CIVB iPhone app Smart Bordeaux
CIVB iPhone app Smart Bordeaux
(Image credit: CIVB iPhone app Smart Bordeaux)

Bordeaux aims to banish its 'old-fashioned' reputation with the launch of an iPhone App in the autumn.

Trade and marketing body, the CIVB, is currently working on the free application and aims to launch it worldwide on October 1.

Users ‘from Shanghai to New York’ will be able to take a photo of any Bordeaux wine label. The App identifies the label and provides a factsheet relating to the wine from the grape variety and appellation, to drink dates and food pairings.

The CIVB’s Christophe Chateau told decanter.com ‘People say Bordeaux is hard to understand and old-fashioned’.

‘The goal of this App is to help consumers to understand Bordeaux and buy the region’s wines,’ he added.

It is hoped the region’s 9000 wine estates will upload information on their 15,000 to 20,000 wines during August and September despite the summer vacation and the impending 2010 harvest.

Chateau said: ‘We think we can be ready by October with at least 80% of the estates filled in. It only takes producers 5-10 minutes to do it.’

The CIVB’s iphone App closely follows the launch of new strategy ‘Bordeaux Tomorrow’ which will see a reduction in low cost ‘basic Bordeaux’ and introduce a simplified labelling system.

Written by Rebecca Gibb

Rebecca Gibb MW
Rebecca Gibb MW
Decanter Magazine & DWWA Judge

Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).