White summary Magazine
Launched in 2011, the Vivino app is a wine scanner that is available for Android and iOS users. In the 5 years of activity, Vivino increased their user base and wine database becoming the most used wine scanner app for casual consumers.
Vivino App Review
How accurate is the Vivino wine scanner app?
The answer is, surprisingly accurate. Its almost 20 million wine enthusiasts, although amateurs, are almost as good as an expert when collectively rating a wine. Here’s how the app works plus some of its features:
How Does the Wine App Vivino Work?
Using the Vivino app is simple:
- Take a photo of the wine’s label.
- Browse through the reviews, prices, and rankings of said wine.
- Add your own opinion and rating after trying it out.
The Vivino app organizes your scans chronologically and by type to offer a comfortable browsing experience. it also has a social component, which allows users to follow their friends’ activities, ratings, and inquiries. After using the Vivino app a few times, you will be able to access your personal taste profile – a chart of the flavors and hints that are compatible with your taste buds.
Another useful feature is its local searches and charts: Users can browse through the best wines in their region for several pricing groups: Under $20, between $20 and $40, between $40 and $80, or over $80 per bottle. Vivino also features an online wine shop, but it is rarely used by those who download the app. Most users just want to find out which wine they should buy.
The Vivino App Rating System
According to Vivino, more than 3 quarters of the wines we find on the market today have never been rated by experts. A study conducted by the company discovered a 4.0 Vivino rating is the equivalent of a 90-point rating by a wine connoisseur. We’re no specialists, but we bet is has something to do with collective intelligence – a group’s ability to provide a collective answer or, in our case, a rating as close to reality as possible.
Premium Features of the Vivino App
The premium version of Vivino features a personal buying guide, complete with recommendations and other types of exclusive content. This includes rare wines with few excellent reviews that could not have been found otherwise because of their lack of popularity. The app selectively displays such wines to match a user’s taste and pricing expectations.
Another important aspect Premium users will enjoy is the expert opinion. Users who download the premium version will have access to ratings and reviews by wine critics and Master Sommeliers. The cellar is another premium feature of the Vivino app. Here, users can keep track of their physical cellar with the help of their smartphone.
Other than these, Premium users who scan a wine will have priority over non-paying users. This decreases the waiting time to a few seconds in most cases.
Vivino App Awards & Nominations
- 2012 Danish App Awards Nomination;
- 2012 Danish Growth Award (won by Heini Zachariassen for Vivino);
- 2013 Danish Startup Awards Nomination for Best Design;
- 2013 Mobile Excellence Awards Nomination for Best Original Mobile Content.
The Vivino App In A Nutshell
There’s not much to say about the free version of Vivino: It doesn’t do much, but it performs adequately and is more than enough to decide which wine to buy during a shopping trip. We did encounter some latency and difficulties when trying to take pictures of wine labels and scan them – the app is a bit slow at times. However, we did not encounter any major privacy, functionality, or energy issues that would make users uninstall the app.
We discovered the Vivino wine app will provide better and better recommendations the more wines you rate. This is a key principle when using this app, especially if you are a regular and picky wine consumer. However, if you only rate the wines you liked, the app will not know which ones to stay away from, thus increasing the chances of recommending an unfit wine.
We also appreciated the fact that some labels which cannot be automatically linked to an existing entry in their wine database are not ignored; Vivino employees manually review these entries and decide if the wine exists in the database (in which case they connect the user with their database entry), if the wine is new and needs to be added to their list, or if the user did not scan a wine label, but something else.
So Should You Trust It?
In most cases, the free version of Vivino offers accurate ratings and reviews – very similar to those given by wine critics. Of course, if you get the premium version you will have access to actual professional reviews and ratings. All in all, the app is reliable and has little to no issues, which makes it a great tool to use when shopping, eating or drinking out, and keeping track of your owned wines.
You can download Vivino from the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store.
