Vinoteka App Reviews
If you dote over your wine collection, this is the app to get. Yeah, its a little pricey relative to the other options, but the investment is minor compared to what you probably have invested in your wine collection. Favorite aspects are extreme flexibility and dead on graphical representations. I had one question that I couldnt resolve with the help page, so I emailed the question to their site. I received a reply within a few hours--not bad considereing the 9 hour time difference--that not only answered my question, but explained the reasoning behind the design choice. Now that I know exactly where that 06 Estate Pinot is, I believe Ill go fetch it...
The application promises a great deal but is marred by some obvious and quite annoying flaws. The first thing users will notice when using this software is that you can include a GREAT deal of detail about a given bottle of wine (or whiskey, beer, etc.). Anything from the most critical bits of information such as varietal, vintage, and apogee to minutia and very thoughtful touches such as bottle shape and color, a URL to reviews or producers, serving temp, decanting time, food pairings. Just about anything you would want to include in terms of information regarding a bottle can be included. Theres even a snazzy feature that lets you search for label art from the internet to stick onto the bottle. The DRAWBACK of all this is that it takes an obscene amount of time to collect and enter. The learning curve is somewhat steep. It took my girlfriend and me quite a few hours to enter what we consider the basic information for our collection. BOTTOM LINE, roughly 2-4 hrs to enter basic information for 100+ different kinds of wines and 200+ bottles, with more work yet to be done. If you are going to use this software be prepared to set aside a lot of time if you wish to be meticulous. I dont expect the application to autopopulate all the information weve taken the time to enter, although it would be a nice feature it is something we signed up for. So I dont want to be hypercritical here. FLAW. Inability to adjust storage locations. There does not seem to be a way to drag or rearrange the different storage places. In fact the order in which you create them seems to be the order they exist. So if you suddenly buy a new wine fridge, you wont be able to arrange it so that the the wine fridges are adjacent to each other in the storage location list. FLAW. Pricing and bottle referencing. Vinoteka includes information on a bottle of wine generally speaking (think a 2007 Napa cab you have from a particular vineyard) as well as information on a specific bottle of wine (think the 2007 Napa cab you have from that vineyard that is sitting in the winefridge on the 3rd shelf as opposed to the one in your cellar). Information regarding price changes for the bottles generally are not reflected in prices of individual bottles. I understand why that might be the case if you are talking about purchase price. But market price and other kinds of price should carry through. The downside is if you hastily enter a bunch of wines into a wine fridge without including the price you have to go back and redo the pricing for wines twice. AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT. It would be nice to be able to copy and paste entire bottles of wine so that only some changes would need to be made instead of having to copy them line by line as well as the ability to compare two references (thats bottles of wine) side by side. Presently, the application shows a great deal of promise and you get a lot out of it if you put a lot into it. But it seems to be inefficient at times. This seems to be an application for those who value their wine more than their time. I get more efficiency and probably just as much utility out of managing my collection on a spreadsheet, but its not as pretty. I believe the day will come (I just hope sooner rather than later) that this application will be worthy of 5 stars. But in the meantime, a few improvements in the search and user interface will easily nab a 4th star. TLDR: Pretty good application with lets you enter a lot of detail about your wine collection, but requires a great deal of time. Lots of room for improvement. Decent right now, but might be the gold standard for all similar applications in the future.
Ive been using the Vinoteka app for about the past six months. Granted there are very few wine apps, it does a very good job. Firstly, the tags function as a quick way for me to evaluate what wines we enjoyed and which ones we didnt - regardless if we tried it by purchasing a bottle or tried it at a tasting. So the next time I go to the wine shop to pick up more, I can use that information to avoid certain types of wine or certain vineyards. Moving on, the app allows one to document a wines appelation, region, area, type, and varietals in the wine. Again, this is very useful for making future wine purchases. Lastly, the app helps me keep track of the wine that I have already. You can set up your virtual storage system just like you have it set up in reality, and you can put bottles in your virtual storage just like you have them in your actual one. This is very convenient when you have quite a few bottles and want to avoid pulling multiples out to find the one youre looking for. Since youve created a catalogue system for your wines using this app, you can also look at the statistics of your collection (number and percentage by vintage, type, and country of origin). Very fun for a wine nerd for sure!
For the price I was expecting a more efficient and user-friendly software. Printing options are very limited and data entry extremely cumbersome. no possibility to load data from internet. In general more views, more options for managing the data are urgently necessary.
Great program to keep track of your Collection/Cellar/Eurocaves. Intuitive, comprehensive, visually appealing, and hands down the number one application available without paying thousands for eSommellier. Syncs with iPhone and iPad versions which is one of the most appealing features. Perfectly stable program with a few minor bugs. Developer responds quickly to suggestions or bug reports.
There are some bugs in this work in progress, but the developers are working hard to make improvements. As it stands now, I love the app. I often input data in cellar tracker first then import it into Vinoteka. That populates more fields automatically. There is a lot of information available in this app and it takes awhile to input the data, but once a reference is in place adding bottles is far easier. I would like to see a 100 point tasting note with more of a breakdown of categories, or the ability to create my own note. However, I am overall very pleased with the product and the price is worth it. Once again, I believe one can get better performance from Vinoteka when integrating it with cellar tracker. Some of the newer web search tools are a step in the right direction of finding and importating, rather than generating data. The developers are actively improving an excellent product.
Still Not working
Since the update to Version 3.1.1 the application is not running. Didnt receive any Info or Help from the support yet
After extensive research, I was excited to download this program. I spent about 2 hours entering details for ~70 bottles, and was very happy with the ease of entry, the available options, and the custom storage configurations. I was able to use the app for 2 days. Now it fails to start, and I can’t seem to get it to work. Very disappointing, and I feel like I wasted $40.
Instructions horrible, data base awful, very difficult and cumbersome interface. Total bummer of an app….esp. at this price. If I could give it no stars I would.
I loved the program and I have been using it since the begining, but I just updated to the latest version and since doing so, I haven’t been able to launch the program again!
It is a WINE not a reference! Did not identify any of the first three bar codes. HELP is very little. Spent an hour playing with it and managed to get two wines into the data, not where I wanted, not with all of the data I wanted,. I will now eat the cost, trash the app and find sometning that works now that PWC has abandoned us
I just downloaded this program after experiencing a problem launching the earlier version. This application will not launch as well. Perhaps it isn’t compatible with OS X El Capitan. Be wary!
Customer support is almost non-existant. The user manual seems more like a schema than a user manual. Instructions don’t seem to be for this app. The concept is great but the follow through isn’t there. Don’t spend the money until they get this all fixed.
Update: Just in case you missed it…it is now December 22, after patiently waiting you still have not delivered to the date of the 21st you had posted here and on your site. Again I would encourage everyone to NOT purchase this software. They offer absolutely no support at all. Do not spend the money - they consistantly do not keep up with the product. Now with the new version of OS the application does not load at all. When you do get an answer from support it is “we know and are working on it” with a blame to apple for current delays in approval of apps for the store (though many other apps I use have received multiple updates. I can only assume that no one is really working to keep the application up to date. I would not recommend anyone spend money on this.
I purchased soon after upgrading to El Capitan, so my experience has been less than good. I waited for December 21st to download the fix (per the developers note on their website.) Well, no fix and no response to my email to them. I want my money back!
ridiculous
Custumer support does not exist. No support for new version of el capitan. Deadlines are not respected. I really do not recommend
This application was not cheap. It has qualities, but reliability is crucial and missing such an already delayed deadline is simply not professional. El Capitan has been available to developers since June 2015!!!
Total Rip Off!!!
DO NOT BUY!!! Is just a scam, they take your money and the app does not even launch!!!!