We have been busy developing new stuff at Adegga and we’ve finally launched the new features.

Here’s what we’ve added:

• A wine blog search engine which covers more than 400 wine blogs.
• New prices and shops. We have a new wine shop search engine that includes more shops, more prices and better interface. Try this example: Wine prices for Barca Velha 1995.
• Top Wines: Top Red Wines, Top White Wines, Top 2005 Wines and many more.
• New Adegga search engine that now allows for searching on wines, producers, wine shops and wine blogs.

We’re fixing some minor bugs so if you find any or have any suggestion please let us know.

Wine Blog Search Engine
From all the new features the wine blog search engine is the one we’ll be talking a lot more in the near future. Information about a wine is not only about it’s tasting notes or technical information. There’s lots more information that is useful and available these days so we’re integrating new sources of information in order to provide access to even more useful information for each wine.

We’re indexing more than 400 wine blogs. It’s now easy to search all these blogs or check what are the latest news.

The AVIN
Together with the wine blog integration we’re finally deploying an interesting way to use our unique code for each wine - the AVIN. This code basically lets us track what is being said about a wine online and at the same time gives wine bloggers more visits and targeted visibility. See for example this wine Cortes de Cima Reserva 2003.

If you’re a wine blogger and want to learn how to get your posts listed please read this.

We’ve supported 4 different rating scales (5 stars, 10 points, 20 points or 100 points) since we launched. One of our top requested features was the ability to rate wines using half-points. We finally implemented this.

We’re now working on allowing you to read ratings in scale you like (and not just rate). For now you can safely rate your almost perfect wine with 19.5 (or 4.5 or 9.5 or 95).

Set your default scale
To make it easier to rate a wine, you can also now choose a default rating scale in your settings. For example, if you choose the 20 points scale then all the places where you can rate will display this scale by default.

We’ve redesigned the tasting note page and it’s now easy to manage your notes.

We only show 2 fields by default (rating and note) and all extra information (tags, food pairing and tasting date) is hidden by default to make the interface more simple to use.

Wine actions
We’ve also simplified actions on a wine page so that list actions (add to cellar, add to tasted and add to wishlist) are clearly split from the rating actions (rate and write a note).

We’ve been making little interface improvements when whenever we discover a problem. If there’s a features or an interface problem that is bugging you while using Adegga, let us know so that we can fix it.

We’ve been working hard on getting a bunch of new features ready for launch (and that’s why we’ve been so silent). We’ll be rolling out this new features (and some updates) in the next couple of weeks.

To start we’ve launched today a new way to communicate on Adegga: Private Messages.

Sending a new message is very easy. You can contact anyone directly from their profile page or you can compose a new message from your account.

You also notice that the number of unread messages is always visible at the top of the page.

If you have any questions or comments lets us know.

We think that Wine Blogs are one of the best things that ever happened to the wine world. Wine bloggers have been doing an amazing job connecting wine and people. There’s a big conversation going on and fortunately even some wineries are starting to follow (for two good examples check Pinotblogger and El Bloggo Torcido).

Because we think that this conversation is healthy and important we want to help more people find out what is happening on the wine blogosphere. We have some ideas on how to do that. This are the first two.

Wine Blogger Accounts
A few months ago we started testing a special account type for wine bloggers. Having this account makes it easier for anyone to find, read and follow a wine blogger. Every wine blogger who has an account on Adegga receives a nice little yellow star that appears everywhere next to the username (on profile, tasting notes, etc).

(Here’s Gabriella Opaz - from wine blog Catavino - profile)

Wine Bloggers List
We have always wanted to add more interesting information to our people page. Adegga is about people, after all. We already had which users were most active and which one had recently signed up. However, one of the things we wanted to add was a place to find which Wine Bloggers were using Adegga. And we finally added that. Now in this page we have access to the list of Wine Bloggers using Adegga ordered by the number of people following them. Here’s a screenshot:

We have a lot more features to help wine bloggers. If you’d like to have one of this accounts please leave a comment bellow or contact us directly.

Some wine shops have blogs. Some use it to maintain a regular contact with their customers and others have created great places to discuss all things wine related.

We have been giving wine shops a way to manage their own shop profiles (contact us if you want to manage yours). There they can edit their contact details, add a logo and even manage a couple of promotions.

Now we’ve added the possibility of adding the rss feed from a blog or a news section. This feature has been running for a while but we just wanted to give it a test before we talked about it. Using this it will get the titles of the latest posts and add them to the shops’ profile. It will even link directly to the shop site.

You can see two examples by visiting domaine547 shop profile and Bubble Brothers.

If you’re interested in a shop don’t forget to add it to your watchlist. Not only you’ll show your appreciation for the wine shop but you’ll also soon get much more interesting news for this simple action.

As always if you have any suggestion or idea please leave a comment or contact us directly.

We’ve started testing our a new feature that let’s Wine Shops and Wine Producers manage their own profile (official launch soon). Feedback has been great and based on that we’ve added a few more details to enhance profiles.

We’ve added for example a list of latest blog posts. This is one of our favourites features and we think it’s really useful for people looking to find out more about a wine shop or a wine producer.

It basically lists the latest blog posts (if a blog exists). To see an example check these wine shops Bubble Brothers or domaine547 and also this wine producer Quinta do Judeu.

If you’re a wine shop or a wine producer and would like to manage your profile, add your blog or simply edit your contacts details we would love to hear from you! Contact us at adegga@adegga.com.

While we work on our upcoming features we have been making a couple of other small (but important) changes on Adegga. You might have noted some of them but here’s a list of some new things we’ve added.

Active Members
We’ve added a “Active Members” box to the homepage. It’s basically a list of pictures of people who have logged in recently. Here’s a screenshot:

Easy inviting
You can now invite anyone directly from your personalized homepage. We added a simple text box so you just need to add the email of the person you want to invite and submit.

Top 10 Members
We’ve added a Top 10 Members to make it easier for you to find people who you might find interesting to add your watchlist.

Add new vintage or type
Adding a different year or wine type (red, white, etc) of a wine that is already in Adegga is now much easier. You just need to look for the link “Add new vintage or type” in a wine page and you’ll be able to add a new wine based on the previous one in no time.

Do you like these features? We’re always open to suggestions! Comment below or send us an email to adegga@adegga.com.

On Adegga you can add your friends and follow what they are doing. What they tasted and what they want to taste next (via their wishlist). To make it easier to see how close another member’s tastes are to yours you can use our Wines in Common feature.

Using Wines in Common you can discover how many wines you have in your cellar, tasted wines and wishlist in common with another Adegga member. 

To use this feature login, visit a user’s profile (try, for example hmoreira or ldiogo) and click on View all wines in common.

As always we’re testing this feature. Any comments and suggestions are welcome (ok, bugs too).
Just leave your comment bellow and tell us what you think. Thanks!

Thinking about the upcoming Wine Blogging Wednesday we decided to implement a new feature: Tag Descriptions.

Wine Blogging Wednesday (or WBW) is a monthly virtual wine tasting. Each month there’s a different theme and bloggers try to taste wines according to that theme. Then, a hosting blogger aggregates all the entries by posting about who has participated.

We thought about it for a while and decided to help people discover more about Wine Blogging Wednesday and at the same time help our Adegga members easily add the tasted wines to their own lists (cellar, tasted or wishlist).

We already had a page for each tag but it was not descriptive enough. So we added* the possibility of anyone adding more information!

Tag Description for “wbw38″
An example:
If all wines tasted in the WBW38 theme** were tagged with WBW38, someone who happens to visit the WBW38 tag page might wonder what WBW is all about. But because someone (in this case me) already added a Tag Description there’s no more confusion. It even has links to the correct sources of information.

So anyone can add a description to a tag. If there’s already a description in place but you would like to change it, just flag the description and tell us what you want to change.

Want to help us add Tag Descriptions? Try douro, lemon or cabernetsauvignon.

* credit goes to Technorati for creating the WTF (no. It’s Where’s the fire?) feature which we used as inspiration.
** original list kindly provided by the cool guys at Catavino. Thanks Ryan and Gabriella!