Wine Appholes

Nothing is safe from smartphones, their apps, and the appholes that use them. Especially not wine. FYI, I don’t own a smartphone. My wife has one, but I don’t qualify. Besides, I’m creeped out by Siri. She reminds me of a stalker I once had. A lot of bad memories there. I should have known something was wrong when we first made love and my future stalker said, “In ten inches, go straight,” followed by a disappointed, “Recalculating.” So I won’t be purchasing any wine apps. (And why is Siri a woman’s voice? I guess because if Siri were a man giving directions it would be more like, “I think we make a left in one hundred yards, it looks kinda familiar, and, for Christ’s sake, why are you going so slow, it’s just a pedestrian. And use your fucking turn signal, what are we, from the rest home?”)

There’s something rather sweet and simpleminded about the idea of people using wine apps. They take a picture of a wine bottle and wait for their phone to tell them about it. It takes them back to when they were slow little kids and they loved their Fisher-Price See ’N Say. “That’s a Madiran. You won’t like it. It makes a sound like a goat. ‘Tannaaaaaaat’” It’s how we learn! You know, I wonder why Tinder doesn’t capitalize on the See ’N Say mentality of appholes. Wouldn’t it be even easier to select a date if you not only viewed their photo, but also heard a brief recording? “This is Fred. In bed, he sounds like this, ‘Oh, baby, wow, you feel good, I’m gonna…sorry, that snuck up on me.’” Seems like they’re missing out here.

Oh, that's going to leave a Wine Ring.

A couple of soon-to-be-former friends of mine are involved with a new wine app called “Wine Ring.” First of all, I have no idea what a Wine Ring is, or what the name even means. Though, apparently, the app’s purpose is to erect a platform that you maintain so that it can advise you what wines you’ll like. So, I guess, judging from the erection and maintaining it, it’s basically a wine lover’s cock ring, which would explain the name. I had a cock ring once, but I was afraid to answer it. No, really, what the hell is a Wine Ring? Aside from what you leave on your date’s lower back when you set your glass of Pinot Noir there. But, for that matter, it seems like most of the wine apps out there have stupid names. I always think Vivino is for pretentious people with speech impediments looking for a good Pepinot Noir.

When you download and use Wine Ring, you begin by rating every wine you taste with their complicated rating system—“Love It, Like It, SoSo and Dislike It™” I particularly like the ™ at the end. Who’s going to steal that? The people who make vibrators? And, really, the goddam 100 Point Scale is so complex and hard to understand that we need a new scale that comes right out and insults our intelligence? It’s really a way to simplify the system for the developers. But I would have liked to have been in the room when all of these MWs (there are five listed as part of the Wine Ring Circus) came up with this rating system. “I don’t know, they’re mostly ignorant Millennials that will sign up for it. Why don’t we just use the ‘OMG, WFM, YMMV and WTF? Scale’”

Once the user has rated a dozen wines, Wine Ring claims, then it’s ready to guide the user to wines they’ll like. I confess that I don’t have any idea, but isn’t this how most of these appholes sell their product? On the premise that you’ll never buy a bottle of wine you don’t like ever again if you download their app. What kind of an idiot thinks that will work? People who know a lot about wine constantly buy wines they don’t like, and they know what they hell they’re doing. You think a smartphone app is going to help? They’re the same people rating the wines and giving advice for the stupid app you keep referring to on your smartphone. They might be wine experts, but they don’t know shit either!

Everything I’ve read recently about Millennials and how they buy wine claims that they are eschewing established (read “old”) wine critics and buying wine based on the recommendation of their peers. So why in the world would they download a wine app? Some wine apps are based on reviews and ratings, some are based on a conglomeration of reviews by other users of the app (think CellarTracker), and some, like Wine Ring, use the opinions of wine industry experts to focus your selections. So, as it turns out, kids, it’s not really your smartphone making the recommendation. It’s still the Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, and the other folks who rate wines for a living. Or it’s a bunch of clowns on a website competing for the most wine reviews posted. It’s a virtual wine world out there. You can pretend to be a hero on “Dungeons and Dragons,” or you can pretend to be a wine expert on CellarTracker! Fantasy is fun! With Wine Ring, apparently your taste is analyzed by a program which then finds other wines to match your taste, based on the opinions of, well, wine experts.

The Wine Ring website has my new favorite pair of oxymorons. It's called both an “Essential Wine App” and a “Crucial Wine App.” The “Essential” quote is from a Liquor.com piece entitled, "The Seven Essential Wine Apps." But the real question is, how essential are you if there are six other essential apps? It’s like saying Dopey is the Essential Dwarf. On the Liquor.com site, the article says of Wine Ring, “In some cases, it will even tell you if you like a wine before you buy it.” Wait. Isn't that the fucking point? I don't really need the app to tell me I like a wine after I buy it. That's like paying for yesterday's weather report. How stupid are the people at Liquor.com? There's a rhetorical question. And why would you take their advice?

Ray Isle (which I thought was where you bought skate at the fish market) of Food and Wine Magazine is the writer who calls Wine Ring one of the seven “Crucial” wine apps. In the same article, Isle recommends two websites for buying wine, Amazon and Wine.com. Yeah, so he’s hip. Buying your wine on Amazon is like shopping for lingerie at Eddie Bauer. So, Ray, you sign up on Wine Ring, rate a dozen crappy wines you bought at the supermarket, then go to Amazon and see what Wine Ring recommends, and that’s how you learn about wine? Wow. It’s like learning about food from Swanson TV dinners--which, coincidentally, is one of the seven Crucial TV dinners. (And you should see the wine blogs Isle recommends…)

I also love Wine Ring’s answer to one of their FAQ, “What is a Master of Wine? A Master Sommelier?” The answer is:

“Both are expert in wine, and study for years to develop their ability to taste.  Our wine experts taste thousands of wines a year so you don’t have to!  You just get recommendations based on your individual preferences.”

Waddya know? I’m a Master of Wine and a Master Sommelier. That was easy. Which explains a lot.

Google and Amazon, and others, build massive facilities that consume inconceivable amounts of energy so that appholes can post photographs of empty wine bottles, their latest meal, and other signs of their importance and status. It’s the new pornography. I need to remember to wear my Wine Ring.