By Deidre Wollard

These days finding a great wine is as easy as heading to your iPhone or Blackberry. There are apps that offer wine information, ways of tracking your cellar and finding out what wine to drink with what food.

One of the most interesting wine pairing apps comes from noted wine author Natalie MacLean. Her Drinks Matcher from Nat Decants doesn't just tell you whether you should choose white or red wine. Her app is far deeper and lets you either start with the food or with the wine. You've got to love an app that includes pairings for over 200 cheeses and over 100 desserts. Ever wonder what goes best with roasted marshmallows? The answer is a German Late Harvest Riesling.

The app also includes pairings for other drinks including beer, coffee and tea. It also links to the mobile version of her website so you can access wine reviews and other information. Overall there are over 380,000 pairings, with new ones added daily. The app sells for $2.99 for iPhone or BlackBerry.

 

Choosing Wisely by Consulting the Sommelier in Your Pocket

By Bob Tedeshi

Shopping for wine is a lot like parenting a teenager. You feel stupid when you’re in the middle of it, and when you finally emerge, you’re desperately ready for a drink. There is, alas, no app for raising teenagers. But mobile software developers have begun aiming at oenophiles, and in so doing, they have established one of the more useful categories of wireless apps.

Appropriately enough, choosing the right one can be puzzling and tedious. One of the most refined entries in the current vintage includes Nat Decants Food & Wine Matcher ... fairly good now, and [it] should age nicely.

Before digging into the details, though, consider the overall value of these services for a moment. Let’s say you’re at your favorite wine shop with about 15 minutes to spare, and you want a bottle that will make your dinner guests coo, without maxing out your credit card.

The shop owner is helping someone near the Mouton Rothschild, and the other employees are 23-year-olds with extensive beer-stocking skills. Rather than choosing a random bottle or asking the beer guys, you can now just reach for the sommelier in your cellphone.

Nat Decants is available on iPhones and BlackBerrys. But this app belongs in a different subset of wine-related software — those that help users pair wine with food. Nat Decants is the creation of Natalie MacLean, a wine journalist and registered sommelier, and includes much of the information available on her Web site, Nat Decants (at NatalieMaclean.com).

To use it, select from a drop-down menu of either food or wine, and the software offers you suitable options from nearly 400,000 food and wine pairings. You are given, for instance, 18 wine varieties that go well with lobster.
 

 

By Dennis Schaefer

My favorite wine and food matching app is from well-known wine writer, Natalie McLean, award winning author of Red White and Drunk All Over. Her long running Nat Decants web site is chock full of wine and food information that is continually updated. Her Nat Decants Drink Matcher rises to the same level of quality and thoroughness as her previous work.

Nat has really broken the food categories down, so if you select "eggs," you choose a specific style or type of egg preparation, because these things, as well as spices, herbs and sauces, can change the flavor profile of dish and thus change the wine selection.  Doing the math, Nat says she has over 380,000 wine and food combos. Now that's pretty comprehensive. Wine isn't the only drink for matching: scotch, tea, cider, rum, sake, vodka, bloody Mary, mojito and many more possibilities are categorized.

 

 

By Judy Creighton

Choosing a wine to go with a particular dish can be just a few clicks away, thanks to your iPhone or BlackBerry and a unique mobile application developed by wine expert Natalie MacLean. If you are out and about and planning a menu with barbecued chicken and want a good wine match, simply choose one on your mobile device.

For example, if a person is in a liquor or wine store and wants to pair barbecued chicken with a New World Chardonnay, the application allows him or her to see if it is available there as well as how many bottles are in stock.

“It's like having a personal sommelier and bartender at your side,” says the online wine writer and author whose newsletter “Nat Decants” is read by more than 100,000 wine lovers each month. MacLean says that whether a person is in a restaurant or a liquor store, “those are the two places where they want wine pairing information, but they don't want to lug around a computer with them.”

 

By Bill Daley

OK, so you don't know a box wine from a baby brunello and that big dinner with colleagues/clients/current object of obsession is just a day away. You want to be dining and wining but will likely be dining and whining ... especially if all you can say to the waiter is, "Got any wine coolers?"

You could sign up for Wine Appreciation 101, but frankly, who has the time? Enter your friend, The Faker, who called on Tribune wine critic Bill Daley for his cheat sheet on pro-style ordering. Follow his script, look like you know your way around a pinot. And whatever you do, don't be afraid to fake it.

Order a weird grape variety. For example, Daley says, the pros love dry riesling, but most people won't go near it. Too sweet, they fear. Yet they drink fruity cocktails. Go figure. Of course, you need to have an idea about how that "weird" wine tastes with food beforehand. A great simple-to-use Web site for food and wine pairings is Nat Decants (natdecants.com) by wine writer Natalie MacLean. Type in the wine ("riesling") and you get a briefing on how the wine tastes and what foods she recommends (Thai dishes, California-style pizza, for example). Another click and you'll have specific wine bottles you can ask for when ordering. (Don't worry if the restaurant is out; ask for something similar in flavor -- and price.)

 

By Leslie Gervitz

Don't know which wine to have with a pepperoni pizza? There's an app for that -- as well as websites and Twitter.

The number of ways to discover the most suitable wine for a particular dish can be as overwhelming as walking into a large wine shop.

More than a dozen apps claiming to be the equivalent of a sommelier in your pocket are available for iPhones and iPods. And there are others for the BlackBerry and other mobile devices.

But among the most popular is the Nat Decants Food & Wine Match. Wine blogger Natalie MacLean also provides the same information on her website (www.nataliemaclean.com).

If you want to find out which wine will go best with lamb vindaloo, MacLean, who has almost 400,000 wine and food pairings, recommends Shiraz for red or a white Chateauneuf-Du-Pape. She also suggests food pairings with beer, whiskies and cocktails.

 

By Monica Bhide

 

These days, Americans are enjoying a broader universe of ethnic cuisines and wines, and so the inevitable questions arise: What to drink with vindaloo (other than chilled beer)? What to pair with kung pao? Which wine goes with cilantro?

I turned to Natalie MacLean for answers. She's the editor of Nat Decants, a free, award-winning wine newsletter.

 

At the outset, I copped to my lack of knowledge about the subject she knows so well. I told her honestly that each time I go out to eat Indian food, I always order Gewurztraminer, a wine my somewhat limited experience tells me pairs well with this food. She told me: “Did you know that the name translates to ‘spice wine’? It’s got an aromatic intensity (full of rose petals and litchi) and stands up well to a spicy meal. It is not a wimpy wine.”

Her advice is practical and makes so much sense: “Choose wines that are not aged in oak and don’t have large amounts of tannins. Tannins actually accentuate heat and salt. High-alcohol wines with spicy foods will make your mouth taste like it is on fire.” Of course, while that makes perfect sense – crisp, aromatic whites are a great choice for spicy foods – I wonder if it means that reds are totally out of the picture? “Of course not,” she says. “You can definitely try a wine that contrasts with spices, like a plush red that is ripe and fruity or some soft Italian reds." For wine pairings with 48 herbs and spices, visit nataliemaclean.com.

 

By Vito Pilieci

An Ottawa wine expert has released an application for iPhone and BlackBerry to make it easy to match the perfect wine with whatever food you may be having.

Called the Nat Decants Food & Drinks Matcher, the application contains a database of more than 380,000 food and wine pairings, including 219 cheeses.

The pairings in the application, designed by Ottawa's bitHeads Inc., draw on the experience of Ottawa native Natalie MacLean. She writes the popular electronic wine newsletter Nat Decants and is keeper of the website www.nataliemaclean.com.

Using the application is easy. Just choose a drink or dish then pick the wine you would like to pair it with -- bubbly, red, white or rosé. Users can also pair their dish with beer, spirits, cocktails, liquor, coffee and tea.

The application costs $2.99 and can be downloaded from either Apple Inc.'s iPhone App store or Research in Motion's BlackBerry App World.

 

By Jeff Houck

Pairings to go

Mystified about what wines would go best with the food you're cooking?

Natalie MacLean creator of the wine Web site Nat Decants (www .nataliemaclean.com), has created a Drinks Matcher application that works on an iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry Bold or BlackBerry Curve.

The Drinks Matcher, produced with software developer bitHeads, has a database of more than 380,000 pairings and suggestions. It costs $2.99 and can be downloaded from the online stores for iPhone or BlackBerry.

 

By Cynthia Furey

Nifty wine app brings pairing to iPhone and BlackBerry

The wine maven behind Nat Decants  has launched a smartphone application to help you choose wine pairings while on the go. James Beard award-winning writer Natalie MacLean and software company bitHeads have created the Nat Decants Drink Matcher, a database of more than 380,000 specific wine and food pairings. New pairings are added to the database daily and include a growing selection of beer, spirits, cocktails, liquor, coffee and teas. Search functions allow you to search by wine or by dish.

“We all want to enjoy great food and drink, but in the summer we don't want to be tied to our office computer looking for information,” MacLean said in a news release. “We want to do a quick search while we browse in the liquor store, grill beside the pool or order drinks on a patio.” (Not to mention, we all want to look like wine experts in front of our friends.)

Here’s a tease:

Top 10 Barbecue Food & Drink Matches from the Nat Decants Drink Matcher

1. Planked salmon with Oregonian Pinot Noir
2. Grilled Portobello mushrooms with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc
3. Shish-kabob lamb with Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon
4. Skewered chicken with Provençal Rosé
5. Marinated pork chops with Italian Chianti
6. Barbecued spare ribs with Australian Shiraz
7. Grilled pepper steak with Rhône Valley Syrah
8. Herb-rubbed chicken with Argentine Malbec
9. Grilled hamburgers with Californian Zinfandel
10. Roasted marshmallows with German Late Harvest Riesling

 

By Jessica Yadegaran

Ever want to know what red wine goes with Chinese food and don’t have time to tweet your friends about it? You might want to try Natalie MacLean’s new Drinks Matcher.

The sommelier and wine writer just launched the mobile application for food and beverage pairings that gives users access to 380,000 matches.

It’s only $2.99 and does not require Internet access. So you can use it when you’re going camping with the family this summer and need to hit the liquore store for the perfect s’mores wine.

You can also search under type of cuisine, grape varietal, wine or cheese.

 

by Jason Salzenstein

If you’ve ever been at the market, wine store, or out to dinner at a restaurant and wondered which wine would be best with the meal you’re contemplating, your worries are over. The new Drinks Matcher from Nat Decants delivers more than 380,000 wine and food pairings to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or BlackBerry.

Want to know what wine goes best with soft cheeses like Brie and Camembert? Or do you prefer it harder and more mature? (Your cheese that is- i.e. Cheddar or Parmesan.) Maybe you’d like to "do it in reverse" and search for a cheese to go with a beer or cocktail. No problem.

Drinks Matcher doesn’t just do cheese either; this App is versatile, and you know we love that. Aside from 220 cheeses, you’ll find pairing for thousands of appetizers, main courses, and even desserts- it’s like having your own personal sommelier and bartender in your pocket. The app doesn’t require an internet connection, so you can use it anywhere you are.

Natalie MacLean, creator of Nat Decants, designed this app to help friends, family and fans more easily pick perfect pairings. Given how easy it is to serve cheese at parties, it’s a natural for entertaining. Now your iPhone can be a natural assistant... if only it could do dishes!

 

By The Editor

I love when I come across a cool topic and it covers two categories…

Famed Wine expert Natalie MacLean has an awesome app for your iPhone or BlackBerry called Mobile Matcher. This app will give you over 380,000 meal/wine pairing recommendations!

As her site says, “You’ll find matches for every dish, from appetizers and cheeses, to main courses and desserts. Never get stuck in a liquor store or restaurant wondering which bottle to choose again. It’s like having a sommelier and a bartender in your pocket.”

 

Excerpted from On Milwaukee

By Nathaniel Bauer

 

This week, we are going to keep things short and sweet (author hears resounding cries of "Hooray!")

A new format for this week's column is going to be a survey of sorts, a weighing-in of opinions and, hopefully, an all-out war.

The topic?

Wine applications/programs for mobile phones.

I will play the referee this week and monitor the comments hourly and chime in as frequently as necessary. The reason I chose to sit on the fence is that I am figuratively on the fence as to whether or not I want to side with "God, I so love them" or the "Dude, are you for real? Please!"

As an overall proponent of the Web 2.0 interactive experience, I appreciate the ability to gather as much quality information as quickly as possible. As a Marketing Director for Big Bang LLC here in Milwaukee, I am on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spoke, and countless others making use of the ever-evolving interwebz experience. With iPhones taking over the world, there are apps for just about everything. Ways to find information about wine on the fly is no exception.

When it comes to existing mobile apps for wine, I would like to see a bit more than is currently available. Popular applications provide tasting notes and food pairings and try to let the average consumer make an educated decision.

The site that I have found to be the most comprehensive in terms of wine and food pairings on the fly is from wine blogger and author Natalie MacLean. Her site, nataliemaclean.com, also offers a mobile application for both Blackberry and iPhone. If you need to find a style of wine match for your food, she offers some very nice choices with detailed explanations of each.

 

Excerpted from Palm Beach Post

 

By Gwen Berry

I’ll always remember the day I bought my first iPhone. The Palm Beach Post sent me to shoot video on the day the 3G model went on sale. By 7 a.m., a long line stretched all the way from the front of the Apple store to the outer entrance of the Wellington Mall. The excitement from the crowd was contagious, and after my shift, I went to join the revolution. Four hours later, I was the very proud owner of my first iPhone.

Suddenly, a whole new world had opened up to me – a world of GPS and constant web access, instant messaging and mobile banking. I began to wonder how I ever lived without this slick and sexy device. And then I discovered the wine applications…

In the past few months, I’ve been on a mission to find the ultimate wine application.

Nat Decants Drinks Matcher

It’s like having a personal sommelier in your pocket! Natalie MacLean is a well-known wine writer, judge, and a member of the National Capital Sommelier Guild. Her iPhone app, Nat Decants, is a comprehensive food and spirits pairing guide based on her own expertise. Some of the highlights include pairing suggestions for 218 different types of cheese and a wine list of 287 different grape varietals and styles.

 

 

By Mark Busse

Our friend Natalie MacLean—a dedicated “Foodist”, wine expert, and author of the wildly popular Nat Decants website www.nataliemaclean.com—has just released Canada’s first wine & food mobile application.

Aptly named Nat Decants Drinks Matcher, the application boasts 380,000+ pairings in your pocket, allowing wine and food lovers to discover new pairings using their smartphone, whether they’re in the liquor store or a restaurant!

 

By Maggie Heyn Richardson

If you find yourself stumped on what wine goes with what, or what bottle to bring to dinner, the answer might lie in the Nat Decants Food & Drink Matcher, a new downloadable program for the iPhone and Blackberry by the appealing wine writer Natalie MacLean, author of Red, White, and Drunk All Over and maven of natdecants.com.

The matcher includes a $2.99 fee, but you then have access to thousands of combinations of wine with foods of all sorts, and you can pair by starting with a category of wine, or with food. MacLean’s Web site includes helpful, easy-to-use info that is decidedly straightforward and accessible. (In fact, MacLean, known for her Everyman schtick, calls herself a champion for wine democracy).

A wine glossary and solid recipes are among the winning features on the website, along with fast-moving articles and information on wine in general. The newsletter is fee-based, but you can find out plenty without it. As for the Matcher, even if you pair successfully on your own, it’s fun to lean on when you find yourself with your handheld, but without a fresh idea on what to buy.

 

By Lisa Magnuson

Not sure what pairs best with appetizers? Or, don’t know what goes with Donna Diegel’s grilled pizzas? How does this sound? 380,000 Wine & Food Pairings in New iPhone and BlackBerry Mobile Application.

Now whether you are in a restaurant or liquor store, Natalie MacLean, creator of the Nat Decants wine web site and author of Red, White and Drunk All Over, has partnered with the software developer bitHeads to cook up an application that works on your iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve.

The Drinks Matcher mobile application can help wine and food lovers discover new pairings while on-the-go. For only $2.99, you can download it in two minutes from the online stores for iPhone or BlackBerry.

 

 

By James Falconer

Here’s a fun new app, right in time for the summer BBQ season! I just received word from world-famous author, journalist and sommelier Natalie MacLean regarding her new ‘Nat Decants Food & Wine Matcher’. The new iPhone and BlackBerry app is a comprehensive guide to help you match food and drink for any occasion.

Start with a drink or a dish, and navigate your way to the perfect match. For wines, you can choose from bubbly, white, red, rosé or dessert (ice) type wines. You can also select beers, spirits, cocktails, coffees, teas and more. You can even browse almost 300 types of grapes and over 200 cheeses for goodness sake. There’s also over 60 pasta dishes, 100+ vegetarian dishes, plus a whole whack of chicken, beef, pork, seafood dishes (among other types). In the end, the app can spit out more than 380,000 pairings with new matches added daily. A truly comprehensive app for optimized summertime fun.

 

 

By Lisa Magnuson

The internet has certainly made it easier to find information. However, too much information can be overwhelming. Additionally, we all have our favorite way to receive are feeds. Some like quick and easy tips; others like to know all the facts. Like wine, we vary in type.

Most online wine guides pair the basic wine varietals (like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon) with meat, fish, and vegetable dishes as well as cheese and dessert plates. Others get more in depth with sauce and spice selection and work with more and sometimes unusual wine varietals (such as Grüner Veltliner).

For those who are on the go,Nat Decants’ mobile matcher can be used while shopping or eating out. Download onto your IPhone or Blackberry and start pairing wine with the food, or vice versa, the food with the wine. This is the most versatile, up-to-date, and easy to use matcher around.

 

By Courtney Cochran

Made from scores of regions, hundreds of varieties, thousands of producers and newly released each vintage year, wine is one of the most data-challenged consumer goods we enjoy. But now, thanks to a host of fancy new iPhone and iPod Touch-compatible applications, sorting through the dizzying array of wine selections in stores, restaurants and even in your own cellar is getting a whole lot easier. Read on for our picks for top applications to fuel your Wine Country lifestyle; they make researching, scoring, sharing and even buying wine a snap - and they let you do it all from the palm of your hand.

Nat Decants Food & Wine Matcher

With its refreshingly simple interface, Canadian wine guru Natalie MacLean's Food & Wine Matcher ($2.99) makes it easy to decide what to pair with the exotic-sounding (read: unnervingly complex) dish you spy on the menu.  Search by single ingredients (e.g. almonds) or fully realized dishes (hello, coq au vin), or start with your wine and find a dish that suits.  Would be improved by a "click to buy" or "click to score" feature, but perhaps we'll see those in version 2.0.

 

 

Natalie MacLean’s Expertise Shines in Food & Drink Matching Mobile App

Natalie MacLean is a trusted name and celebrated writer for the wine community. The introduction of her tool is, in her own words, a simple extension of services for her fans and readers answering the question she has received time and time again, “What wine would go with X?” Her jump into a mobile platform is crucial in educating consumers and broadening the reach of different varietals. Although not a tool that directly connects consumers to sales, Natalie’s personal touch and trusted opinion would undoubtedly influence the purchasing behavior of her audience if enhanced. The key importance of this tool however, lies within access to information necessary for making purchasing decisions of Natalie’s loyal and trusting audience.

Over 380,000 wine pairings and no algorithm to automate the selection. Natalie MacLean uses her experiential judgment to hand pick every one of her food and drink suggestions in her mobile application and widget. As she explains “I’m still very old fashioned. I like to make human decision the last factor and still think you need the human touch.” And this attention to detail, creative oversight and personal touch that Natalie has infused in the application is not only impressive but should impart significant influence on both her loyal readers and new users.

Opening up a larger philosophical discussion, one in which we don’t have a clear and definitive stance, is understanding the delta between wine and food pairing applications made through algorithm and those made through a subjective use of an individual’s opinion (especially a trained and regarded professional). On the one hand, a pairing made through an algorithm imparts objective industry standards on what flavor profiles of food go best with what flavor profiles of wine. Of course it will miss a few, but the median and standard remain the same. On the other hand however, an individual’s
opinion carries a sentient and more relatable, albeit more subjective, tone that a user might find easier to identify with.

Some food decisions also cannot yet be made by algorithms alone, as the gestalt of the recipe is different than the sum of its parts. Natalie’s readers trust her and even though they understand her tasting notes are based solely on her palate and opinion, they have confidence she made the right decision. We have yet to determine if an algorithm has the capacity to get close but understanding that wine itself is subjective by many factors and despite being technophiles, we do find Natalie’s approach to be refreshing. The application experience starts with users selecting either a beverage (as she also includes non-alcoholic options) or a food category and dependent on the first choice, the user receives either a menu item or a generic wine suggestion respectively based on Natalie’s deciding.