This week the ZiNG! app has finally made it to the app store.
Then today comes this article in the NY Post by Steve Cuozzo (“Sour Grapes”) all about how hard it is to navigate wine lists where you have no familiarity with any of the wines or grapes. Dr. Vino jumps in and asks what do you do when you encounter a wine list dominated by wines you don’t know much about? There are some undoubtedly some nice wines on those lists, and if they are related to the type of cuisine then there are probably many great matches. But how do you know what they are?
Well this is exactly the type of problem that the ZiNG! app sets out to solve. If a restaurant entered their menu and wine list into the app and published it through ZiNG! then diners can use that information to see what wines would match with the dishes they want to eat.
ZiNG! is based on chemistry and can determine great pairings (“zings”) from the dominant elements in food and wine. It is different from other wine/food pairing approaches in that it deals with specifics and not generics. This specific Pinot Gris is going to pair excellently with this specific salad based on the dominant elements in the dish. A chef could tweak those elements and you match completely different wines.
The ZiNG! app plays the role of not only helping diners navigate wine lists, giving them the ability to order with confidence, but also helps restaurants actually sell their carefully curated lists because people are not throwing up their arms in dispair and ordering a beer instead.
Radical Barrel 