Vivino App: Needs More Time on the Vine
The Vivino app is amazing for its primary feature: using your cell phone’s camera, you photograph a wine label and Vivino quickly reports back reviews, typical prices and more. It’s indispensable when shopping for wine and confronted with a bevy of bottled beauties, and the tech is an elegant marriage of image search and wine data. But unfortunately, that’s about it.
Vivino promises a lot more, but the dev team seems woefully ill-equipped to deliver. Months ago, users of both the app and even the webpage had been tortured for weeks with a site error that crippled most features, and about which Vivino had been relatively silent. The fact that both the app and webpage were impacted revealed a serious multi-platform database issue, which then raised questions about the security of user information. Emails to their support team routinely went unanswered.
In what could have been a good move to simultaneously boost user loyalty, while obtaining feedback on potential new features, Vivino recently sent an email survey with the subject line “Help to build the next feature?” Unfortunately, the title of the survey was misleading, and the devs were not interested at all in getting user opinions on what might be the “next feature,” but instead asked some fairly inane and canned questions about whether app users preferred to see words like “fruity” or “dry” used when describing wines. There was no comment field option at all which may have allowed survey respondents to suggest their own features, so it is clear the dev team already had their minds made up about something, and the survey was designed to reinforce their assumptions.
Waiter, There’s a Bug in My Wine App
Meanwhile, the other features the app provides are poorly implemented. For the “premium” price of $49.99, you are supposed to get periodic buying guides, but these routinely include wines that are only available for sale on the other side of the planet from where you live, making the buying guide entirely useless. A GPS feature is supposed to report nearby wines, but routinely fails to show any wines at all, even if you are standing in the middle of a wine shop.
Worse still, Vivino hasn’t fixed growing problems with its key feature, the label scans. More and more, a scan will result in a wildly different wine; scan a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, and it may come back with the right label image, but the data is for a malbec from Argentina. Other times, it gets the winery right, but the wrong wine or wrong vintage. The app allows you to correct the year or the particular wine from that producer, but if the result was for an entirely different wine from an entirely different label, you’re out of luck. This problem used to occur occasionally, but recently has become more frequent, occurring (for me, anyway) about 25% of the time. Given that there are a host of “wine scanning” apps coming out, Vivino needs to course-correct, and do it soon.
Syncing of the data across platforms isn’t seamless, either. I run Vivino on three devices (a tablet, a PC and my cell phone) and often reviews I post on one platform don’t show up on the other for weeks. Accessing via PC through Chrome seems to show everything in real time, but for the tablet and cell, it’s hit or miss as to when the data will sync up.
Antisocial Media
But perhaps the biggest frustration with Vivino is that it is sitting on a goldmine that seems to be beyond their ability to comprehend: creating a true wine-based social network. Right now users can upload reviews and ratings, and can “follow” others; but that’s about it. You can comment on other people’s reviews, but you can’t message people, you can’t share reviews with your friends, can’t share your social media accounts, and there is very little user interaction as a result. In short, there’s no community.
There’s also some secret algorithm that chooses to nominate some reviewers as “featured” which puts their reviews front and center; in fact, it’s likely not an algorithm at all, and just a toggle punched on the whim of a developer somewhere. There’s no rhyme or reason to who gets “featured” and how they got that way, and it cripples the ability of anyone — such as Winepisser — to build a “brand” through the app. It’s impossible to build a network of readers, or even friends, no matter how much time you put in on the app; since reviewers ultimately want their reviews read — that’s the point — this undercooked attempt at networking is a big, glaring flaw.
There’s little you can do about it, either, since Vivino offers no integration with other social media outlets. You cannot, for example, easily post links to long-form reviews on the web, and you can’t back-share your Vivino reviews on your site, either. There’s no Twitter integration either, which is a cardinal sin; I would love to automatically tweet links to my Vivino reviews, and I am sure Vivino would love the additional traffic. But the devs don’t seem to know they should even want such traffic. This, then, limits the reciprocation Vivino could get by having “big name” reviewers constantly promoting them in return.
I’m patient, though. I really like the scan feature, and reviewing wines is fun and easy, even if no one will ever be able to see the reviews. I hope Vivino comes to its senses, though, and turns the app into a functioning social review platform like Travelocity, but for winos.
Grab the app here from the Apple Store, and here from Google Play.
Site Changes
As you may have seen, we are trying out some new image-based reviews. This will hose up things for a little while, but I think once we get settled it should provide a nicer presentation, and it makes fuller reviews easier to publish via social media like Twitter.
We’ll also be adding a search feature, and a sort-by-rating feature.
So pardon any ugliness as we transition to the new review format.
Wake the Somnambulist with the Kabinett of Dr. Loosen
It seemed a surefire certainty that a Riesling from the good Dr. Loosen would hit the five-star mark here at Winepisser sooner or later, but I admit to thinking it would be later. Surprise, the 2014 Ürziger Würzgarten Kabinett Riesling steals our hearts as we wait for Hugel et Fils to release something that reaches their 2009 Jubilee. But the winetongue is fickle, and the Germans have snatched the title away from the French, for now.
The journey to a five-star rating for Loosen was a quick one, and nearly entirely forced by circumstance. As a bicontinental, I found myself staying for an extended time in Peru, where there simply isn’t a great selection of Euro-booze from which to choose. The selection of malbecs and tannats and torrontes is unmatched, but if you say “alsace” out loud, someone is going to say salud (Spanish for “gesundheit.”) Furthermore, Peruanos prefer their wine red, probably to fantasize about the blood of Chilenos they’d like to spill, ignoring the fact that the bottle they’re drinking probably came from Chile. Fortunately for Dr. Loosen — or, more likely, his aggressive export licensor — there appears to be a ready supply of Rieslings from his label: the low end Dr. L, the middle-rung Blue Slate, and this fine Ürziger Würzgarten Kabinett.
I bought these in no particular order, but it merely happened that the ratings kept improving: three stars for the Doc L, three and a half for the Blue. Things just kept getting better and better. So the trajectory seemed in Loosen’s favor towards a five-star hit. That it came only a month after reviewing the first one is a happy surprise.
Ernst Loosen
In Peru, this stuff’s not cheap. It’s grossly marked up, topping nearly 200 soles, or $57 a bottle, while elsewhere in the world the same bottle sells for a fraction of that. So if you can get it below that price point — assuming price matters to you at all — grab it by the case. In my house, the family has widely disparate tastes, with some favoring brown bag sewer syrup, and others a more sophisticated, sniffable snoot. But we passed the Dr. Loosen around and it produced nothing but smiles. The sugar is light and just enough, the fruit is evident without being abrasive, the acid is light, and the entire thing is well balanced. At only 7.5% alcohol, it’s almost a diet wine, but that just makes it easier to drink during any occasion.
I am suspicious of any European or US import I see popping up on nearly every wine shelf in Lima, and sure enough the filth-flecked uberpiss of Ch. Ste Michelle floods the market even here, so it was originally with great trepidation that I approached Dr. Loosen’s whites. I am happy to be proven wrong, not only about the state of European imports in Peru, but also about my previous slanting towards French Rieslings over their alemán counterparts.
So congratulations to March’s first (possibly only?) five-star ranked wine. If you’re keeping track, that means the 2014 Dr. Loosen Ürziger Würzgarten Kabinett will — so far — face off against Argentina’s 2014 Finca La Linda Torrontés, Uruguay’s 2010 Narbona Tannat Roble and a competing German, the Schloss Vollrads Qualitätswein Rheingau Riesling for the 2016 Winepisser Best Wine award.
Visit the Dr. Loosen site to learn more about this fantastic wine from the Mosel region.
The Secret History of Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling
Many a wine enthusiast has, by dint of marriage or poor selection of friends, unwittingly found themselves in one of America’s multitude of lackluster slop houses, such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster or Dumpster Don’s Steakhouse of Horrors, and there, perusing the wine list so as to kill time while his fellows order oil-soaked exploded onions and sodium-dipped alas de aves, found his palate clench like an anxious anus trembling before an overeager proctologist, when confronted with four words that bring terror to any oenophile:
Chateau. Ste. Michelle. Riesling.
Indeed, in some cultures where the latitude is southwards and the people speak in a tongue lost for millennia, the words are uttered to summon the dead to avenge the living, or to curse the crops of enemy invaders. Few know that these were the final words of the dying Aleister Crowley, overheard as “shato san t’mishel rees ling” and misinterpreted for decades, until their mystery was unconfounded by the contemporary mystic Bobby Flay. The truth emerged, and it was understood that Crowley, the Beast 666, was attempting to evoke pure evil in order to stave off the inevitable endless black sleep. But like the lie that is the label of the wine, the sinful words betrayed Crowley, and merely sucked him to Hell that much faster.
The dread projected by the Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling became known to all, and even now populates modern cinema. In the James Cameron film Aliens, it was not because of the threat of chest-bursting or double-jawed face-biting that made the trapped colonists on LV-426 beg the Colonial Marines to “kill me!”, rather it was because prior to being captured by the Xenomorphs, they had run out of food and were forced to drink CSM, and the foul swill was still making its way through their bowels. Mercy killing, indeed, and any hero could do no less than to spare them their torture, and grant them a quick death, whether by bootknife or grenade launcher.
But few know the true history of Chateau Ste. Michelle, nor how its grey scum came to sit on the menu of every goddamn restaurant in the USA, even in goddamn restaurants that don’t even have menus, and even in goddamn restaurants that don’t doors or chairs or gravity. So ubiquitous is the lymphatic goo of Woodinville WA, it was recently discovered that printing companies just automatically add “Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling” to any menu they print, just to save time, and that’s why you even see it on the kids’ menus at Chuck E. Cheese and the drive-thru menu at Carls Jr. Pre-printing thusly is estimated to save the US economy $3.5 billion annually.
How did this feculent spillage seep into American culture? The history is dark, unlike the color of the wine itself, which can only be described as the color of diluted, recycled garden hose water mixed with bear urine, if the bear had been raised on a lifelong diet of marshmallows and pumpkin seeds and kept alive through intravenous injection of Twinkie puree and formaldehyde.
The CSM website paints happy picture of how some idiot built a French style chateau in the middle of an American state, and then slapped a French sounding name on said American structure, and then went on to denounce wines from other countries other than America, like a hypocrite on meth. But none of it is true, and the real story comes to us only from an ancient book discovered by treasure hunters who had been seeking gold, but instead ran into something far more stupid.
A Chateau Ste Michelle worker prepares the special shoes used to press the grapes.
According to The Original Wine Journal of Alan Smithee, a handwritten collection of papers written by the winery’s unknown first founder, Smithee and his band of Cherokee slave girls came upon a plot of cursed and filthy land, long abandoned due to a history of bloody battles which was said to have resulted in a the earth being permanently awash with the ghosts of angry, long-dead soldiers. This, so the story goes, ensured that nothing would ever grow here, nothing, at least, capable of human consumption. Smithee recalled seeing many birds fall dead like stones from the clouds, as they simply passed over the airspace of the place.
Motivated by poverty and need to pay for his Cherokee slave girls, Smithee was determined to make something good of the land. He attempted to plant carrots, but the earth vomited up a horde of sword-wielding skeletons instead, hungering for human blood. He then attempted potatoes, but was met with an eruption of volcanic lava mixed with the bile of Cthulhu. He then attempted grapes, in the hopes of creating a vineyard, but the grapes turned into bats, and the resulting guano dust filled the air, driving anyone who breathed it mad from cerebral infection. Thus was the origin of the phrase “batshit crazy.”
Finally he met with local witch doctors, literal servants of Satan, and promised him three of his youngest children if they could somehow get grapes to grow on the land. The diabolical priests uttered incantations, threw his children into a volcano, and then urinated on his shoes, the latter step not an actual part of the ritual but just to show their disgust with Smithee himself, who was a wretched human being worthy of shoe-pissing. In return, the priests said, the next batch of grapes would grow, but they disavowed any promise of the quality of the resulting wine.
A Chateau Ste Michelle worker preps the grapes for fermentation in what is a unique winemaking process.
Sure enough, the first crop grew, smelling much like a combination of cow saliva and snake stomach, but nevertheless producing a .. thing.. one might reasonable call “wine” if one held their nose and squinted a lot.
But the foul brew could never be sold, and so Smithee again resorted to witchcraft to bargain with the Devil. This time he summoned vampire priestesses and promised his own blood in return for the ability to successfully sell his wine, but they refused, saying his blood smelled like week-old diaper juice. He then reached out to the mystic Madame Blavatsky, and asked the Ukrainian mystic to conduct a ceremony that would grant him luck in selling his wines. Blavatsky promptly died, rather than help Smithee, her last words being “I serve the Devil, but helping Smithee sell wine is too much even for me.”
Finally, Smithee happened upon a tribe of wandering Romani pagans, who agreed to grant him good fortune in exchange for four of his limbs, which they required for reasons known only to them. He allowed them to sever his arms and legs, replace them with wooden sticks. and soon enough Evil Fate began swinging things Smithee’s way. He began selling the awful Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling to local restaurants, and soon to other countries. Legend says that the more people who drink it, the more the Romani pagans grow in power, and many of them now hold seats of power in Starbucks, Disney, BP Oil and Comcast. They are that evil.
So you have the origin of this foulest of the foul, this horrid concoction foisted upon the world, a wine called “Riesling” only because someone typed it on a label, but which tastes more like what you might lick from the bottom of a public laundromat washing machine, if the person before you had just washed their month-old gym clothes.
Perfumed Perfection in a Five-Star Torrontés from Argentina
What a month it’s been, with two five-star wines hitting our palates here at the Winepisser estate. First it was Uruguay’s amazing Tannat Roble from Narbona, and now it’s a gorgeous Torrontés from Argentina, courtesy Bodega Luigi Bosca.
The 2014 Finca La Linda Torrontés is an astounding triumph of floral and tropical notes that would normally scare those wanting to avoid sugary wine, and yet this semiseco — yes, you read that right — has just the perfect amount of sweetness, despite its perfumy bouquet. The flowers continue on the tongue, with additional notes of fruit and coconut, forming a tropical island paradise that drinks well alone, and pairs great with lighter dishes.
Few people know the origin of the Torrontés grape. The word itself means “bull’s vagina” and was originally planted in China to stop the infestation of giant locusts which, for some reason, were allergic to grapes. The grape was later transported to Argentina by slave ships, with the grapes themselves carried in the bellies of the slaves, and then regurgitated upon arrival in South America. In Argentina the word Torrontés means “tremendous orgasm” so became immediately popular with local priests, of course. It was planted throughout the wine regions of the country, and is typically fermented in barrels made of wormwood and human bone. Finally, each batch was bottled and corked with corks soaked in the blood of Inka virgins, giving it it’s characteristic perfume. Now they use screwcaps, sure, but the screwcaps are still soaked in Inka virgin blood, so the effect is roughly the same.
In 1990 the Argentinian dictator Jorge “El Poto” Castillo led an armed insurrection against the liberal government of the day, and declared all the Torrontés wineries property of the state. He too was entranced by a grape named after a “tremendous orgasm,” but failing to have any, he soon gave up the entire enterprise to local winemakers, leading us into the contemporary Torrontés wines we now know.
I’m not sure if any of that is actually true, but it must be, because it certainly feels right.
In any event, “bull’s vagina” notwithstanding, the Finca La Linda 2014 is an amazing wine, versatile and light, lovely in every way, and worth buying by the case if you can get it. Five stars go to this Argentinian wonder.
More here at the Bodega Luigi Bosca website.
Uruguay Wins a February Five-Star for 2010 Tannat
The 2010 Narbona Tannat Roble from the Puerto Carmelo region is a knockout wine from Uruguay, and alas, one you are going to have some difficulty finding depending on where you live.
There’s really only one word that can describe this wine, and it works equally well for how it hits both the nose and the palate: meaty. Everything about this Tannat screams meat, from the bacony bouquet to the rush of beef, pepper and spices that attack the tongue. This is not a wine that will appeal to everyone, and only for the most dedicated red wine drinker will this work without a red meat pairing; indeed, at my table I was through two glasses of the stuff before the entree was served, and everyone looked at me as if I was insane.
It’s dry — like lunar landscape dry — but if you just meditate on the complexity that unfolds, and imagine yourself in a barbecue, you can really appreciate what is going on here. Meditation won’t be a problem, what with the 14.2% alcohol lurking in the bottle. But then, yes, pair it with beef or even duck, and POW! this will push the plate into a level of the stratosphere that even seasoned, professional Stratospherists didn’t think possible.
With some left, I corked my bottle and visited it again in two days, at home. The flavor had intensified, if that were possible, and remained a stunning, punch-in-the-mouth glass of meaty goodness. One swears it was aged in barrels made of beef.
Uruguay is an up-and-coming producer of some very, very great wines, which are unfortunately hard to find. For map-pinning completists, seeking out wines from this tiny country is worth it. I hope you will start with this fantastic tannat from Narbona.
Five stars, without a second of hesitation! It’s only February, but the other five-star wines that may arise in 2016 are going to have a hard time beating this one out for an annual Best Wine award, I suspect.
More here, at the Narbona website.
First 5-Star Wine of 2016 is a German Reez
Germany is a beautiful little country, full of pleasant people who never do anything bad, and because of their steadfast anonymity, about whom history has nothing much to say. Thank goodness for their wine, or we might not even know Germany existed!
So it’s a pleasant surprise that the first wine in 2016 to get a 5-star rating here at Winepisser is a German reez, specifically Schloss Vollrads 2014 Qualitätswein Rheingau Riesling.
The paperbag swigging nob-jobs at Wine.com may have rated it only 3 stars, but they clearly missed something with this delectable white wonder. This is balance perfected: sugar and fruit and tartness each dancing in perfect, relaxed steps, without any single one overtaking the other, but each poking a foot out for a quick wink at the dancehall audience. Remarkable in so many ways, this is drinkable by itself, and might seem timid until you pair it with a bold cheese, and the graceful adagio just turns into a scherzo. I always say the best wines pair with food to create a third flavor unique from either the wine or the plate, and this is true here.
Yes, there’s fruit, and yes there are minerals. But unlike some rieslings, this isn’t a mix of iron ore and pineapple. This is delicate when it needs to be, bold when called upon, and delicious always.
Highly recommended, and of course it’s always great to throw a little press at shy Germany, which has otherwise never done anything of notice before it mastered the grape.
Winepisser Best Wine of 2015: Apothic Red
The Winepisser is happy to award its first annual Best Wine award to the stellar blend from Modesto California, Apothic Red.
The Winepisser Best Wine award is granted to one of the wines reviewed in the previous year, but only of those rated 5 stars by the Winepisser. Because the site just launched in Q3 2015, there were fewer candidates than there are likely to be in 2016, but that shouldn’t diminish the fact that Apothic Red is a spectacular wine.
You can read my long-form review here (Better Red Than Dead – Apothic Red 2013) but suffice it to say that the best wines are eventually decided by your tastes: the ones you simply find yourself going back to enjoy over and over. This is certainly true of Apothic Red, and it surprises all of us at the Winepisser offices since no one had predicted a blend of any color would have made this significant an impression on us. If you had asked me a year ago if I would ever have awarded a top honor to a wine found on the Carabba’s menu, I would have harumphed indignantly. But by the nine circles of hell, Apothic Red proved me wrong.
So congratulations to the hardworking grapesmashers in Modesto for producing an amazing gore-red cup of bliss that this wine snob just can’t get enough of.
Suspiciously Good Chenin Blanc from … Peru?
Peru is not a country known for its honesty in quality control, although it’s much improved than, say, 20 years ago. But it wouldn’t be at all out of place for one of the vineyards of Ica to throw in some apple juice or maple syrup into the vats, bottle it and call it a gran cuvée. It’s not like the government is paying attention.
So when I sipped a bit of Viña Vieja Chenin Blanc 2014 and found it not only good, but really good, my first reaction wasn’t to declare I had found a great new wine; instead, it was “whose wine are they relabeling?”
Peru isn’t blessed with the greatest terroir for wine; the primary wine growing region of Ica is dry and dusty and the vines look like anorexic pipe cleaners wrapped on poles. There are a few wineries who have mastered the brujería necessary to produce a decent bottle or two, but they aren’t common. To consider that some Peruvian vineyard managed to not only get the sometimes fussy chenin blanc to behave, but managed to make a spectacular tasting wine out of it, is pushing the boundaries of credibility.
Specifically, this bottle comes from Agrícola Viña Vieja Viña Santa Isabel SAC, based in Ica. If we trust the label, the chenin blanc is a “young wine” (despite the “Old Vine” brand name) with fruity aromas characteristic of peach. For me, it was a fantastic and aromatic wine, full of fruit but more on the tangy melon end of the spectrum, with a light fizz and high alcohol. Very low acidity, it stood up to a typical Peruvian meal of arroz chaufa (Peruvian / Chinese fusion rice) as well as a chocolate dessert. Later in the evening, it was still being drunk as a nightcap, and no one was complaining. To put it simply, it is a fantastic wine, drinkable under all circumstances.
So how in the heck did it come from a company that has already been fined by Peru’s regulators for selling another alcoholic drink — Peru’s beloved pisco — under false labeling? And how is that same company also selling Malbec and Merlot blends? Where are they hiding all those grapes? The fact that their Facebook page only features a video of some automated bottling and labeling machines gives one pause. Where are the vines?
My gut — which is rather happy from having drunk the Chenin Blanc, by the way — nevertheless tells me they are either a negociant rebottler, or just really good at making labels that can say anything. I’m not 100% sure I know what is in the bottle, and without going to the winery personally I won’t be convinced that something funny isn’t up, but damn it’s tasty. So it gets my recommendation, and it’s worth seeking out, if you don’t care about the fact that you might be drinking some kind of weirdo, Peruvian mafia counterfeit.
Vinturi Essential Wine Aerator
If you’re like me, you have a lot of sweatshops, white slavery rings and brothels to manage all across the globe as part of your international criminal conspiracy, and thus spend a lot of time in hotels, airplanes and brothels. This makes enjoying a properly decanted bottle of wine difficult, since most restaurants don’t know what a decanter is (“I can’t what, now?”) and it’s not exactly easy to travel with one in your luggage, for use in the hotel or brothel.
Enter the pocket venturi, a gadget which aerates wine as you pour through it, by spinning the wine in a tiny chamber featuring holes which suck air in as the wine passes. I’m fond of the dirt cheap Venturi Essential Wine Aerator, which runs a meager $27 on Amazon, and comes with a sturdy stand to sit it on when not in use.
Now, whether the Vinturi works as advertised seems to be up for grabs. Bon Apetit ran a blind flight test to see what effect the Vinturi had, and they agreed that it was changing the wine, but not always for the better. In my own experience, done simply by comparing a glass run through the Vinturi against one not, there was a noticeable change, and for the wines I tested it regularly improved the wine, with no noticeable negative effect. (Bon Apetit also complains about the noise the Vinturi makes, which is a squishy, bubbly squeak as air is sucked into the chamber, but I love it, as it seems oddly satisfying and always makes the workers at the sweatshop or brothel giggle.)
There’s also a trick: if you feel the Vinturi has added too much air, you can run a second glass and place a finger over one of the two aerator holes, thus reducing the air intake by 50%. If you encounter a wine where the Vinturi doesn’t work at all, simply pour that second glass without the Vinturi… problem solved. Unlike full bottle aerators, you aren’t committed.
Clearly the Vinturi is not suited for all wines, and is no replacement for an on-hand decanter. But if you are a traveler, it’s a fine close second, and when used smartly — only for wines you suspect it will open up — it’s a great, low cost addition to your toolkit.
Quick Cuttings