If you are
looking for a way to impress someone or a group when going out to dinner,
having an extensive knowledge of wines is a great way to start. Despite the
wide variety of wines available and accompanying price ranges, many know only
what they are accustomed to seeing at local restaurants. This is so much the
case that Sommeliers, or wine experts get paid well to disseminate this
information. There is a whole world of wine and wine etiquette that many are
simply unaware of.
What if you
could have your own personal Sommelier on your device? WineStein Sommelier for
Android attempts to achieve this daunting task.
Enter WineStein
WineStein Sommelier
is not just a “digital sommelier”, but a social network just for the wine
world! It touts being able to match any wine with any dish, any dish with any
wine, allows you to search for restaurants which carry certain wines and even
lets you purchase wine directly!
Signing up
is simple. You can sign up using your Facebook log in or by creating an
independent account. This will be much appreciated by those wishing to keep
their personal information private. Create a username and password and you are
ready to go.
Using WineStein
After
creating an account, the startup screen gives you several choices. You can “Pair
Your Dish”. This allows you to enter in any dish and pair it with an
appropriate wine. You can literally enter in any dish, or the main portion of a
dish. To test this, we simply entered beef and watched close to 371 results
appear from its extensive database. Everything from Biefstuk to Flank Steak was
displayed.
Tapping on
one of the dishes shows you the ingredients of the dish and the “Meal DNA”.
This welcome feature breaks down the taste of the dish using a bar graph.
Attributes such as “Sour”, “Bitter”, “Salty”, “Sweet” and more are used to
communicate this information. From there, the user can pair the dish with the
appropriate wine or modify the dish. You can also save it to “My Dishes”, a
favorites list.
In the case
of Flank Steak, 171 wines appeared when tapping on “Find Wines With This Dish”.
Tapping on any of the wines gives you information about the wine. Its origin,
price range, serving advice, grapes used and the DNA (taste information) of the
Wine.
Just as you
can pair a wine with a dish, you can also do the reverse by tapping “Pair Your
Wine”.
Other Goodies
The choices
on the startup screen are mirrored as icons at the bottom of the screen. Icons
for “Shops” and “Restaurants” are present. You can locate shops to purchase
your favorite wine, or locate restaurants which serve the wine you desire. Any
of these places are displayed on a map with local establishments prioritized.
If you sell wines, you will enjoy the fact that you can register with WineStein
so people can find you and do business!
Verdict
WineStein Sommelier
has so much to offer. While there is a premium version available, it is hard to
believe that they were able to pull this off and offer a free version of this
app. There is simply so much information and so many features available that if
it were $20, we would still be okay with it. The app listing in the major app
stores brags that this app can make you a wine expert, or allow you to have a
wine expert in your pocket. This claim is about as true as it gets. WineStein
certainly hits a homerun in our books. This app is a must have. Five out of
five stars. We would give it six out of five if we could.
GMA
