Vine Trails
Where the wine was, who you were with, and whether it was any good.
Built, not launched Built for iOS and in daily use on a trip. Not published to the App Store.
Vine Trails is not on the App Store yet, so there is nothing here to install. It gets built and installed by hand, and it has been through a real tasting trip in that state. The screenshots below are from the working app.
The problem Vine Trails solves turns up months after the trip, not during it. You tasted a dozen wines across four wineries, you meant to remember three of them, and now you are in a shop holding a bottle you half recognize with no idea whether it was the one you liked.
What it does
Notes taken on a phone in a tasting room are rushed, taken standing up, and usually abandoned by the third winery. Vine Trails is built around that: capture takes seconds and looks like a vintage, a name and one line of what you thought. Nothing asks you to rate structure out of twenty while somebody is pouring.
The recall is where the work went. Wines are filed under the producer and stay there across trips, so the La Crema page holds the Pinot from this August next to the Pinot and the Chardonnay from a trip in February. That is the shape the question actually takes in a shop months later, when you remember the place clearly and the label not at all.
It is deliberately not cellar software. Nothing here tracks what you own, what it cost, or when to drink it. This is for the wine you met once and want to find again.
Who it is for
For people who visit wineries and want to find the wine again afterwards. It models tastings rather than bottles you own, so it is the wrong tool for running a cellar and the right one for a trip.
The details
| Status | Built, in use, not published. |
|---|---|
| Platform | iPhone. |
| What it records | The encounter: which winery, which day, who was there, what you tasted, what you thought. |
| The spine | The winery, because that is how people remember a trip. |
Questions
Can I use it?
Not yet. There is no App Store listing and no TestFlight build to hand out. When that changes it will be on this page and in the log below.
Is this cellar software?
No. It models the wine you met once, at a place, on a day. If you want to know how many bottles are on the rack and when to drink them, this is the wrong shape.
Why is the winery the organizing idea rather than the wine?
Because recall runs that way. Nobody remembers a producer's third label six months later, but they do remember the room they tasted it in, and from the winery the wines come back.
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