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What Goes Best With the Meursault Les Narvaux 2007?

Never let it be said that gadget lovers aren’t sophisticated. There was a time when perhaps this was true – if you had the latest tech to hand, you were probably a neck-bearded old techie playing with cutting edge technology that was ultimately inaccessible to anyone without eyes as square as their social standing.  Nowadays, everyone who is anyone has a smartphone, maybe even a tablet. If a gadget is easy to use and it makes our life easier, why not bring it into your life? So Sommeliers everywhere are tooling up with the latest gadgetry, and the wine world looks a lot less stuffy. Wine Appreciation? Of course there’s an app for that. In fact, there’s several, and across multiple platforms too.

Hello Vino – Android and iOS

Currently the most popular and well reviewed wine app on the android store, Hello Vino is a comprehensive wine recommendation app that is also available for the iPhone app store. It allows you to select a wine based on the meal you intend to have, the occasion or recommends wines based on your taste preferences or from certain places of origin. It also allows you to find suitable foods for wines you’ve already bought!

Pair It – iOS

Never sure when to pair what wine with what food? Got a Fantastic Chardonnay Wine you want to share over dinner, but not sure what to put it with? Pair it is a $4.99 wine app available on the Apple App Store that will tell you not only how to pair each major grape type, but the sub-varietals too. With over 1000+ dishes and a course by course breakdown, it’s very comprehensive, even telling you irrelevant facts like how to pronounce each varietal. Shame it’s not multiplatform, mind!

R-Vintage Lookup – Android, Blackberry, iOS

The year a wine is produced can have a profound impact on both its value and its quality. R-Vintage Lookup is a handy app that advises you on the critical opinion and commercial value of a number of high profile wines, so you can make an informed decision about what you purchase, especially if you’re dealing with older wines. It’ll even tell you how long a white wine should be stored for before consumption (though I’ll give you that one for free – drink it after you buy it at the supermarket!) You can even get it on Blackberry devices (remember them?) as well as smartphones that people actually like (oooh, burn).

OK so it sounds a little gruesom but it is the latest fad to hit the world of wine and that is,

‘Tiger Bone Wine’. Although you must be aware that ‘Tiger Bone Win’e is highly illegal. Some reports are still floating around that the wine is being made and sold in some animal parks in China. Evidence emerged of the illegal production of the tiger wine when the EIA were investigating the matter. They said they were offered drinks made from tiger carcasses soaked in rice wine chilled in a wine cooler.

According to the NGO, its investigators found that the tiger wine was openly advertised at various animal parks in China. The wine is apparently a healthy cure for such conditions as arthritus and rheumatism. The park’s staff have stated that the wine only came from dead tigers after they had been killed in fights with bigger tigers. Personally, I find the treatments of these magnificent animals dispicable. I am hoping that these animal parks are not endorsing the sale of this wine as it truly is vile and cruel.

Debbie Banks, head of the EIA’s tiger campaign called on the Chinese authorities to close down the illegal trade immediately. “They are well aware that tigers are a protected species and we will not tolerate this disgusting behaviour”.