My biggest gripe with Wine-Searcher is that there seems to be no effective way to request corrections to their database. It’s easy enough to report pricing/offer mistakes, but reporting missing bottlings is almost impossible.
Yes. I’ve emailed them to no avail. For example, I once told them that the basic Mosquita Muerta Malbec was not listed. In response, one of their CRM Specialists emailed back saying that yes, of course it’s visible, pointing to this wine from the same producer, called Mosquita Muerta Blend de Tintas, which is, of course not a Malbec as its name clearly states. I couldn’t even attribute that one to her not understanding Spanish because “blend” is not in Spanish.
(CellarTracker’s opposite solution, simply allowing people to add wines, does cause listing proliferation, but Eric’s staff is quick to correct those when one flags it for them.)
So, it was with some hope that I read yesterday’s announcement that Wine-Searcher has incorporated LWIN codes to its database. At last, I thought, a system that can distinguish Fass/Fuder numbers for otherwise-identical German wine names (a persistent problem I had noticed for many wines) and can also quickly get products into Wine-Searcher. And it does the first, to a point.
You find an LWIN code here. And, if they have it --for example, you get LWIN 1672965 for Weingut Max Ferd. Richter, Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Kabinett Fuder 4-- you enter that string into WSP and out comes a perfect listing, different from the standard Juffer Kabinett (LWIN 1090918). Alas, my happiness was short-lived.
The first sign of trouble came when an LWIN code popped-up for a Weingut Max Ferd. Richter Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett (LWIN 1266966), a wine that, as far as I can find, has never existed. There used to be a Juffer-Sonnenuhr Kabinett trocken some time ago, but that’s not the same thing.
No luck with Dr. Hermann Kabinetten either, for which LWIN has 2 entries, instead of at least 8. Wine-Searcher actually has 6 of those 8 already listed. Why didn’t they flag those 4 missing entries for Liv-ex (which owns LWIN) when doing the integration?
And the issue isn’t limited to Germany of course. LWIN doesn’t distinguish, for example, between Cafaggio Chianti Classico Riserva (no LWIN entry), and Villa Cafaggio Chianti Classico Riserva (LWIN 1106400), even though the former, a higher-end offering, has been on the market for 9 years and is not an obscure wine.
But in all of those cases the problem is a missing LWIN code. My saddest discovery was that the existence of an LWIN code for a wine did not translate automatically into a Wine-Searcher entry. I looked for a wine that has always been a PITA to find in WSP: Pierre Brisset Nuits-Saint-Georges Premier Cru Aux Thorey (LWIN 2239859). But I entered its LWIN code into WSP and got nothing (at least if I enter the words I get some offer listings). So it seems that, when doing the integration, not only did they not flag missing LWIN codes for wines with entries in Wine-Searcher, they also let existing LWIN entries dangle without pairing.
There must be a better way to do this.