Tried and True...
Delectable"The Essential Wine App" - James Beard award winner Jordan Mackay
Free download available for Apple and Android
Labeled the "only wine app worth a damn" by Vinography's Alder Yarrow, Delectable is the most popular and most comprehensive wine database, scanning and social app out there. Set up your profile to begin photographing the wine you try and scanning in bottles' UPCs to gain access to a wealth of information and user reviews. The app's homepage features an Instagram-esque feed, featuring recent wine posts from the folks you follow. The UI is on par with leading social apps, and I've found it's truly entertaining simply to scroll through the recent reviews. You're also able to see both the average user rating and the average "pro" rating, providing you with a highly reliable picture of what you can expect from your wine.
I assumed that I would be far more interested in the app for its ability to steer you towards informed wine picks at the bottle shop than for its social media sharing function. However, I've found that I've loved being able to follow my favorite wine bloggers and influencers to see what they're drinking and hear their opinions in close to real-time. And, following friends is a great way to share recommendations and have a sense of cheers-ing from afar with friends from out of town. I do agree with one app reviewer on the iTunes store, though, who commented it would be nice to have an "offline" mode in which you could store information about a wine without publishing it to your followers.
For the Novice...
Plonk"Your secret weapon for finding the wine styles you like, wherever you are"
Free download available for Apple and Android
The plonk app is chalk-full of easily digestible wine information, perfect to get the novice wine drinker on her feet, identifying the grapes she enjoys. The UI is easy to navigate, modern and pretty charming, with a periodic table-like varietal index, color coded by wine style. You're able to browse through or look-up different grapes to learn their flavor profile, read about their origin, get food pairing recommendations and even hear how they're pronounced. The app will recommend similar wines you may like and allows you to rate and save the grapes you've tried.
Plonk strikes me as the perfect "fake-it-till-you-make-it" app for the new wine drinker. An image of the millennial discretely "plonking" under the table to identity the wine his boss has just ordered over dinner comes to mind, dropping some knowledge about the style and origin to impress. Apparently, a recent update to the app eliminates an embarrassing bug that essentially rendered the app unusable for many folks. My only gripe was that I wished I could add pictures, notes and specific labels to the grapes I rated and saved. A more complete wine journaling function could transform this app into a more involved and long-lasting learning tool.