The new release includes,

- New App Icon
- New App Name to appear with new Icon: Cellar Rat
- New interface with additional country and region detail
- New regions
- More vintages
- New rating definitions in Key popup

We look forward to wine lovers worldwide continuing to enjoy buying wine as much as they enjoy drinking it.

This post is inspired by a someone who wrote me interested if I produced a number-based version of the Wine Vintage Card. He felt the 'smiley faces' might prove embarrassing should a wine professional see them. Actually he said 'sommelier', but I assume he meant anyone one feels the need to put on wine airs around. We have all felt the need to put on airs at one time or another. Unfortunately, it seems part and parcel of the wine experience.

My response elucidates many of my original thoughts behind creating the card as well as a bit of history as to how it came about. Hope you enjoy it!

Dear Sir,

I appreciate your thoughts. The card has been a long time in production. What you see here comes after a long journey - carrying a folded up 8.5 x 11 vintage chart, printed out from the web, in my wallet to constructing a wallet version of my own (basically a numbers-based miniaturized version printed out on paper.) After several more botched iterations I happened upon the present concept you see for sale on my site. There's an iPhone / iPod Touch version now too.

The earlier versions of the card failed in significant ways, seeing my goal of creating a simple and portable wine rating system that anyone could interpret and use in just about any wine-related situation. As refinement of the concept progressed, I discovered a small number of surprising (at the time) facts that significantly altered my direction.

1. The vast majority of people are completely disinterested in carrying around a wine rating system based on numbers. In this case, numbers are boring and show too much variation and ambiguity to allow quick and decisive decisions. When I moved from numbers to modern, cute, and intuitive emoticons, viola, everyone wanted one and people started to use them religiously.

2. People want the wine buying experience to be fun - and for many it's not. So many regions, varietals, and vintages - how do you bring it all together? Emoticons were the key for getting people to relax and start exploring. I created this tool so that anyone, regardless of wine knowledge, could relax, have fun, and experience a little more control and power when buying wine.

3. Numbers are difficult to interpret and offer too many possibilities when trying make quick decisions. A grid of numbers between 1 - 100 or even 1 - 5, seem incongruous to most people when related to a beverage such as wine. They want the experience to be easy and enjoyable. Now a big smiley face compared to frowning one, that's obvious. People have no difficulty deciphering and comparing facial expressions.

4. People want the system to work where they actually buy and drink wine. In retrospect, there's a no-brainer. Unlike any other wine rating system, the Wine Vintage Card is specifically designed to be used quickly, easily, and discreetly in any wine buying situation –- in busy restaurants, dimly-lit wine bars, high-pressure wine shops and bewildering supermarkets.

I carry and use the card because it's easy to interpret and read as well as durable and easy to take out and put away. And it also works. I have on occasion cringed a little when a server or sommelier spotted it in a restaurant. But to my surprise, most wine professionals love them. Today's wine professionals are cool with anything that gets people to deepen their wine experience. Of course, I have run into a few who seem threatened by the whole idea...but they are the exception not the rule -- and I assume they'd feel that way about a number-based card as well.

Thank you for your interest.

WineVintageCard.com

Note: One thing I neglected to mention to him. Paradoxically, pulling a wine rating system covered with smiley faces out of my pocket,  even in the finest of fine dining situations, brings the whole situation down to earth and reminds me, over and over again, that really, we are all just here to have fun.

We are overjoyed to announce that we have taken the Wine Vintage Card virtual and it is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch and downloadable from iTunes!

iTunes Application Store (you'll need iTunes installed for this):

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=295087020&mt=8

For those of you hearing of this for the first time the project has spanned nearly three years with tireless vintage research and countless redesigns to come up with one very smart, very simple little tool designed to help you pick the best wine every time. Simple, easy to use and completely intuitive, the Wine Vintage Card is a tool designed with your personal wine discovery in mind and is meant for everyone from the complete beginner to the savant. Far from a vehicle of opinion, the Wine Vintage Card is built from factual vintage information for the last ten years across all major wine producing regions and a reliable source to steer your decisions no matter what the situation.

Many of you have and use the card in it's original incarnation - the wallet card - and we intend to keep our updates current in both formats. In fact, we're already working on enhancements and plan to update the data (spanning a decade) each year as new vintages are released so you'll always have the last decade at your fingertips for quick and easy reference no matter what format you use it in. In keeping, as smart phones continue to evolve so too will the Wine Vintage Card. Blackberry and Google phone users are not far behind our pursuits and as soon as those platforms have a venue for application development we will ensure our place within it.

Cheers and happy drinking!

Welcome to Vintage Matters. This blog will be dedicated to discussing wine vintages world wide as well as keeping our friends and fans updated on developments and changes to the Wine Vintage wallet card and phone application. Thanks for stopping by and come back often.