If you're like me, a wine enthusiast without a lot of expertise, selecting a bottle can be downright stressful. More than once, I've wandered around and around in a shop, under the gaze of a not-too-helpful sales person who keeps pushing expensive items. I usually wind up choosing based on a cool label or staring at a dinner table wine menu like a deer caught in headlights (that is, until I close my eyes and pick something at random). For mere mortals like me, choosing wines for a dinner party is even more excruciating: Indecisive, I typically end up schlepping multitudes of bottles home, along with a drastically lightened wallet.
Thankfully, I just got wind of Vinofordinner.com, a site that offers pairing suggestions based on three simple questions. The cool thing about this service, which is now available as an iPhone app, is that it's not geared toward the sommelier wannabe. It's for the rest of us who love wine, but don't have encyclopedic knowledge of it. It offers specific wine suggestions, not just general explanations of appropriate wine types, and since It focuses on price points at $30 and under, the recommendations won't break any wallets.
Vino For Dinner Mobile offers reviews only for wines that are currently available, plus details like price, vintage, rating, varietal and an image of the bottle. If you're planning on having a holiday party this month and you have an iPhone -- either the 3G version or the original -- or even an iPod Touch, this really sounds like a must-have app. It's available right now for $2.99 in the App Store.
