitious but the success of such a service depends on comprehensive content.
In the case of Wine Pass, they is absolutely no content whatsoever. That’s right, not one single restaurant appears in my version and you are just left thinking, ‘why on earth have these guys gone live with this?’.
The model is dependent on restaurants signing up to the service and publishing their own lists but a better option would be for users to upload their own choices/recommendations.
4 – Wine Ratings
Wine ratings comes with something of a fanfare based on it’s iPhone version. ‘#1 wine app’ is the claim in the iTunes description. So, surely these guys have got it right? Wrong.
I downloaded the app just before I set off to a wine tasting in Kent and was looking forward to adding ratings and new wines. In practice I couldn’t do either task.
I tried to add a wine using the ‘suggest a wine’ feature and all that it allows you to do is send an email to the app creators. I then navigated to a product page, was confronted with a perfunctory list of attributes (but no tasting note) and then was invited to add a rating. Except no matter how hard you push your fleshy digits on the touch screen you simply can’t do what it’s asking you to. Wowzers.
As a last throw of the dice I touched the ‘share’ icon, at least expecting to see options to post to Facebook and Twitter. You can guess what happened next?
WineOfTheWeek Rating: AVOID
5 – WineNoggin
WineNoggin positions itself as a ‘new way to find, rate and share wine you love’. The service is a web based application that allows you to search a database of wines. Again, the app is drawing on the data from it’s namesake web service. As such you can search by name, winery, type, varietal and rating. There’s a social element in that you can also search by friends reviews. Crucially, you can add new wines and review/rate existing wines via the app.
So far so good. The down side though of all these types of social aggragator apps is that without content they are limited and without friends they are lonely places to inhabit. At the moment WineNoggin doesn’t have either for me. Until it achieves critical mass it’s really not much fun and on that front it’s surprising that there are limited social sharing tools to ensure content can be seeded to your own networks.
The other risk with data oriented apps is that unless you have an excellent user interface you end up overwhelmed by lists of data. This is the case with WineNoggin. It just doesn’t feel fun.
So what would we like to see on the iPad of wine?
1 – Snooth. The best social wine site on the web is sorely missing from the iPad. Come on guys, get your act together!
2 – More merchants with innovative apps that fully utilise the technology rather than simple versions of their existing websites. Here’s an appeal to Oddbins and Majestic – come and talk to WineOfTheWeek, we know what you need to do!
3 – Rich Content guides rather than boring PDF scans. Imagine how Hugh Johnsons Pocket Wine Book or World Atlas of Wine would render on the iPad. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
Any more ideas, dear readers?
