How much is that wine worth?

WinePrices iPhone App from Vinfolio

Over the past few days I’ve been testing a new iPhone app from Vinfolio: WinePrices.

The company has been working on the app for the past few months. It provides easy access to the comprehensive wine auction price results and U.S. wine retail prices from their sister site WinePrices.com. It has been submitted to the Apple iPhone store and is waiting for approval. Here are some of the features Vinfolio lists for this app:

• Simple navigation – View average prices and detailed listings quickly.
• Integration with professional reviews – Subscribers to Allen Meadows’ Burghound.com, Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar, Roy Hersh’s For the Love of Port, and The Richard Juhlin Champagne Club, can view their professional ratings.
• Community scores and reviews – View average community score and complete community wine reviews from VinCellar.
• Label view – View detailed wine labels for easy wine verification.

The above features all work perfectly well. The app not only lists the average auction price for the item, but the average U.S. retail price as well. One of the cool features listed above is that you can enter your subscription to one of the scoring pubs and it will give you that content in the app. I got it to work with my subscription to Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar. Additionally, I would like to see Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate scores in there, since they carry more weight than any of the others. I don’t know, there may be licensing issues.

Another cool feature is that if you select either the auction or retail price, it will expand to show you the the individual stores or auctions they used to get the average. One can extrapolate that if you were looking for a particular wine you might find it at these stores or at a future auction by the same auction house.

The practical applications for this app, other than that listed above, would be to have a handy reference if you happen to be at an auction, browsing the store shelves at a high end wine store, or dining at a fine establishment. You can double check that you are getting a fair price and aren’t being taken to the cleaners.

I just have a few small nits to pick. First, there is an icon with 4 small circles located under the name of each wine when you do a search. I have no idea what they mean or where to find the info. Second, they have a banner ad on the search screen that points users to the Vinfolio website to browse their selections. The website it sends you to is not mobile optimized. A big faux pas in my opinion. Finally, if you want to log off, you have to go to the info screen, which itself is hard to find. You have to click on the small “i” in the lower right hand corner.

These should be easy fixes however, and I am sure Vinfolio will address them in the next release.

Overall, it is a pretty neat and unique app.

Vinfolio is working on a second app for VinCellar which should be released in the next few months. In the meantime, the VinCellar site has also been optimized for mobile browsing.

Tags: Auctions, Retail, VinCellar, VinFolio, WinePrices