When it comes to wine apps, the Americans are miles ahead of us. Having spent several hours scrolling through the vinous offerings in the Android and Apple stores, it seems that roughly 90% of wine apps have been created by US developers with American users in mind. Perhaps not surprising when you consider that the Silicon and Napa Valleys are pretty close geographically, and that many employees from California's tech and wine industries spend time together in the bars and restaurants of San Francisco (and that the tech industry has invested quite a lot of its proceeds in wine, whether as dot.com millionaires' vanity vineyards, or as prime investors in expensive cult Napa Valley Cabernets).
So the problem for British wine lovers is that the apps are skewed towards an American audience. Fine if you like bumptious Californian Cabs or big brands such as Blossom Hill and Gallo, not much use if your tastes are more European in flavour.
But no matter where they've been developed, I'm not sure anyone has yet come up with the killer wine app. There's a tendency to try to do too much; there are hundreds of thousands of wines available in the world today, and trying to cover them all – as some apps do – requires more full-time staff than the relatively small global audience of wine-lovers prepared to pay for an app can justify. As with most apps, it's those that do a single simple job well that are most rewarding and useful.
1 Vivino (iPhone, Android – free or £3.50 for pro)
A wine-themed mix of Flickr and music-spotting app Shazam, Vivino uses image-recognition software, scanning photos of bottles and connecting them to a database of – it claims – more than 1m wines. It's pretty comprehensive: I snapped a series of bottles at Tesco the other day, and it came up with information on each of them., including other local stockists. There's space for you to write a tasting note and rate the wine, links to other wines from the same producer, and some rather broad-brush food-and-wine matching suggestions. If you ignore the ratings, it's a useful tool for remembering the bottles you've tried
2 Berry Bros & Rudd (iPhone, iPad – free)
Founded in 1698, and still running its original atmospheric shop and cellars in London's St James's Street, Berry Bros & Rudd may be one of Britain's oldest traditional wine merchants, but it's always been quick to adapt to technology. Its content-rich website is a considerable cut above most of its rivals, and its app is no less impressive, allowing you to search through its vast list of 2,000 bottles from around the world (it's particularly strong on the European classics). Tasting notes are informed and informative, and there's some slick extra content in the shape of blogs by the company's erudite buyers and a video wine course.
3 Wine-Searcher (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch – free)
Nifty app version of one of the most useful (and, in my case at least, used) websites around, wine-searcher comes into its own when you know the name of the wine you're looking for, but want to know where to find it or – equally important – compare prices. It works by tapping into the lists of thousands of participating wine merchants across the world (some are better at updating their stock than others, but there's a rating system rewarding the most efficient), and the app also includes a map feature to help you find the location of your nearest store.
4 Local Wine Events (iPhone, Android – free)
Like wine-searcher, another Ronseal app that scores for its simplicity, being essentially a listings service of tastings and other wine events in your area. An app like this depends on the quality and timeliness of its information, and in this respect it's hard to fault if you live in London: I was amazed at just how many wine events there are in the city these days. It's slightly less impressive if you're on holiday or visiting wine regions overseas: just 10 events came up for the next year in wine-mad Bordeaux, for example, and there were none at all for Barcelona.
5 UK Wine Tax Calculator (iPhone Android – free)
The cheaper a wine is in the UK, the more, as a proportion of the total price you pay in tax – and the less proportionally, you pay for the wine itself. This no-frills but revealing and weirdly addictive app tells you how much of your cash is going to the taxman– you input the price and alcohol percentage, and it works it out for you. A £3.99 bottle of 13% ABV generic Spanish red? It's 66.8% tax. A £10 bottle at the same strength? A mere 36.7%.
6 WSET Wine Game (iPhone – free)
The Wine & Spirit Education Trust was set up by the drinks trade to school its employees, though you don't have to be a pro to enrol. It offers exams roughly equivalent to an A-level at the top but also does beginner's courses, which is the level of this fun trivia game. Using maps and labels, as you unlock different levels you learn a surprising amount about where the world's wines are made.
7 Supermarket Wine (iPhone 69p Android 99p)
Collates the reviews of the UK's national newspaper critics to help you find the best-value and most critically acclaimed bottles in the supermarkets (plus Majestic and Laithwaites). Because it focuses on wines that have been reviewed (almost always positively), it only features a small amount of each store's range, so search by shop then see what's in your local branch. There's also a section of reviewed wines currently on offer.
8 Plonk (iPhone – free)
The most easy-to-use of the many beginner's wine apps, Plonk is the work of UK importer and supplier, Bibendum Wine. You navigate through a periodic table-like interface to learn about grape variety, country, or food and wine matching, and there's clever features such as audio files to teach you how to pronounce different grape varieties, and tips on what to drink next if you like a certain style.
9 Olly Smith's Wine App (iPhone £1.99
The television presenter and Daily Mail wine critic has a refreshingly unstuffy, humorous, even silly, approach to wine, which translates well to the informality of his app, which allows you to search for recommended bottles by food, occasion, and style. The wackiness (there's a section entitled "larks" which includes a "wine horn") might not appeal to everyone, but Smith's wine choices are spot-on., and as an alternative to the crowd-sourced, group-think of many wine recommendation apps (where the suggestions tend towards the bland), this app is engagingly opinionated and full of personality.
10 Wine Dictionary (iPhone and Android – free)
Like any subject with an element of specialised knowledge, wine has its own arcane and opaque jargon that can feel rather forbidding to the novice. If you really want to get to grips with it, your best bet is a copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine book, but this glossary, while far from definitive, is a good start, arranged as a simple A to Z, and including pithy definitions of a selection of the main grape varieties, wine regions and winemaking and tasting terms .
