What's A Winobot

The simple answer is that Winobot is one of the coolest wine based apps available for the IPhone.

In this space, I usually blog about some of the great wines that I've sampled over the past several weeks. Today, its about a great wine app that I've been playing with on my new IPhone. What makes this app different from most others is that it is geared towards wine lists in specific restaurants, and guiding each user to select a bottle off that restaurant's wine list that fits their preferences.

So, last week I took Winobot out for a spin. Using it is easy, you sign in with your Facebook page (there will be connectivity in upcoming releases) and then choose whether to manually search for a restaurant, or to use your phones GPS to select on for you. I selected Il Fornaio in Corte Madera, near my house, as the test restaurant.

After your restaurant is selected, a short list of featured wines appears on the screen, followed by several reels on that allow you to select up to three criteria for narrowing your search. Since I was having Veal Osso Buco, I selected meat. and using my past preferences and selections, Winobot suggested four selections for me to try; Franciscan Napa Valley Cabernet, Tiganello Super Tuscan from Antinori, a Brunello from Canlicchio and Ridge Three Valleys Zinfandel.

All very good suggestions, but I wanted something Italian. Tiganello, a blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet is one of my favorite wines, but at $185 it was a little out of my price range. So I went back to Winobot, put a $50 limit as my price range, and hit the select bar again. The choices were three Chiantis, and since I love Antinori's Tiganello, I selected the Peppoli Chianti to have with dinner.

The next screen describes the wine, allows you to rate and review the wine, and comming soon will be direct links to the winery and/or importer web sites to buy your wine and arrange for visits and to be included on any mailing lists.

This sounds complicated, but its not. The whole process took about 30 seconds. The app is free, and the developers tell me they are currently adding restaurants from all over the Bay Area and wine country as well as direct links to many Northern California wineries.

Check it out at http://www.winobot.com/. If nothing else, its a great source to check out wine lists at your favorite restaurants.