Vivino: Drink the Right Wine

Review by eFreeware

Standing in a store aisle with two bottles in hand and no memory of which one you liked last spring is the small, recurring problem Vivino is built around. The app, from Vivino ApS, turns a phone camera into a way of reading a label and pulling up what other drinkers have made of that bottle, then keeps a record of your own verdict for next time.

It has been on the Play Store since November 2010, which makes it one of the older names in this category, and it shows in the scale of what sits behind the scanner. The app covers 16 million wines, 245,000 wineries and more than 500 wine sellers, with ratings and reviews gathered from tastings. Vivino is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases.

A wine app lives or dies on whether the bottle in your hand is already in its catalog, and a decade and a half of accumulated entries is the practical answer to that question. Below I go through what the app does, what it costs, and where a dedicated alternative might serve you better.

Who tends to get value from it

The people I would point to first are regular buyers rather than collectors. If you pick up a bottle most weeks, whether from a supermarket shelf, a restaurant list or a wine club shipment, the loop of scanning, rating and looking back at your own notes is where the app fits naturally on a home screen. You do not need to know anything about grape varieties to start; the point is to build that knowledge from what you actually drink.

The developer also pitches it at seasoned drinkers and natural wine collectors, and the cellar side of the app is clearly meant for them. Anyone keeping more than a couple of cases will find the tracking tools more useful than the scanner, because the questions change from what is this bottle to when should I open it.

It is a less obvious fit for someone who wants a single recommendation and nothing else. The app is built around accumulating your own history: ratings, tasting notes, favorites and a cellar. If you are not willing to log what you drink, the personalized parts have little to work from.

Scanning a label or a wine list

The core action is pointing the camera at a wine label or a restaurant list. The app reads it and returns the wine's rating, what other drinkers have said about it, and suggested food pairings. That last part is the one I would use most in a restaurant, where the list is long and the decision is immediate.

Beyond the identification itself, there is a wine finder that takes your taste into account and points to bottles that should suit it. I would treat that as a starting shortlist rather than a final answer, since it depends on the app having a good read on your preferences in the first place.

The scanning step is also the entry point to everything else. Each bottle you look up can be rated, annotated and filed, which is how the app moves from being a reference tool to being yours.

Learning your own taste

Vivino asks you to record the grapes, styles and regions you like and dislike. Feed it enough of that and it produces drinking suggestions tuned to your profile, along with a Match for You score that predicts how well a given wine should land with you. The score is the kind of thing that is easy to over-trust, so I would read it as a nudge toward or away from a bottle rather than a verdict.

The journal side is what I find more durable. Every tasting can carry a personal rating, a written review and tasting notes, and you can mark favorites so the memory of a particular bottle is not lost. Over a year or two that becomes a genuinely personal record, and it is the part that no external rating can replace.

The two halves reinforce each other: the more you log, the more the suggestions have to work with. That is a reasonable design, though it does mean the app is at its least useful in the first few weeks.

Keeping a cellar in order

The cellar tracker is where the app gets practical for anyone with more than a handful of bottles. You add what you own, and the app shows ideal drinking windows so you can see what is ready now and what should wait. That single view answers the question most cellars raise: what am I actually supposed to open this month.

Collections can be sorted by quantity, vintage or readiness to drink, which is the difference between a list and something you can act on. If you have ever found a case of something you forgot you had, the sort by readiness is the feature that prevents a repeat.

It is a manual system, so its accuracy depends on you keeping it current as bottles come in and go out. That is a fair trade for not having to maintain a spreadsheet, but it is worth being realistic about whether you will do the upkeep.

Buying through the app

Wines can be bought inside the app through a store of vetted merchants, with alcohol delivery available, and a discount on a first order is offered. Recommendations in the shop draw on ratings from the wider community of drinkers, so the buying side is tied to the same data as the scanner.

Vivino is free to download and shows no ads. In-app purchases are part of the app, and a Vivino wine subscription sits alongside logging tastings.

Worth noting: the shop and delivery side is a regional service, while scanning, rating and cellar tracking are the parts that work wherever you are.

When a different tool fits better

A dedicated cellar management program is the obvious alternative if inventory is your main concern. Those tend to go deeper on storage, valuation and bottle-level detail, at the cost of the community ratings and label scanning that make Vivino quick to use.

If your real interest is discovering new producers rather than identifying what is in front of you, a specialist wine publication or a merchant's own curation might teach you more per bottle. And if you simply want a bottle delivered without any interest in logging what you drink, a general alcohol delivery service covers that ground with less to set up.

What keeps me coming back to Vivino as the sensible default is the combination: identification, a personal record and a way to buy, in one place. Each individual piece has a stronger specialist counterpart, but few people want three apps for one glass of wine.

A dependable default for everyday drinking

Vivino is free, ad-free and rated 4.7 from more than 241,000 ratings, with over 10 million installs behind it. Those numbers are not a reason on their own to install anything, but they are consistent with an app that has had fifteen years to get the basics right, and the recent update, which adds control over who can follow you and see your profile, plus management of blocked users, shows the developer is still tending the social side.

My recommendation is straightforward. If you buy wine regularly and are willing to spend a few seconds rating each bottle, the scanner, journal and cellar tracker form a loop that gets more useful the longer you keep at it. If you want deep cellar management or expert tasting notes, a specialist tool will serve you better.

For the everyday question of which bottle to take home, this is the app I would install first.

What's new in version 2026.40.2

The newest version of the app allows you to control your Followers list even more so you can stay safe while using Vivino. You can prevent unwanted users from following you and seeing your profile, as well as manage blocked users from your settings. As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know.