How does Vivino work?
Quick answer
Vivino is a mobile app that identifies a wine by scanning its label, then shows its average rating (out of 5), user reviews, average price, and similar suggestions. It has over 65 million users worldwide.
Detailed answer
Vivino, founded in Denmark in 2010, has become the world's largest wine community with 65 million users and a database of over 12 million wines (2024 figures). It works simply: photograph a wine label and the app identifies it in seconds using image recognition.
The app then shows: the community average rating (out of 5), number of reviews, average price in your country, suggested food pairings, and similar wines. Ratings come from regular users, not professionals — which is both its strength (volume of data) and its weakness (subjectivity).
Vivino's limitations: ratings skew high (overall average of 3.6/5), obscure wines have too few reviews to be reliable, and the system favours sweet/oaky profiles that appeal to the mainstream. A Wine Analytics study (2023) found only a 0.42 correlation between Vivino scores and professional critic ratings.
Vivino also offers an integrated buying service and a premium subscription with personalised recommendations. It's a useful first filter, but it doesn't replace advice from a wine shop or the curation of a specialist site.
For genuinely expert curation, expertvin.be offers profiles written by wine professionals — the perfect complement to Vivino for refining your choices.