If you follow me on Twitter (@deeje) you probably noticed a ton of posting today rating various wines. I was at the ZAP Zinfandel Festival 2009 at Fort Mason today, and was field testing our new iPhone app. Here are a few quick observations while they're fresh on my mind.
First, I didn't see anyone actually taking notes on what they were tasting. ZAP does provide a paper guide for tasting notes and I did run into some friends who pulled out their tasting guide to tell me about some of their favorite zins. Clearly, people are trying to keep track to a limited degree, but it wasn't overt or widespread.
Next, we've already been thinking about a "twitter limiter" setting so that low ratings don't get posted. The takeaway here is that my rating is not consequential... I'm no expert, I'm just trying to keep track of what I like and don't like. There's no point in posting low ratings, only the stuff that really impresses.
Third, while we've spent considerable time making our app easy to user, and in particular, easer to enter data, there's still a bunch of aspects to identifying wine that are tricky. For example, what's the difference between Zinfandel and Old Vine Zinfandel? How important is the vinyard? Clearly the winemaker makes the distinction, and so should we when we want to remember and find that wine again. But we also don't want to make identifying wines a burden... tricky.
The notion of scanning bar codes to identify wines seems obvious to everyone we talk with, but the practical reality is that bar codes are not universal. In the context of a large wine tasting event, however, i could see it making a journal drop dead simple to use.
Lastly, I'm not so deep on wines yet to really appreciate all the nuance between the 14 different zinfandels I tasted. I'm looking forward to the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition public wine tasting event in Feb.
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