I've been testing the MyOeno wine scanner, a compact device that measures a wine's characteristics and helps budding aficionados develop their own wine library.
Why does one wine appeal to you while another makes your lips curl? A clever wine-scanning gadget might be able to tell you.
I’ve been testing the MyOeno wine scanner, a compact device that measures a wine’s characteristics and helps budding aficionados develop their own wine library.
The MyOeno scanner measures 4 ¾-inches tall, and communicates wirelessly with a phone app. Start a tasting session on your app, and you’ll be instructed to dip the scanner in your wine glass to measure that wine’s strength, acidity, and tannins.
After that, you can enter your own notes on the wine’s taste and aroma, building up a personal library of wine notes. Once you’ve determined the characteristics you prefer, the app will suggest new wines for you to try.
Yes, it feels odd to drop a tech gadget in a wine glass. This is probably best used during private tastings at home. Certainly, no one at a wine bar is going to be impressed if you pull this out and dip it in your merlot before swirling and sipping.
Scanning a new wine takes only a few seconds, but I did run into a few problems in my testing. For one thing, the app crashes often. About a third of my tests had to be redone after the software crashed. Also, this device was created by a French company, and it couldn’t be bothered to translate all the on-screen text into English. While you can figure out that the Send button is now an Envoyer button, other instructions are less obvious, and the tasting notes it generates are not clear at all.
Maybe the biggest downside, though, is that the device can only scan red wines. Anyone who prefers white wines is out of luck here.
MyOeno is currently available for $89 on Amazon. If your New Year’s resolution includes savoring some fine bottles, it might be a good companion for your journey.
Follow TROY DREIER at http://twitter.com/TDreier or e-mail him at loggedon@mac.com.
