Fine Wine and Good Spirits *New* App for iPhone

Heard this was coming for a while, will be interested to check it out. Let's see those PAWineTalk references in the online reviews!!

The app actually is pretty decent. Nothing shocking but seems to search faster than the website.

Very fast indeed.

Admin is still ahead. When you search for wine available by stores, you get a bunch of pins, but no data on which store the pin represents and no inventory data.

When I touch the pins I get store number, address, phone, hours, and quantity of the wine.

Anyone else try scan bottle? When I tried it crashed.

Well I think this was a surprisingly good first effort but there are still a lot of problems.

Bottle scan worked mostly for me but there were some issues. It seems to recognize both winery and PLCB-issused barcodes which is good. I scanned a winery-applied barcode from a bottle of Jadot Beaujolais from Costco in Virginia and it came right up with the wine as sold by the PLCB (higher price not surprisingly). Then I tried a PLCB barcode of a recent Chairman's selection and again it worked. Then tried a PLCB barcode of a wine that's no longer available and it didn't recognize it...it didn't even say anything along the lines of "this wine is no longer available" but just that the barcode not in their database. And for one barcode I scanned, can't remember which offhand, it came up with a page formatted like the others with a spot where a photo would be etc. but the page was entirely blank, which I thought was interesting.

Re: the map, at PAWineTalk the pins have the quantity numbers right on them. On the app you click on the pin and it gives only the store number and city which is not helpful for 99% of users. Then you have to click on the arrow in the pop-up and you get quantity along with store hours, phone, and a link to get directions. A blatant rip-off of PAWineTalk if you ask me (I'm biased) and not as well done since you need an extra click (tap) to get all the info.

Used it this past weekend as I was looking for some wines to use in a tasting. I liked the idea of scanning for more information about each wine, but I was disappointed that the wish list function didn't work. It may be a problem with the app or the site itself.

I'm quick to condem the PLCB, so I should be just as quick to give them credit. As I mentioned in my prior post, I had a problem with the "Wish List" functionality which I reported online Monday morning. My issue was pick up via Live Chat and so I could be very specific explaining my issue. They quickly transferred the session to a tech within the session who asked me to perform a few tests on my machines. Unable to solve the problem, he asked for my email address so that they could provide a response. Within the hour, I received a response and the issue was solved.

BTW, used the app last night and it worked just the way I needed it to.

Used the app with good success in a couple of stores this weekend. There was some inconsistency with the Find Wine function however, once the bar scan identified the wine.