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http://www.vintank.com/2011/10/the-slow-and-sad-death-of-mobile-wine-apps/

As reported by the article in the link above, wine apps just aren’t working. They say why they aren’t working (my comments in bold)

Using a wine app doesn’t fit into the normal workflow of everyday use. (read: people spend more time trying to find a use for the app than actually using it.)
Clean data sucks in the wine industry. SUCKS. (read: 50% data is robo-mined, and 40% is senseless writing posted by people who don’t know Cab from Zin)
The majority of wine journaling occurs in apps that people already use (Springpad, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Flickr, and even Foodspotting and Opentable). (ahh, the unique crossroads between “everyone has an opinion” and “read mine at GeoCities” …or myspace, for that matter…)
99% of the wine apps have no way for wineries to interact with consumers (either raw marketing or DTC efforts). The two exceptions are Drync and HelloVino. With no interactivity, they can not earn revenue from companies interested in leveraging their audiences. (enough said)
Downloads are different than users. Users are different than ACTIVE users. ACTIVE users are a nebulous term and need deeper clarification. Most apps don’t differentiate when telling their story which leads to disappointment from inflated expectations. (a challenge not specific to wine apps.)
Wineries just don’t spend that much money on digital. Period. In 2007 the total spend for internet advertising by the wine industry was a measly $3 million. (Ever built a shopping cart without any product imagery? If the content isn’t there, people aren’t consuming it, and companies don’t spend $$ to rise to the top of list that nobody is looking at. And right now, that clean data “sucks.”)
There are only about 250K uber-oenophiles in the US who are the most prolific content generators and do the most detailed tasting notes. There are only approximately 1.7 million additional “aspiring-oenophiles” who journal brand, variety and region and only about 3.5 million additional consumers who mention wine on social networks. That leaves approximately 58.5 million people who don’t use anything digital to talk about wine. In a nutshell, the total addressable audience for digitally saavy wine lovers is approximately 6.5 million: only about 10% of the total US wine drinking population. (are we starting to see a trend here yet? People don’t really care about what other people have to journal about when it comes to wine. Really. Unless they know the author, or the author has a fantastic voice, their thoughts about wine are about as intuitive and interesting as a mechanics thoughts about a birch tree. Wine blogging, wine journalism, and wine tasting notes are irrelevant unless a system for relevantly matching the author with the audience is developed.)
Reference apps are great but all of their content be already be found through a major search engine or just by asking your friends/followers/fans on a social network. (read: they are right. And all that reference is general knowledge, or out-dated vintage-specific information for wines that are impossible to acquire for the average consumer.)

The article hints that wine apps need to be more than their current span of “journaling” tools, or partnerships between wiki-styled tasting note databases with foursquare-styled “I drank this wine here” startups. They require accurate information; relevant recommendation and sharing systems; they need to provide purposeful and practical value for the end-user interaction; they need to give the industry market-specific feedback, insightful analytics, trend monitoring, advertising/promotions, and digital interaction opportunities for the wineries themselves. Fundamentally, all of these apps lack a reliable foundation to plug into and source their data from, and they’re finding that in the world of wine, the consumer isn’t reliable enough to provide that foundation – at least right now.

So why is this so hard to accomplish? Doesn’t it work fine for other industries, like music, or food, or any other product that relies heavily on personal preference in taste and style, and consumers to share their findings? People seem to be able to recommend and rate those other commodities in meaningful and relevant ways. Why not wine too?

Wine is unique, and stands alone as something that’s just not like any other product on earth. Take art for example: put a group of 10 observers in an art exhibit, where one of them is color blind. Nine of the people in the group all see the same image hanging on the wall – that is to say, regardless of personal taste and preference, they all receive the same raw sensory data. The tenth person receives a slightly different set of sensory data. Now take those same ten people and serve them a sample of wine. Because of the unique anatomical differences of each individual palate, all ten out of ten will receive unique raw sensory data (they’re all “color blind” to a different degree.) Part of this phenomenon is obviously what makes wine what it is; sharing the differences in sensory perception is what makes it exciting, in the same way that sharing the interpretation of art is exciting. The same comparison can be made between music and wine: when most of us hear a song, we are receiving the same raw data. But with wine….

Now, while it might be interesting to know what 10 of your friends think about different wines, it becomes senseless when presented with what 100,000 strangers think about different wines. Conversely, it’s fascinating to see how 100,000 different people interpreted a piece of art or music; you can group those interpretations, observe them, and compare them to your own interpretation from the same raw sensory data; you can have meaningful discussions about them. Like a discussion abut literature, when it comes to art or music, there is no wrong interpretation. But the same is not so with wine. For while the power of suggestion can lead someone to adopt the same interpretation of a wine, they are still inherently dealing with fundamentally different sensory data. For example, I can tell you “cherry” as you’re taking a sip, and it might “trick” your brain into perceiving a cherry flavor – and perhaps the cherry is there – but ultimately, that’s a trick of the mind that encouraged you to perceive it.

Imagine an entire roomful if people whispering different flavors in your ear while you sip. The din would be meaningless and irrelevant, which is exactly what you find in current wine apps: Hundreds strangers noting personal interpretations based on fundamentally different sensory data and circumstantially altered perceptions. Senseless, useless, chaos.

Okay, so how about food then – for is food not also subject to the same differences in sensory perception and interpretation as that of wine? And if so, how is it that apps like foodspotting, yelp, and the likes of other such concepts work just fine for the restaurant industry… yet when applied to the wine industry, those same concepts and tools can not also be similarly utilized?

Again, wine stands alone in its uniqueness. Lets start with the uncountable differences of terroir (vineyard site, soil type, micro climate, growing season, altitude, sun exposure, etc.,) which yield millions of different fruit characteristics around the world for the same exact grape (take Cabernet Sauvignon as one example – it is different fruit at the end of the season in California than it is in France.) Now add the fact that the wine industry also has to deal with vintage-to-vintage variation; the 2009 growing season (“vintage”) produces different fruit in one vineyard than the 2010 vintage in the exact same vineyard. Now add the (perhaps imperceptible, yet valid) differences stemming from: the choice of yeast from thousands of lab-cultured options; storage and aging vessels; harvest and processing methods; equipment; etc…the list goes on and on, further impacting the differences between one vintage and the next, one producer to the next, and one region from the next. The idea is that wines are like snowflakes – no two will ever be alike.

So how is that different than food? Let’s compare it to shrimp scampi: butter from a commercial (or local) producer is really just butter, albeit some creamier or saltier than others; pasta is made from identical grains from around the world; shrimp is either fresh…or it’s not, with minor flavor fluctuations from different regions. In that light, 500 people can easily agree that they prefer one restaurant’s shrimp scampi over the other, and most importantly, they can agree on why – it’s creamier, saltier, the pasta is cooked al dente, there is lots of garlic, and the shrimp is fresh and juicy. And that can be a relevant recommendation to a complete stranger who happens to like creamy, salty, garlic-heavy foods. Now ask those 500 people why they prefer a particular Napa cab over a Loir cab, or one Merlot over the other from the same region, or one vintage of Chardonnay over the other from the same producer, and imagine how a complete stranger is to filter through those opinions to arrive at a relevant recommendation. It’s simply not possible. And asking the masses to boil all their opinions down to a rating on a 5-star scale, you’ll find that the overall rating is equally unfruitful, as even in the presence of flaws, each individual rated the wine for a different reason, for a different sensory perception, for a difference in preference, for a difference in taste.

Consider for a moment: how does “I like the heavy tannins” compare to “I like the heavy salt,” especially when so many of the consumers don’t even know what tannins are, and of those that do, many can’t discern tannic acid from other acids in the wine? And to take it one step further: what is “heavy tannins” to you, as opposed to me? Is it not possible that what I consider to be heavy, you consider to be light? Sure, the same could be asked of salt – but generally speaking, I think most people would agree that they know the difference between “a pinch of salt” and “soaked in salt” – but what are a “pinch of tannins?”

When it comes to food, certain basic ingredients are staples of nearly every culture. Salt, garlic, butter; these are flavors that are universal. But a big Cab? Well, I get cherry – you get plum – she gets raspberry. Really?

Trying to make relevant applications based on crowd-sourced “journalistic, blogging, sensory-based” opinions is a slow, sad, painful endeavor.

So what’s the alternative? Well, up till now, we’ve relied on a respected authority to tell the masses which wine is good, which is bad, and which is worth the money. Enter Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, or even your favorite wine blogger. So what’s the problem?

From the get go, their palate is as unique as anyone else’s, so aside from distinguishing flaws in a wine (try rationalizing that with “flaws add character,”) how is their opinion supposed to be relevant to you? Is it relevant because they *know* what a wine is supposed to taste like, so you can trust that you should learn from them what you should like? Or is it relevant because you’ve found that you generally agree with their opinions? To the former, I would ask why anyone has the right to say that a Cab should taste? Is a Napa Cab correct, and everyone else is making it wrong? Is an Argentinian Malbec the only way to produce one, so nobody else should bother? Or how about the Cabernet Franc that Virginia produces – is Virginia the epicenter of what a Franc should be, as opposed to a winery in California? Of course not.

And as for the latter question, regarding identifying with the palate of a so-called “expert,” why would you want to limit the advice you get on wines that you might like. to one individual source?

I’ll say it clear: there is no standard – there is no right way to make a wine. Sure, there are general preferences, trends that we’ve been trained to love, flavors and styles that we’ve learned to appreciate through sheer exposure.

So why can’t there be a way for one individual to find a wine, enjoy that wine tremendously, and share that with someone who will be sure to enjoy the discovery just as much?

Well for one, there already is a way, and we already do share these recommendations with each other. It’s what we do with our local wine shop manager. It’s what we do with our in-laws. It’s what we do with our family. But what if there was a way to connect people from across the globe, with wines that each other would have never tried in their lifetime otherwise, in price ranges that they can afford, from local shops or online stores with next day delivery – with recommendations that are relevant – right then and there?

What if there was a way to explore and experience the broader world of wine that’s not limited to what your local retailer imports, not set in stone by an expert, and not completely irrelevant from a total stranger? There can be a way – there is a way – and you’ll use it someday. But for now, the apps aren’t it. Yet.

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