We are asked occasionally when we’ll offer a wine pairings guide. To date, we’ve tried hard to focus on the single use-case “remember what I’m drinking right now”. Of course, other compelling use-cases have naturally extended from there, such as researching wine and reading reviews, sharing, and buying wine. But at the core, Drync Wine is about remembering what you drank. That’s not saying we won’t expand in the future, but that’s where we started and exist right now.

That said, I came across a nice website today from one of our Twitter followers (@wineforeveryone) containing useful rules of thumb for wine pairings…

1. There are no rules to pairing food and wine, only guidelines.
2. Balance the weight of the food and wine, one should not over power the other. A hearty wine like a Syrah will over power a delicate dish such as chicken with mushrooms. However, a lighter style of red wine like Pinot Noir (Burgundy if you’re buying French) would be a great choice as the earthy characteristics will compliment the mushrooms. Take the flip side of this, a creamy Alfredo sauce will over power a lighter Pinot Grigio, however a full-bodied, aged in oak Chardonnay, which is often described as buttery would make a great match.
3. Match geographic location. Food and wine from the same region often times share the same characteristics. Wine and beef will have similar characteristics if the grapes are grown in the same ground and soil type as the grass the cow ate. There is an old saying that sums this up, “What grows together, goes together”.
4. When choosing a wine, consider the strongest component of the food dish first, and then consider the base ingredients. In other words, if you are serving lemon chicken, focus on pairing a wine with the lemon first, then pairing the wine to the chicken.
5. Foods high in protein help offset highly tannic wines.
6. When serving multiple bottles of wine serve: a) dry wine before sweet wine (the same reason desserts are sweet and served last), and b) light wine before heavy wine (a light wine will often times seem tasteless if served after a heavy wine).
7. Opposites attract (sometimes). This is a much more difficult way of pairing food and wine. For example, Asian food typically goes well with Riesling or Gewürztraminer, however don’t be afraid to try it with a Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. You never know what will make your taste buds sing and dance.

Above we mentioned there were no rules to pairing food and wine, we lied, this is our only rule: follow your tastes and have fun!

Thanks to Josh Lipson for this great reminder.

I co-founded Drync because I love wine, but have no time to invest in becoming a wine guru, aka oenophile. I’ve got a full time job and three active boys to contend with. While I’d love to spend my days going to wine tastings and reading The Wine Spectator, sadly, that will continue to be a  fantasy…at least until I ship them off to college.

So, I find myself using the Drync app all the time…to look “informed” when at a business meeting…to select the “right” bottle and impress friends at a dinner party…or just to discover new wines to try at home.

New in the v2.0 product is a Top Wines section. This is one of my favorites,  because I love browsing the most popular wines our users are drinking.

For instance, I just noticed that my favorite inexpensive, “go-to” wine is at the top of the list – Kim Crawford – a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. It’s nice to know others like it too as I bring it to almost every dinner party I go to! You can’t go wrong with Kim Crawford. I never much liked Sauvignon Blancs until I tried the New Zealand variety. And Kim Crawford has become my favorite.  And as I learned from a review I read on Drync, the 2008 Kim Crawford was selected to Wine Spectator’s top 100 list.  I always thought the 2007 was the one to buy. This is why I love Drync — now i know to buy the 2008! (And btw, you can buy it by the case at Costco).  I drink it year round. In the spring and summer it pairs well with just about anything I’m grilling. (i don’t cook…only grill) fruity and crisp and not too sweet. And I drink it all winter long to remind me of spring and summer. Us New Englanders do whatever we can to get through winter. And Kim Crawford helps makes winter just a little bit more palatable.

Speaking of winter, we’re heading up to ski country this weekend, and I am bringing the 2007 Luca Malbec. Another popular wine from our Top Wines section. It too is on Wine Spectator’s 2008 top 100 list. According to Eric Asimov from the NYT, Malbecs are a great value and very “drinkable.” Since that’s about as sophisticated as I get — I’m sold. It is supposed to pair well with hearty comfort foods like lamb, steak, and pork.  Since I don’t cook…I like to stop at the Harvest Market in Stowe, VT. They have a great lamb shank with fig sauce.  Sounds perfect for the Malbec, and just the type of meal we’ll want after a long day on the slopes.
I’ll let you know how it goes! And keep using Drync so I can discover more wines that you like!

Cheers!

Jodi, Co-Founder

February was quite a month. In typical fashion, I let our planned v2.0 release “balloon” from a manageable set of features to something quite a bit larger than that. Now pleasantly on the other side of the release, I can look back and admit that maybe we should have bitten off something smaller.

However, perhaps it was worth the extra effort and time. Today we were chosen as the top wine app in the app store by Macworld. That feels good and probably justifies the “stress” induced by feature creep. What I particularly like about this article is the author is exactly our target audience – not a wine expert per sae, but a wine lover and interested in remembering and learning more about the wines he tries. I also like his correct (imo) analysis of the Wine Enthusiast Guide app, which has a lot of information but loses some of the key mainstream use-cases.

Our v2.0 release really zero’d in on user feedback, which was incredibly clear. We received hundreds of requests for the following features:

• Cellar filtering
• Editable fields for wines stored in people’s Cellars
• More reviews
• Visibility into what other users are drinking

All that’s in there. The Cellar filtering took quite a bit of doing, and in the end we settled on a solution that, while perhaps not perfect for everyone, is quite elegant (we think). A simple “search” bar (a common iPhone paradigm) into which you type keywords that you would like to filter your Cellar on, such as Red, Chardonnay, or Steak.

What didn’t make it that users have requested? The key items, which will be released in the blink of an eye, include:

• MUCH faster search (we’ve completely re-vamped our Search back end)
• Cellar sorting (i.e. by rating, alphabetical, etc.)
• Cellar backup

There will be much more, but that’s the teaser.

Thanks for your support. Keep the feedback coming. I think you’ll find that we respond quickly to it!

-Brad, CEO

We had a great showing at the Vilna Shul for a panel on the State of Consumer Internet. Moderated by Jeff Bussgang, the panel included Scott Savitz of Shoebuy.com, Dave Balter of BzzAgent, Jeff Taylor of Monster, EONS, and Tributes, and Brad Rosen of Drync.

It was exciting to feel the buzz in Boston around consumer internet, and in particular, the iPhone. We fielded many questions about mobile/iPhone market, pricing, and product strategy.

Here are some follow-up blogs…

Doug Levin (organizer of the talk; thanks Doug!!)

Dan Bricklin (inventor of the spreadsheet (!) and committed podcaster)

Keri Singer

All in all, a fun, informative event with a really engaged audience.

OMG! OMG! OMG! Like, OMG! Drync is in the new iPhone commercial!

Ok, so it’s just our icon, but it’s there on TV and on the web in the new ad! Check it out, it’s the new “Read” ad, about half way through.

Wow.  *Phew*  Glad I got that out of my system.

…may the mulling begin! Below is a note with a recipe from on of our users.

Dear Drync’ers,

I am enjoying Drync. By the way I just made a batch of mulled wine this evening. For wine I used a big jug of Carlo Rossi Burgundy for $11, and it actually turned out pretty well. It’s amazing how much these jug wines have improved since I recall them tasting in college . And the nice part is the leftovers can go right back in the jug for keeping in the fridge.

Ingredients

• 4 quarts dry red wine (zinfandel, merlot, burgundy, etc.)
• 1 pint brandy
• 1 cup sugar
• 6 cinnamon sticks
• 12 cloves, whole
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1/8 tsp mace
• 2 oranges, sliced
• 1 lemon, sliced

Directions

1. Pour the wine into a large pot and begin heating over low heat.
2. As it begins to warm, add sugar and spices. Stir until sugar is dissolved.
3. Add the brandy.
4. Heat thoroughly, but do not allow to boil!
5. Add the lemon and orange.
6. Steep for about 1 hour over low heat.
7. You may add more sugar during this time if desired, stirring well so it disolves.
8. Serve hot and garnish with orange slices. A stick cinnamon could also be used.

Best regards,
Tom

One of the things that’s been most interesting to watch is how people are using Drync. With thousands of active users adding wines to their cellars now, and tens of thousands of searches each month, we’re starting to see lots of interesting trends in the data.

For instance, we’ve started watching “top wines” that users have added to their cellars…

Interesting that the most popular wine right now is a $38.00 bottle! Another interesting stat is that we are approaching 800,000 wines that we search, and have performed over 25,000 searches in the last month!

And of course, the most exciting thing about this is that people are clearly using and getting value from the product. As entrepreneurs, that’s the ultimate reward.

Here in the US, we’re full-on into holiday madness.  While the recession is certainly having it’s own effects on cheer, it certainly doesn’t mean we need to forgo that special wine, right?

In my house, when the party calls for a red, we have a midpriced go to like Red Truck. For a white, we’ll serve Field Stone Saugvignon Blanc, when we can get our hands on it.

My parents are a different story, however.  My dad, being a collector of wine is just as likely to bust out the Opus One as he is an Easton Zin.

Champagne, or, more correctly sparkling wine, is where we all agree.  For the Sagalyn family, that special bottle of sparkling is Gruet from New Mexico.  No matter the special occasion, from birthdays to Thanksgiving to New Years, Gruet Brut finds its way to our table.

Do you have a go-to wine?  If so, we’re itching to hear about it and, more importantly, try it.

It’s been about 3 weeks since we launched Drync Wine, and so far the response has been amazing. Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to get picked up in 56 (!) countries and so many thousands of users – especially not this quickly. We’ve heard from hundreds people with useful suggestions who are passionate about wine, and committed to making Drync the best wine app on the iPhone.

For grins (and because we think it’s so cool), here’s the list of Drync’ing countries:

United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Unknown, Brazil, Sweden, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Norway, Russia, Belgium, Denmark, Puerto Rico, Poland, Spain, Luxembourg, Taiwan, Argentina, Czech Republic, New Zealand, China, U.S. Virgin Islands, Ireland, Turkey, Austria, Unknown, Costa Rica, South Africa, Macao, Finland, Egypt, South Korea, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Monaco, Ukraine, Portugal, Peru, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Latvia, Indonesia, Greece, Chile, Malta, Venezuela.

So, from the Drync Team, we send a huge ‘THANK YOU’ all of our users.Oh, and keep a lookout for our upcoming release, due out any day, that incorporates a lot of the feedback we’ve gotten (including photos).

With Thanksgiving fast approaching here in the U.S., we just wanted to pause to give our hearty thanks to the wine industry.  Without you, there would be no Champagne to toast with, Pinots to pair with the bird, or Port for that Stilton.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget a shout out to the beer industry for their second biggest selling day of the year State-side – the day before Thanksgiving.  Let’s face it, heading home for the holidays and bumping into that old high school fling at the supermarket might otherwise be a sobering affair!

And finally, to you, our Drync patrons.  We thank you for inspiring us to make Drync the best wine app out there, and we look forward to celebrating many holidays to come with you.

Happy Thanksgiving wishes to all, and enjoy your drync responsibly!