Mr Vine is a clever new mobile wine app that has recently launched in the UK and is changing the way wine lovers can find and buy their favorite wines.
The market for wines can be both baffling and confusing (at least it is for me…) and sometimes finding the right bottle for a certain meal or occasion can be a bit of a lottery.
Mr Vine demystifies the process of selecting the best wines for you from Britain’s best specialist retailers – for any budget and for all occasions.
The app is the brainchild of a London-based wine entrepreneur, Charlie Martin, who realised that there was a clear opportunity to use the latest smartphone and social networking technology to offer British wine drinkers a far better experience.
The innovative Mr Vine app lets you select your favorite wines in various ways including by grape, region, country, price and many more, and constantly learns your tastes and preferences in wines as you make purchases.
The most interesting way that the app attracted me was that you could actually search by food as well – they have developed a food and wine pairing element so that if you search for a food type such as ‘shellfish’ the app will bring you a list of wines that would go well with this. Perfect for that special occasion meal, dinner parties or even weddings. I really liked this feature and used it to choose the wines for my first order – searching for shellfish, duck and cheese.
The cheapest bottle I could find on the site was £5.74 and there was a good range of choices for under £10 too so it doesn’t have to break the bank either!
I ordered via the app on a Sunday evening, and the wine arrived via courier first thing Tuesday morning – a great turnaround time. The wine (all from Hard to Find Wines) was packaged excellently and they even threw in a corkscrew!
There are no restrictions on orders, from single bottles through to cases and there are already 14 retailers listing their best wines. One tip that I would pass on is that the order will be subject to postage charges, which, if you choose one bottle from lots of different suppliers can rack up very quickly, so it would be good to limit each order to a couple of suppliers to keep this down.
My experience with Mr Vine was great from start to finish and I will definitely be using them again! Follow them on twitter @official_MrVine
Disclosure: Mr Vine gave me a contribution towards my first order. No further compensation was received and I was not expected to write positively about the experience.
