Wine is a wonderful thing, and your PC and
phone can help you enjoy it even more
1. A sommelier in your smartphone
A sommelier is a wine expert, and with
Mobile Sommelier you can have one in your smartphone wherever your travels take
you. This $3 Windows Phone app (there's a free trial so you can test it out
first) has been created by wine buffs to give you the information you need,
wherever you need it. Whether you're a newcomer to the world of wine or a
seasoned expert, it'll help you find the right wine to go with your restaurant
meal or the feast you intend to cook in the evening. It can also take notes and
photos of labels and will track your favourite grapes, wineries and vintages.
Mobile
Sommelier (Windows Phone)
2. Award-winning wine writing
The Sunday Express wine columnist
Jamie Goode has won multiple awards for his writing on wine, and his personal
website is a great resource for anyone with even a passing interest in the
subject. Here you'll find out how your favourite wine is made, how to choose a
good budget bottle, how you can learn to taste wine and, most importantly of
all, why wine is better drunk than stored. It's a brilliant site with an
equally good and regularly updated blog, where Goode shares his top wine tips.
It's an enormous resource, and it's completely free.
Award-winning
wine writing
3. What to buy in Waitrose
For most of us, the supermarket is where we
buy some, most or even all of our wine, so wouldn't it be great if someone
could tell us which of the dozens of bottles on the shelves are worth having,
and whether that supposedly half-price bargain is the deal of the century or
just paint stripper with a nice label? If that sounds familiar, say hello to
Supermarketwine.com, which enables you to filter your selection by supermarket,
and see which bottles have been recommended by top wine critics. There are
comments from other users, and its suggestions include inexpensive but
delicious own-brand wines.
4. Invaluable annual wine guide
Hugh Johnson OBE is a writer, broadcaster
and wine lover. He's also the world's top wine writer, and his annual Pocket
Wine Book is the best-selling guide on the market. It features more than
6,000 wines and regions, expert advice from around the world, and a section
showing you alternatives to some of the wines you already drink. It's an
invaluable tool for novices and experts, and is available in both Adobe Digital
Editions format and as a Kindle book that works in the Kindle app.
5. Wine lists for Windows 8
My Wine Lists is an app that works together
with WineTable.com to create a virtual wine cellar on your computer. You can
create lists of any wines you like - including ones you've tasted and loved,
ones you'd really like to try, and ones your favourite critics have recommended
- and access professional wine tasters' choices to inspire you. The website's
handy social features enable users to rate and review over 50,000 different
bottles. Whether you want to keep track of your own wine adventures or just
discover something that will taste good with a stir-fry, there's lots to enjoy
here.
My
Wine Lists is an app that works together with WineTable.com to create a virtual
wine cellar on your computer.
6. Expert advice, delivered digitally
Don't let the faintly patronising title
fool you - Wine for Dummies is a great buy, especially the all-in-one
edition, which gives you five books for the price of one. Authors Ed McCarthy
and Mary Ewing- Mulligan know their stuff, and promise to teach you everything
you need to know to understand, buy and enjoy wine. The book covers everything
from how wine is made to the best way to store it and what to pair it with. Its
coverage of the world's wine-producing regions is particularly good.
Wine
for Dummies is a great buy, especially the
all-in-one edition, which gives you five books for the price of one.
7. Advice from a famous expert
Jancis Robinson OBE's site is in two parts:
a large free section with articles about wine, recommended buys, tips on
wine-related travel and so on, and a paid-for version ($11 per month or $104
per year) with tasting notes, a member's forum and access to the Oxford
Companion to Wine. Robinson herself is one of the wine world's celebrities
- a writer and broadcaster who updates her site daily - and her team includes
top restaurant critics, wine bloggers and industry insiders.
8. A virtual walk around a winery
Here's an interesting app for wine buffs:
the world-renowned Matías Winery
has created a Windows Phone app for those of us who can’t quite make it to
Hungary to be there in person. The app is a gorgeous online brochure for the
winery, its philosophy and, of course, its wines. You can choose to organise
the bottles by type, region, vintage or category. It would be nice to see some
of the bigger names in wine take a similar approach; it's nice to know a bit
about the places your favourite wines come from, and the people who make them.
9. Wine browsing on the move
Not to be confused with Mobile Sommelier,
Vinum too promises "a sommelier in your pocket". It enables you to
browse wine by categories including varietal, appellation, vintage and even
vineyard. It also provides extensive information on each wine, offers user
reviews and winemakers' notes and includes advice on which bottle to pair with
which dish. We particularly like the embedded maps that let you see exactly
where your favourites come from. The Vinum app is $2, and you can download a
free trial to put it through its paces first.
10. The right
wine for every meal
The Wine Society was established in 1874 to
find good quality wines for its members, and it remains a key player in the
wine world - but you don't need to buy its wines to benefit from over a century
of wisdom.
The
Wine Society
The society's Food and Wine Matching page
is a simple guide to help you find the right accompaniment for any meal. Be it
a juicy steak, a hearty broth or your Christmas turkey, it couldn't be easier:
choose a meal from the drop-down menu, click 'Select' and let the Wine Society
make some recommendations.
