Last weekend Second Glass journeyed down to the Newport Wine Fest, a seriously swanky event pouring lots of the good stuff by the water’s edge.  But rather than sticking to the traditional method of pen-and-paper wine guides or resorting to mnemonic devices to remember their wines, Newport-ians upgraded their wine tasting game with some mobile technology. At the event some 128 tasters used the Second Glass Mobile App to write nearly 1,000 wine reviews for the more than 300 wines in attendance! The App allowed visitors to see what wines were being poured, rate what they were tasting, and remember their favorites. Best of all, these favorites will never be more than a touch away, saved forever in their own personal Second Glass vault.

However the friendly folks of Newport aren’t keeping their favorites a secret.  The App allows users to share their reviews with their Facebook friends and even see what their friends like!  So which wines made the biggest splash at Newport? Well, the New England Wines held down the fort and rep’d the hometown pride with a few highly rated Vidal Blanc’s. For the most part, the intense heat sent Newportians flocking to and favoring the white wines.  Nonetheless, some big reds came out on top including spicy picks from Mendoza and Napa Valley. Despite being famous for it’s mansions, Newport’s vibe was totally down-to-earth and was a super chill place to explore some new wines. I mean, where else can you spend a weekend sipping $9 table wine next to a $5.4 million yacht?

Attention, wine country explorers: Today is the day we officially launch the new Tasting Room App to the world! We’re incredibly stoked to be partnering with Paso Robles to bring our new technology to nearly 140 wineries across California, and that’s just the beginning! Get ready as we launch our Tasting Room App in wine regions across the country. We designed the App to function like it does at events like Wine Riot, but now with wines you try in tasting rooms. Wines are preloaded into our system so you can show up to a winery ready to rock and roll: access tasting room lists instantly on your phone and easily mark wines and save them to your “My Wines” forever. We don’t just hook you up in the tasting rooms, we help you get there in the first place. Whether you decided to take a wine tasting weekend with your closest friends, or made an impulse move and gunned it to 88 towards Paso, you’re gonna need more information on these wineries to do this trip right. Keeping that in mind, Second Glass got you covered with up to date winery hours, contact info, and driving directions straight to the tasting room. Browse wineries by distance and find the tasting rooms closest to you, or check tasting lists and base your trip on who’s pouring what wines. Best of all, we use Friend Connect to show you what your friends are drinking and which wineries they visited, updated instantly and listed alongside the wines! Stay in the know with the people you trust. Go boldly forth and try that Dessert Zin that Anthony likes, or steer clear of whatever Aunt Mindy is drinking...

We’re stoked to be working with Paso Robles, that sunny oasis halfway between San Francisco and LA, and we’re planning on expanding all over so count on us showing up in a wine region near you! Make sure to update or download the App to get the Tasting Room App and start your wine country adventure.

We're always trying to learn lessons from what we do here at Second Glass, but my favorite lessons are always the qualitative ones.  After Boston Wine Expo we had a lot of data to work with:  3,948 ratings were marked by 479 people--that’s just over 8 ratings per person! Here's a quick look at some interesting bits about the data we collected over the weekend at Expo. Mobile site usage was widespread at the expo, with 92% (199/216) vendor booths receiving at least one wine rated on the mobile site. 840 of the 1,o50 wines received at least one rating. Only 10% of the ratings were "meh", meaning that 90% of the wine ratings were positive. Is it just that people don't rate wines they don't like? Or the myth of "bad wine" is 90% wrong? One thing that jumped out at us was the change in accumulation rate on Sunday -- which suspiciously lined up with the start of the Bears/Packers game. The game was on all afternoon at the Xfinity booth next to ours, and it was definitely drawing a crowd. To see if the drop in wine rating was related to the Bears/Packers game, we charted mens' and women's ratings over time on Sunday. However, while the aggregation of rating mens' ratings saw a consistent pace despite the status of the game, womens' ratings fell off starting around 4pm.

Read the rest of this post »

Second Glass is bringing our mobile site to the Boston Wine Expo this weekend and we couldn't be more excited! If you were at the last Wine Riot in October, you saw how the SG mobile site can help you navigate and remember what you drank like a pro. We've been hard at work adding in features to make it even better to help you get around and get the most out of the thousands of wines being poured at Boston Wine Expo. Here's a look at a couple of the new features: Bookmarking Wines, or "I'd totally buy this." Ratings are cool, and it's awesome to remember what you drank and if you liked it, but we realized there was another kind of rating we had to include to make the site as useful as possible. Sure, you love that $85 bottle of Champagne and it deserves two thumbs without a doubt, but would you actually rush to the store to buy it? Bookmarking is for that moment when you're tasting a wine, really love it, then look at the price tag and find out that it's both delicious and cheap and think to yourself, "wow, I'd totally buy this!" As of today, it's just one tap on the pushpin icon to store it in a separate section of the site.  That way, when you're out shopping for wine later, it's really easy to find those wines that were exceptionally great finds and great values. Top Wines on Secondglass.com The top wines section was a big hit at Wine Riot, making it easier for curious drinkers to explore the wines popular with other attendees. To make it even more useful -- especially at the beginning of an event -- we're adding a new section to Top Wines that shows you the top wines on secondglass.com that are being poured at an event, not just the ratings from that day. Now you can tap the collective past wisdom of your fellow wine drinkers to find awesome wines to check out! Let's do this! Is your curiosity piqued? Head on over to http://m.secondglass.com on your mobile device to sign up now so you'll be ready to rock at Boston Wine Expo this weekend! Anything with a modern browser (iPhone, Android, Palm, and newer Blackberries) is supported.

This weekend, January 22-23, 2011, the Boston Wine Expo hits the city! The Boston Wine Expo is the largest trade and consumer wine event in the country and has been running for 20 years. This year we at Second Glass are working with the Boston Wine Expo to run our mobile guide, that allows attendees to remember every wine they drink. Second Glass has developed a Mobile Event Guide for wine tasting events that allows wine drinkers to easily remember all of the wines they try. We pre-load all of the wines at the event and list them by booth, so all you have to do is hit the Like It or Love It button. The app stores your preferences in your phone so you always have them and builds a list online so on your computer you can read more about all the tasty wines you tried. The Mobile Guide saw great success at the October Wine Riot with over 5,000 votes in just two days. The Boston Wine Expo, however, is an event with ten times the attendees and over 1,800 different wines! We have been hard at work for the past three months updating our customized software to handle the large amounts of wines. We have also added new features, such as publishing your "One Liner" review to SecondGlass.com and the "I'd Totally Buy That" button so you can pick up these wines either at the event or later. The Boston Wine Expo is the first major event to use the Mobile Guide but we are currently in talks with other large events across the country to use the same technology. Read here to see all the info or point any phone (iPhone, Droid, Palm, Blackberry, etc) to http://m.secondglass.com. Sign up for a free account and you're ready to rock and roll!

This Saturday, September 11th, 2010 from 2p.m. to 5p.m the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, CA is throwing their annual Tasting on the Lawn for the 59th year in a row! This year, however, they've added the Second Glass Mobile site to the mix! As you galavant across the lawn of the oldest winery in Napa Valley, you can now whip out your mobile phone and mark what you drink and even take notes! Charles Krug Winery is the first winery to implement the use of the Second Glass mobile site! We created it as a tool for attendees at Wine Riot to remember what they're drinking and help navigate the event but also realized it had a huge potential for use with third-party events. Have just worked out a multi-Wine Riot and website sponsorship deal with Charles Krug, we're also launching our newly updated mobile site! If you're in the Napa/ San Francisco area, this is a tasting event you don't want to miss! For only $35 you get to sip wine on the absolutely gorgeous property of Charles Krug. They are pouring their entire portfolio including the Estate Grown, limited release wines like the 2004 Voltz Vineyard Red ($80/ bottle). They also have two special bottlings that will be poured including the 1974 Lot F1 Fay Vineyard Cabernet ($174/ bottle)! We love sipping the high end stuff but one of our favorite wines from Charles Krug is the 2008 Chardonnay from Carneros ($20/ bottle). The ticket price for this event not only gets you in the door but also gets you samples of 14 different wines along with tasty food parings! While Charles Krug is the first to use our new mobile site they aren't the only ones! Look for our mobile site in use with Boston Wine Week coming up September 20-26, 2010. The site will also be used for a series of Loire Valley Wine Trade tastings coming up in six cities across the US. Check out our new mobile site by pointing the browser on any web enabled phone to: http://m.secondglass.com