Prior to our recent trip to Napa and Sonoma, I went on a mission to find free wine tastings to try and save us some cash.  As you may know, wine tasting can get pretty pricey ranging from around $5 to $30 depending on the place (from our experience).  I love a good deal or a coupon if I could find it, so I originally thought I would use the ‘ole google machine to find places with free tastings or with coupons I could print.  Well, they are out there, that’s for sure.  I found websites with lists, websites with links to other websites, and then of course, links to apps.  I’m not sure why I was surprised, but there are quite a few apps available for this sort of thing.  Who knew?  (Many people I’m sure.)

The first app that I downloaded was winecountry.com.  It offers, a Calendar of Events, Offers, a Wineries list, Itineraries, Things to Do, Dining, and Lodging.  Whew, lots of stuff!  I made a bee line for the offers portion.  In this tab, you can find Lodging, Wineries, and Things to Do as well.  Lodging was already taken care of and my thing to do was taste wine, so I went right to Wineries.  They have a pretty good selection, some 2 for 1 deals or half off a tasting.  Even deals for cheese plates here and there!  (mmmmm… cheese)  Upon some of my searches though, I found that I was coming up empty handed for some of the wineries I knew we wanted to visit.

I’m not going to go in to an all out review of this app but I will tell you what I liked about it and why I switched back and forth from another app (which I will post about on a later date) on the trip.  Winecountry.com’s app clearly lists the tasting price for each winery, without having to select the winery from the list.  It was easy to scroll through and see if something was going to be to pricey for us.  It also lists the hours from this view and whether or not the winery required a private appointment.   I could also pull up the  app from anywhere (even here in Nebraska) and it will tell me what the closest winery is.  (Napa Wine Company is the closest to us at a mere 1373.14 miles.)  I also liked that you could save favorites and that interface was pretty clean and easy to read.  It had maps, directions, and for many, contact information as well.  Tapping directions would allow you to go to iPhone maps which was a plus.

I’ll keep the app on my phone for future trips, unless of course, I find something better.  Hopefully it will combine the features of this app and the other one I will tell you about soon!