FORGET IPHONE, HERE COMES WINE PHONE!

Sometimes you need to air your thoughts to come up with balanced and mature ideas. The Swedish wine hotel The Winery Hotel's new invention, The Wine Phone, is a vivid example of this.

- It's a bit strong to say we've revolutionised the wine world but, to be completely transparent, it is not without a certain aftertaste of success that we now launch the Wine Phone, says Elon Must, one of the developers of the project.

Among other things, he talks about the app Winder - First Crush (then press), which helps users find a partner in wine through an advanced analysis of users' taste and smell preferences. The location service app Gargel Maps has an advanced location detector for large quantities of wine and is therefore ideal for identifying the nearest wine bar, restaurant or private wine cellar.

- We're bubbling with anticipation and are sure there's a thirst for just this kind of tool out there. Anything else would be, as we say in Swedish, corked, say Per Lage and Brett Foxy, two of the trialists who got to try out the Wine Phone before its launch.

Their common favourite is the built-in wine dispenser that allows you to taste wine straight from your phone. Using a small device plugged into the phone's power socket, it turns into a spout from which wine can flow. The user then chooses between a small sample, half a glass or a full glass.

Other popular features include the voice service Hey Bacchus! which answers any question about wine, the Hail Alert weather app provides updates on the weather in the microclimate you choose to monitor, and the problem solving app Screwed helps with any wine-related crisis that may arise in everyday life.

However, developments have not been without setbacks. There have been both highs and lows, but also deep valleys. A virus has already been identified. It seems to feed on the root of the software's effectiveness.

- Not unlike the phylloxera actually, the vine bug which plagued vineyards in the late 1800s, hence the nickname Phyllo (check the translation of "fyllo" into Swedish), explains Elon Must.

Fortunately, the virus was detected at an early stage and can therefore be controlled in a completely natural way.

- Not all rot is bad rot, as we use to say, concludes virus expert Bo Trytis with a semi-dry smile on his face.