Wine Master PDA

Wine Master claims to be a PDA type of device with thousands of reviews from the Wine Enthusiast Magazine. What it actually appears to be is a cheap game case that was converted (poorly) to hold wine information in it. I am a huge fan of wine gadgets and ordered the Wine Master immediately when I saw it in a catalogue. It has numerous reviews from the Wine Enthusiast magazine, plus wine-food pairing suggestions and much more.

However, when I got it, I first found it to be a small plastic device that apparently was created for some sort of a game. The game must have failed because now they've stuffed it full of wine information again. Unfortunately, the key layout was definitely not suited for navigating a database. You have a left, right and down arrow - but then to the lower left of that area is a small "up" button with letters on it. The on/off button is sort of in the center. Other random buttons fill up the rest of the area.

The LCD screen area is only 3 lines - and each line only has 12 letters on it. So if you're for example looking at a Sauvignon Blanc review, you can only see Sauvignon Bl. If you sit reading it, it starts to scroll to show the remaining letters. In the meantime, the review of course is longer than 3 lines so the rest of the review is down past the bottom of the screen. So you have things scrolling right to left while you're scrolling up and down. You get a headache very quickly.

Starting from the main page, you say you want to review the rated wines. OK, you can look at them by winery, by type, or by grape. Good enough. You choose Type. Now you get choices of red, white or rose. So far so good. Choosing white, you can choose a grape or country or just view all results.

If you choose by grape, it shows you ALL grapes - including red grapes. We just said we only wanted to work with white wines. Of course, choosing "merlot" comes back with "sorry no wine found".

The system could have been great, with its glossary, terms, and other information. But it can't be updated, so you're stuck with the reviews it has and nothing else. You can save 25 wines - but that just means you hit the SAVE button on one of their reviews to get to it quickly. Their wine and food pairings are a 1:1 combo most of the times. You're having Asian Food, you must find a Sauvignon Blanc. Or, actually a Sauvignon Bl. I actually like Gewurztraminer with a lot of my Asian dishes, but there's no other advice here.

I really suggest getting a good database for your PDA that you can maintain and update, that has a much better interface and will stay current.

This Wine Master will probably be out of date before you get it home, and once it's there you might simply never use it because it's so clunky. I've had many people play with this device and all have had the same reaction to it.

Wine DVD and Software Reviews