The Wine Collector

I'm pleased to report that The Wine Collector was named as one of the four finalists in the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards in the category of Best Business/Industry Wine Blog.  This blog won this category last year and another category in the 2007 debut year of the awards.  See all finalists in all 7 categories.

Winners are determined by voting from the public as well as from a panel of judges.

If you enjoy this blog, please take a minute to vote for The Wine Collector on question 5 prior to midnight on Wednesday, March 4, 2009.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE.

You need not vote on all categories to submit a response (and you can only vote once!).  But I would encourage you to check out all of the blogs as they deserve your readership.

Thanks for your support.

P.S. You should also subscribe to the new Vinfolio Blog whose content has been repurposed going forward (since February 13).

When I wrote my post last week about our iPhone app for WinePrices.com, I mentioned that our next one in the queue was for VinCellar, our free online cellar management application.  But I had no idea that our Director of Engineering, Yilmaz Oztanir, had secretly been developing a mobile version of VinCellar for the past month in his spare time.  I was given a surprise demo in the middle of the week and it was so good, we decided to just release it in beta form to users to gather their feedback and suggestions for improvement.  See Yilmaz's post in Vinfolio's Forums titled "VinCellar iPhone site, VinCellar goes mobile for details on what it can do, more screenshots, and, best of all, how to start using it immediately.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is an iPhone-optmized web site as opposed to an iPhone application which could enable other features such as offline use and perhaps the camera capability for scanning bar coodes.  We're still planning on doing an iPhone app but you'll find immediate benefits in using this solution now. Please post product suggestions in our Forums as a reply to Yilmaz's post.

For the past few months, we've been working on our first iPhone application for providing easy access to the comprehensive wine auction price results and U.S. wine retail prices from our WinePrices.com site.  After weeks of testing, we submitted the application to Apple for approval a few days ago.  As the approval process takes 1-2 weeks, I thought I'd provide a sneak preview of the application with some screenshot images and a brief summary of features including:

• Simple navigation - View average prices and detailed listings quickly.
• Integration with professional reviews - Subscribers to Allen Meadows' Burghound.com, Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, Roy Hersh's For the Love of Port, and The Richard Juhlin Champagne Club, can view their professional ratings.
• Community scores and reviews - View average community score and complete community wine reviews from VinCellar.
• Label view - View detailed wine labels for easy wine verification.

It's Free!

The application is free; you'll just need to register (also free) or link to your existing Vinfolio account.  Note that whether you have registered on Vinfolio's main site (www.vinfolio.com), VinCellar (www.vincellar.com), WinePrices.com, or via the iPhone app, the same email address and password will work everywhere else.

Attention wine bloggers and members of the press

If you're a wine blogger or a member of the press and would like to get early access to the application prior to its official launch, just email service@vinfolio.com and we'll arrange for that to happen.

Future iPhone applications?

Now that we've completed our first iPhone application (with the assistance of Alder Yarrow and his awesome team at Hydrant), we've got the next one in the queue (for VinCellar).  Stay tuned

UPDATE: As of 2/23/09, I have modified this post to remove mentioning the name of a particular firm after their attorneys contacted me.  However, my warning to readers stands and if in doubt about an investment opportunity, don't proceed.

A few months ago, I attended a Vinfolio wine dinner in San Francisco and spoke to one of our Bay area clients, a doctor, who told a story about being solicited to invest in wine by someone calling from Canada representing a UK firm. The pitch she repeated to me sounded more than a bit questionable but she went ahead and invested some money.

I told her that I would research the firm to see what I could find (which wasn't much other than the sites above).  About that time, I was contacted by a journalist in France, Kathleen Buckley, who was researching a story about wine fraud and investing for Wine Enthusiast magazine.  I put Kathleen in touch with my client and just learned a few days ago that Kathleen's story titled "Wine Fraud" had been published in the 12/22/08 issue the Wine Enthusiast.  This is a must read article (4-5 pages if you print it) as Kathleen does an excellent job pulling together various aspects of the topic into a coherent whole.  I think you'll find the examples provided of the various sales pitches used by con artists particularly interesting (some are just ridiculous statements that should scream "scam" for any potential investment).

My client told me last week that she reported the UK firm to the SEC and FTC.  She also asked them to sell her wine but has not heard back from them.  She doesn't expect to get much back, if anything, but part of the initial charge was made to her American Express card.  Amex has agreed to investigate and reverse those charges

In doing a new Google search on the UK firm today, I found a thread on a site called WorldLawDirect.com with over 40 posts (started on 9/4/08 and with a post as recent as yesterday).  Suffice it to say, they are consistently negative.

As I note in Kathleen's article (and in past blog posts), if you're investing in wine, know your retailer and insist on completely transparent transactions and disclosures. If they balk, go elsewhere.  Research the firm on the Internet (and with wine friends) before parting with any money as you may find threads like the one above or positive ones which help confirm the legitimacy of the operation.  If you're still not sure, contact me at Vinfolio and I'll be glad to look into it.

(Updated 2/8/09 for last story)

Both the San Francisco Chronicle and Bloomberg.com ran articles on the fine wine market in recent days in wihich Vinfolio was quoted.  Here are links:

• San Francisco Chronicle: "Suddenly, those rare wines aren't so rare"
• Bloomberg.com:"With Lafite 45% off, it's time for wine vultures"