Reviews: (1) ‘Memorable Wines App’; (2) Alba Rias Baixas 2010; (3) Aonghusa ‘Bentouly’ 2009 January 8, 2012

After minimal researching of wine apps I bought ‘Memorable Wines‘ (MW) back in early December. The blurb says, ‘Memorable Wines is an elegant app for quickly recording, remembering, and sharing your favourite wines.’

I’d been planning on road-testing it and doing a short review, but – like everything else – that got put on the long finger, and the review probably would never have seen the light of day had I not bitched on Twitter (I said I was going to delete the app) about a particular feature and prompted one of the MW people to pop out of the ether and ask me for more feedback on my experience.

I had to write something after that, and below are a few points on the matter.

*Easy-to-use interface.

*Where you can say how much you liked the wine the only option offered seems to be ‘Love it!’. ‘What if you didn’t love it?’, seems to be the obvious question. I’d like to be able to rate a wine on MW. Scores and so on are a bit painful (there is some discussion now about how ‘score inflation’ is making wine-scoring even more ludicrous than it already was), but I think there is a hole in any wine app that doesn’t allow the user to play the scoring / rating game.

*You can spiel away to your heart’s content in the ‘Add wine notes’ box at the end … but … then if you want to read over your notes subsequently (as if) you have to click a side-arrow to see them – which is clunky. Just scrolling down would be better – there is plenty of room to include wine picture, words, and spec on the same screen.

*At the end you can choose one of, ‘At home’, ‘Restaurant’, ‘Winery’, ‘Tasting Room’, ‘Wine Bar’, ‘Friends’, ‘Family’, ‘Special Gifts’, and ‘Try It’, to indicate where you had the wine, or maybe who you had it with. I didn’t find this list very useful (how many times can I click ‘At Home’ before starting to feel like a loser?) – maybe it was crafted more with an extroverted American audience (with their fancy wineries and ‘tasting rooms’) in mind.

*Using a picture from your phone for the wine profile is very easy.

*My main gripe is that when I tweeted the details of a wine I’d just put in MW, the Twitter link just took clickers to a page that showed an image of the label shot, but no words, anywhere. I can only assume this is a glitch of some sort – surely the worded review is the key point?

All that said, I didn’t actually delete MW in the end, and used it fine for the two wines below.

Have you used MW, or any other wine app, and what features do you think should be part of a good wine app?

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WINE REVIEWS

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1. Martin Alba Rias-Baixas Albarino 2010 (Spain) -> About €14, ’1601 Off-License’ Kinsale, Rednose Wine, and other independents -> Fresh, fruity (pear, green apple), and clean. Lovely weight and texture. Dry, slightly bitter (tonic water) finish. Refreshing and invigorating. Enjoyed on New Year’s Day! **** (very good).

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2. Domaine Aonghusa ‘Bentouly’ 2009 (Vin de France) -> About €17, ’1601 Off-License’ Kinsale, and independents (possibly Karwigs too) -> This wine is made by an Irish trio (Pat and Jim Neville, and Catherine McGuinness) in Corbieres, but the wine can’t use that appellation as it’s 100% grenache (a minimum of 2 varieties must be used in AC Corbieres).

Domaine Aonghusa’s out-of-date, low-tech, but well-written and engaging website can be found here.

‘Bentouly’ is a real treat – full bodied and lush, with rich blackberry / raspberry jam, liquorice, clove, and menthol flavours. Exotic and full of personality. ***** (excellent)

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