What is WineUp?

Someone recently referred to us as the "Google for Wines." We think that's a good description of what WineUp is all about...

Simply put, WineUp is a search engine for wines. At the time this was written we have indexed information more than 625,000 unique wines and that number is growing every day.

It's easy to find wines.

Searching the WineUp index is made easy with our simplified search form. It has just one field where you enter anything you might find on a wine label. This can be the vintage, the varietal, the vineyard, or... anything! WineUp search results will then show details about a wine such as bottle and label pictures, who made the wine, where it was made, what type of wine it is, and more.

As we progress through our beta testing period we will release more features including the much-anticipated Tasting Notes & Reviews section where you will be able to read tasting notes from other sites, other users and even submit your own.

Also in the pipeline are features that let you suggest wines to add to the WineUp index. You will be able to add wines, upload wine bottle and label photos, submit reviews and recommendations, and let us know if you see something that needs to be changed.

Where do we get our data?

The WineUp team has developed proprietary technology that scans the internet for information about wines and adds it to the WineUp index. We store only the core details about a wine (such as the vintage, producer, varietal, etc.) and we provide links to other sites where those wines can be found for everything else. Tasting notes are good examples of this. As our technology indexes tasting notes, the wine search results will show only a portion of each to you along with a link to the page where the full tasting note can be found.

We also index wine information from other sources which include wine producers, distributors and retailers, our technology partners, and even you! As mentioned earlier we will soon release features allowing you to suggest wines for the WineUp index.

Codename: The Thirsty Spider

The Thirsty Spider is the name we've given to our proprietary internet scanning technology. Why a spider? Search engines use software called a web crawler to examine other web sites for indexing. This software is also called a spider. Since we're in the wine industry we called ours The Thirsty Spider. It's goofy, we know...

Data Services

One of the strategic goals at WineUp is to provide free and open access to wine data to anyone who wishes to use it.

To support that goal we created the WineUp API. The WineUp API gives software developers constructive access to our wine data. Our first practical goal is to offer sufficient access for someone to write a custom WineUp search plugin for their site.

If you are a software or web site developer and would like to know more about the WineUp API, you may visit the WineUp Developer Center.

Partners

We're in the process of partnering with several industry web sites as well as a handful of mobile iPhone and Android application developers. If you wish to know more about our partner programs feel free to contact us.

Our partners' logos and links to their web sites will be added here as we progress.