Wine Enthusiast Guide 2003

Rating:
Summary: Not as useful as I had expected
Review: An ardent oenophile (what an elderly friend of mine playfully calls a dedicated wino) with a newly purchased PDA, my discovery of this program in a Wine Enthusiast catalog conjured expactations of mountains of reviews at my fingertips. I also expected to be able to organize my own collection and record my impressions of wines I had drunk, as well as any notes and recommendations from others for wines I might like to try in the future. While, in all honesty, this program does this, it doesn't do it as well or as smoothly as I had expected.

Take for instance the reviews section. A surprising number of the listed wines carry only a breif description but no review. (Piedmontese wine lovers beware - the objects of your affection are sorely under-represented and even if listed are rarely reviewed.)

The cellar inventory aspect in good but not great. The autotext completion features that save one having to write "Bordeaux" one hundred times or that fill in appelation names from the first few letters lack many names that would be expected in a program such as this.

Perhaps most distressing is that Bordeaux wines are startlingly under-represented in the review section. Many premier chateau are not cited at all.

Am I being a bit too demanding of a $... program? Perhaps. Nevertheless, I was a bit less than satisfied with the program. Were it possible to return software programs, I suspect I would. Alas, such things are not allowed. I am left with it to make of it what I can.

Rating:
Summary: Not as useful as I had expected
Review: An ardent oenophile (what an elderly friend of mine playfully calls a dedicated wino) with a newly purchased PDA, my discovery of this program in a Wine Enthusiast catalog conjured expactations of mountains of reviews at my fingertips. I also expected to be able to organize my own collection and record my impressions of wines I had drunk, as well as any notes and recommendations from others for wines I might like to try in the future. While, in all honesty, this program does this, it doesn't do it as well or as smoothly as I had expected.

Take for instance the reviews section. A surprising number of the listed wines carry only a breif description but no review. (Piedmontese wine lovers beware - the objects of your affection are sorely under-represented and even if listed are rarely reviewed.)

The cellar inventory aspect in good but not great. The autotext completion features that save one having to write "Bordeaux" one hundred times or that fill in appelation names from the first few letters lack many names that would be expected in a program such as this.

Perhaps most distressing is that Bordeaux wines are startlingly under-represented in the review section. Many premier chateau are not cited at all.

Am I being a bit too demanding of a $... program? Perhaps. Nevertheless, I was a bit less than satisfied with the program. Were it possible to return software programs, I suspect I would. Alas, such things are not allowed. I am left with it to make of it what I can.