Introduction

IsVinoGood reads barcodes on wine bottles and looks up the ratings of the wines from the Wine Spectator and Robert Parker databases. There is a sample screenshot here.

To read barcodes, this app requires the ZXing Barcode Scanner, which can be freely downloaded from Google Play.

If you cannot use the ZXing Barcode Scanner for some reason, you can also enter the barcode manually. Or you can enter the name of a wine to find its ratings.

To get ratings, the app requires a subscription to Wine Spectator online (www.WineSpectator.com) or Robert Parker online (www.RobertParker.com). If you have subscriptions to both services, IsVinoGood will show ratings from both. A paid subscription is as low as $4.95 a month.

(Robert Parker is also the publisher of The Wine Advocate.)

IsVinoGood does NOT require Wine Spectator and Robert Parker mobile apps on your device.

Using IsVinoGood

To get started with IsVinoGood, follow these steps: 

1.      Install the ZXing Barcode Scanner (from Google Play).

2.      Enter your paid subscription credentials for Wine Spectator or Robert Parker or both services using the IsVinoGood Settings button.

3.      Scan a barcode on a wine bottle using the IsVinoGood Scan Barcode button. (After a scan you may need to press the device’s Back button to return to IsVinoGood.)

4.      Press the Get Product Information button.

Tips for Getting Rating Information

Sometimes IsVinoGood will not find a rating for a scanned barcode. This situation can be due to:

A.    The name associated with the barcode differs from the name in the ratings database.
Vintners typically use one barcode to designate a single variety of wine across vintage years. For example, the barcode 088586498954 on a bottle of Columbia Crest Chardonnay Columbia Valley Grand Estates 2011 yields the name ‘Columbia Crest Grand Estates Chardonnay Columbia Valley, 2006’ from the barcode database. Since few 2006 bottles are still available, IsVinoGood drops the vintage year in its searches. It searches ‘Columbia Crest Grand Estates Chardonnay Columbia Valley’ which results in Wine Spectator ratings for 13 vintages and Robert Parker ratings for 9 vintages ranging from 2012 to 1995.

In another example, the barcode 088692860256 yields the name ‘Sterling Vintner’s Collection Chardonnay Central Coast’ from the barcode database. This name produces results for eight items in Wine Spectator. A search on ‘Sterling Chardonnay’ produces ratings for 66 vintages. In short, if a search yields few or no ratings, try expanding the search by removing some words from the Product Name and then press the Get Product Ratings button.

B.     The wine is not rated by Wine Spectator and Robert Parker. The number of wines in the ratings databases of WS and RP number in the hundreds of thousands but it is possible that the particular wine you scanned is not rated by these services.

C.     The wine barcode is not in the barcode database. The barcode database contains millions of barcodes but it is possible that the barcode you scanned is not in the database. In this case you can enter the wine name manually on the Product Name line to get its rating.

Revision History

Version 1.4 -- Fixed barcode lookup failure on Android 9 & later.
                   -- Fixed incompatibility with Wine Spectator introduced in 2019.

Version 1.3 -- Added prices to display of Robert Parker ratings.

                    -- Fixed problem that prevented Wine Spectator ratings from appearing.

                    -- Targeted to versions Android 3.0 (API version 11) to Android 9.0 (API version 28) and later. 

Version 1.2 -- Fixed incompatibility with Robert Parker introduced in 2016.

Version 1.1 -- Fixed incompatibility with Wine Spectator introduced in 2015.

Questions & Comments

Direct questions and comments to support@IsVinoGood.com.

Copyright 2018 Edward J. Joyce