Does anyone know the alternatives?
I’d like to know as well - Wine-Searcher is so often false and I don’t need to pay for search results when the retailers listing their wines are paying as much as they are (it’s HUGE)
Yeah, I’m not so sure how accurate that site is:
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Isn’t some of the data scraped off web sites?
I subscribed for the pro version but when I checked that against the free version, I got the same results. I gather that’s no always true, but there was little enough difference that I didn’t re-up.
This used to be decent but I haven’t tried it recently
I just ran a test on winezap.com and searched for Littorai. There were more broken links than there were good ones.
There are others but none are nearly as good.
The problem isn’t really WS itself, it’s that the vendors are the ones to keep their inventories up to date and they’re supposed to enter data in the correct manner. I’m going thru a similar exercise on a much smaller scale and frankly, I’m shocked that WS works as well as it does and it’s world-wide. Unless they personally reviewed every link, they’re bound to have broken and outdated links.
W-S either scrapes the data, or a retailer can provide an XML file that they update daily. It does not cost to be a retailer on W-S, however if you want listings for your wines to be bolded and to show up for both paid and un-paid subscribers, paying the fees is advisable. And Todd is right, the retailer fees are not small.
Re: results on paid versus unpaid consumers - it completely depends on the wine. If you are searching for wines that don’t have a huge presence in the market, you may get exactly the same results. For wines that are everywhere, you will definitely get results but you might not see the best price using a non-pro account.
+1
At times I use wine zap but u often have to mull through a lot of expired links
Try Vinquire. I prefer its interface and have always been satisifed with it, though I haven’t done a lot of research to see if its results are as complete.
I agree. This is the real issue with this site and Im not certain as to how they can rectify it other than penalizing those vendors and delete them from inclusion. This in effect is like shooting themselves in the foot since they need to have sources to offer. There has to be some kind of quality control on WSs part and they may in fact have something in place, but it is not widespread enough to avert many expired listings.
We need another reliable source which is what this thread is asking for. I find Wine Zap to be very limited and ineffective. I`ll look at Vinquire.
While I agree with the fact it can be very frustrating when the links are out of date Especially when your paying for the Pro access, but I still find the $40 a year worth it to have access to bottle size preference, location, “full results” what ever the hell that means.
I’ve found wine zap to be clunky, and not very useful
I’m not complaining about the price, just find it unreliable from time and time and would like to explore alternatives.
How about 1000 corks. I use it a lot and it’s free. I find you get most of the listings for a wine that come up with wine searcher and then many more. I’m pretty sure the data base only includes retailers in the U.S. Does anyone else use 1000 corks. I refuse to pay for this information when the retailer is already paying a lot. That would be like paying for google searches.
Any examples? As Greg T explained, there is not much WS can do if the retailers have outdated inventory.
Wine searcher is fantastic. What else do you need?
Robert has a point.
Not a perfect tool, but vastly better than anything I know of. Nothing I know of comes close.