How to know which wine is good (using your phone to scan wine labels and wine lists) 2026

I like wine. It's delicious. When I'm asked, “red or white?” I generally respond “Yes” because I'm a masterful comic. But there is one type of wine that I really don't like, and it's something that I work hard to avoid: Bad wine! So how do I avoid bad wine and only drink deliciously fantastic wine? Here's how!

Picture this: You're at a restaurant and it's the big meeting (or the big date, or you're with friends and don't want to look silly). You're handed the wine list and someone says “Hey, you should pick something good, I don't mind”.

You, of course, know that they will mind if you pick something terrible, so you start to sweat. Your knees become weak, your arms are heavy. Some would argue what's on your front is mom's spaghetti.

But you don't need to, because there's an app for that, and one that will revolutionize how you drink wine.

Vivino: Saving you from bad wine since 2010

Vivino is an app that I love, and every time I tell someone about it, they adore it too. Here's how it works.

You have two options, you can either:

Take a photo of a wine label and it will tell you the review of the wine, the flavor profile, and what it's good to drink with; OR (and here's the really good bit)
You can take a photo of a wine list and it will go down the list giving you the aggregate score out of 5 for every wine it sees.

Yep. It goes down the list and gives every wine that it can find a score out of 5, so you can then pick the one that gets the highest score (for a reasonable price, of course).

This is honestly a lifesaver and has meant that we haven't ordered a bad bottle of wine since, well, 2010.

You can tap on each of the wines as they appear and it will give you a review of it, and tell you all about it (just like #1 above).

But wait, there's more

If you signup for a Vivino account, you can actually store all the wines that you've drunk AND all the wines that you have in your cellar.

From this information, it can build a flavor profile for you and tell you what types of wine you might like drinking in the future, and what you didn't like in the past. It's big data, but it's big wine data, and I say… wine note?

How to get Vivino

Download it on the App Store! It’s all over the place!

We can be Vivino buddies

If you'd like to take one step further into the America Josh world, we could become Vivino buddies!

Go to Search and type in: “America Josh” and you'll see me, add me, and we can share great wine stories and travels. (Or you can just click here and be transported magically to my profile). Full disclosure, I've been using the app for ages but have been pretty rubbish about maintaining a profile but that all changes today, promise.

Looking for wine to drink at home?

If you are like me and love to lay on the couch with a nice glass of white/red/bubbles/yes then you should also be aware of the article I wrote all about how to get good and (really) cheap wine in New York City!

That's all from me, so until next time, happy wine-ing!