Looking for the perfect bottle of wine can be a daunting task, especially if you’re not exactly sure what you’re looking for. iPhone app Blush aims to make shopping for your next bottle of vino a little simpler, putting the power of your own personal wine shopper in the palm of your hand. An update Tuesday adds holiday wine recommendations into the mix, vintage information for most wines, and the ability to rate wines as well as read reviews and recommendations from other users. “I believe that personalization and recommendation play a big role in making the shopping process easier and more compelling,” Steve Katz, creator of Blush, told Mashable.
Working somewhat like Pandora does for music, the first thing you do when you start using Blush is answer a few questions about yourself and your personal tastes. Questions range from what occasion the wine is for to how much you want to spend. “We wanted to create a unique solution for shoppers to discover and match wines to their tastes, and do it in a way that doesn’t require a lot of vocabulary or a lot of skill,” says Katz. Based on the information you give Blush the app will give you a number of different wine suggestions, as well as information on retailers nearby where you can pick up those particular wines.
For the location information Blush currently gets information from retailer and retailers’ websites, so results are going to be primarily focused around larger wine stores rather than mom-and-pops. In the future, however, the company plans to roll out a self-serve onboarding capability so smaller retailers can also be included in the mix. If you’re already at a wine retailer, a Scan feature in the app allows you to scan the UPC on a particular bottle to learn more about it.
Wine listings will let you know how much the bottle should cost, what critics are saying about it and whether or not Blush thinks it’s a good match for your taste. When you drink your purchase, Blush lets you rate it within the app. Reviews can be useful both to help other Blush users make shopping devices as well as help Blush customize the wines it suggests to you to match your palette. Blush also keeps track of your ratings and wines you’ve scanned so you can access them later on. So, you’ll always be able to remember what that great wine was. ( By Emily Price from www.mashable.com ) Blush is available now for iOS at the link bellow.