Why Hello Vino

You’ll never choose the wrong wine again, in fact your Android app will match you with your soul mate bottle of vino each time.

Hello Vino is an app for Android, free for download off the Android market, that eliminates you staring for hours at a wine list or a wine shelf in the bottle store. In fact the app will tell you what the perfect wine to get is, depending on the occasion.

When you download the app, you’ll see that it has a really classy but simple interface with a wine bottle and wine glass as an icon. Simply download the latest wine pairings and wine tasting information and you’ll have all the tools you need at your fingertips to pick wine like a wine connoisseur pro. My favourite part of the app is how simple it is to use, where the app quite literally does everything for you.

Once the app is open, you’ll see there are several options if you need help choosing a wine, where the app will help you depending if you need wine for a meal/food, if you need wine for a specific occasion, if you want to pick your wine based on taste preference, if you want a wine depending on type or variety or wines for Memorial Day.

The first tab allows you to choose between different meals or types of food including meat, pizza or pasta, seafood, ethnic foods or dishes, soup, salad or appetizers, cheese or dessert. One of the greatest things about this app is how detailed it is. For example, if you choose pasta, you can then select the main flavour of your pasta, including tomato/marinara, white/alfredo, pesto/basil, seafood, meat, spicy/peppery or cheese, ensuring that the wine recommended is absolutely perfectly paired to the meal. I’m a fan of basil/pesto and so the wine that was recommended for my pasta dish was a Chardonnay.

What’s more is that the app also then lists recommended Chardonnay, complete with a price, date and description as well as a link to the wine’s website and a link so that you can buy the wine online. It also gives you more recommendations if you aren’t happy with the ones listed as well as a range of wines that you might also enjoy. This shows that the developers have really tried to bring a quality service to users of the app.

If you go to wine for an occasion, you’ll see that you can choose between using the wine as a gift, for a seasonal gift or holiday, for a date, to impress someone, for a wine tasting party, a cookout or outdoor party or for a sporting event. Each of these go into further detail including what kind of sporting event or outdoor party you are going to, showing that the developers have tried to include as much detail as possible, giving the user a whole variety of options.

The only downside to this app is that the wines listed and websites or online sites where you can buy them that they link to are all American. This is a huge pity because apart from that, the app is flawless, providing quality recommendations, great reviews and an opportunity for you review the particular bottle of wine as well. If a particular bottle of wine sticks out, you can also save it so you remember it.

I would give this app a 4-star rating because it still very useful for food pairings and goes into great detail with regards to this feature. As for recommending particular bottles of wine on the market, let’s hope they include a South African wine market soon.

Current Version: 1.07
Requires Android: 1.5 and up
Updated: 23 March 2012
Category: Everyday
Size: 538k
Price: Free
Developer: Hello Vino