Drinking (at its best, of course) is about celebrating, socializing, relaxing, and complementing food. When having a nice dinner out, most people want their food and drink – the two go hand in hand. Some people might never give the restaurant a chance if they thought they couldn’t get a glass of wine or a cocktail.  In my local gastronomic center of San Francisco, where foodies and amateur home chefs pouring through Alice Water cookbooks abound, the opening of a bottle of wine is an ode to the evening, as normal and intrinsic as your friends’ warm greetings, or eating itself. Wine is so essential to our culture that wine and cheese parties have become de rigueur, and a chic go-to gift is always an exquisite, personally selected, aged bottle of wine. Like anyone, I like to drink now and then, too.

I recently came upon this excellent free app called Drync Wine by Drync LLC that acts as a personal scrapbook to your every wine whim, allowing you to jot down notes and reviews about a wine you just had, or remember a wine you’d like to try. Rather than recalling from memory, or hastily pasting wine labels to a scrapbook – that’s so 2002 – with Drync wine you can easily find the wine in question by typing a few words from the wine label into the search bar (the app will amusingly read, “Dryncing… please wait”). You don’t need to type in all the information, either, just pertinent details like the varietal, the vintage date, perhaps the Producer (i.e. a 2004 inman pinot or chateau margaux 2001). Since Drync wine’s database is so large, you oftentimes need only type in the varietal and you can just read through the list, trying to see if any of the names ring a bell. Saving wines to your “Cellar” allows you to look up wines you’ve drunk or wanted in the past, so you can remember each bottle of wine you’ve embraced for a special occasion.

I recently dined with three friends at Risibisi – a most excellent restaurant, by the way – and ordered a bottle of 2005 Robert Mondavi Private Selection Pinot Noir for my table. I always feel silly and pretentious when swishing the wine in my glass, testing for alcohol content by viewing the “legs,” those dripping lines that remain slightly gelled to the glass as your swirl its contents, and then when tasting, trickling the ruby red fluid down my gullet, noting the zesty acidity and the palpable tannins, accented with well-defined blackberry and stone fruit notes. It was a good wine, or at least, with my performance perhaps any of my friends would have been convinced – out of sheer anxiety and polite character I could never send back a wine… does anyone? The wine truly complimented our meal, and soon afterward, I accessed Drync, gave it a 4 wine bottle rating (out of 5), added some further details – it’s a red wine, a Pinot – and then jotted down a short description of the taste and mouthfeel, the afterglow of drinking the entire bottle with my friends.  On Drync, I can indicate whether I drank, I own, or I want this particular bottle of wine – or all the above – and if I’m really enthusiastic, I can opt to purchase the wine through Drync, through their connection with Ken’s Wine Guide, Snooth, or Wine Access, and tweet my happiness to the world. It’s a personal wine compendium.

Normally, many of the wines you search for will be heavily lacking in reviews – its up to you to fill them in – but the Top wines tab has many critical reviews for wines like the 2005 Ravenswood Winery Zinfandel, a red wine from the Teldeschi Vineyard of Dry Creek Valley – I can attest to its deliciousness and it wholly deserves a 9.5 rating through Drync – and other wines held in the highest regards, like the 2000 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild Bordeaux blend from the Pauillac region of France that sells for a whopping $347.99. I probably won’t be trying that one any time soon.

For those who stray from the household names of Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and even Shiraz today, be thankful that Italian Sangioveses, Spanish Sherries and, my favorite, Tempranillos with their characteristic deep ruby hue, are all equally represented on Drync. Any limitations your cellar may have would only have to do with your narrow palate.A paid version is available for Drync, but the free version suits my needs well enough. I suppose it would be nice to attach a personal picture to the wine, to better suit memory, but this detail doesn’t detract from Drync.

I’m having a party this Sunday, with friends and family alike, and I’m sure there will be more than one bottle of wine opened. Red and white, perhaps a rose will be poured into many glasses, and I know if any are to my liking, with a deep finish and a terroir of tobacco, vanilla and pepper, I will be sure to consult Drync for safekeeping.