VinoScout – AU wine price search + alerts (beta, feedback welcome)

[BPej]

Hi all and thanks to Sam for giving the okay to post about my project.

I’ve been building VinoScout, an Australian site for keeping tabs on wines you’re hunting, with more emphasis on smaller producers and independent retailers than the mainstream big guys.

What it does today:

• Search nearly 6000 wines across a growing list of Australian independent retailers

• Compare prices across retailers and vintages to see who has the best deal

• Follow wines and set alerts for price drops (all vintages, or a specific vintage)

• Add wines to a cellar list and set alerts if you want to restock

What’s still early: 

• Email notifications aren’t set up yet. That’s next on the list, including how often you want them.

• Coverage will keep expanding. Tell me which producers/retailers matter most to you.

• Prices move around, so every so often VinoScout can be a touch behind a retailer’s site. If you spot that, let me know and I can update it.

Create a free member account to follow, set alerts and the other account features. You’ll get a verification email to confirm your address. It may show as coming from Supabase (our login system), not VinoScout, so check spam if you don’t see it.

I’m mainly after blunt feedback. Is this useful, what’s missing and would something like this ever be worth paying for? Personally I find it much quicker to look for and compare bottles I'm after, but I could be an outlier?

Have a look at vinoscout.au (Sorry, I couldn't get the link to work as a hyperlink.)

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Brad

[Mike Hawkins]

Hi, how does this differ to winesearcher? Cheers

[phillisc]

post removed

[Mynameislucluc]

Similar websites have been around for years

[BPej]

Hi, how does this differ to winesearcher? Cheers

Hi Mike,

Fair question. There’s overlap today. Both help you find a wine and see who’s selling it.

Wine-Searcher Pro (free tier isn’t really comparable) has to serve everyone, everywhere. That means a huge messy catalogue, sponsored results, and overseas listings mixed through. Auction prices get mixed in too, which can distort what you’d actually pay at a retailer. The user experience is pretty clunky and not great if you just want to scan prices and products quickly.

VinoScout is deliberately narrower. Australian retailers, Australian buyers and more room for smaller producers instead of mass plonk. I’m sure some will sneak in but I’m trying to keep the quality of the wines listed high.

What I’m aiming at for Aussie buyers specifically:

• Less noise from the rest of the world when you’re shopping here

• Retailer pricing only, so you’re comparing shop prices rather than auction listings

• Easier compare across AU independent retailers and vintages

• Follow wines and price-drop alerts built around AU retailers (email alerts still coming). Free during beta, later those member features will likely sit behind a paid plan, hopefully at a more approachable price than Wine-Searcher PRO

• Over time, more AU-focused stuff. Better coverage of the online shops we actually buy from, cleaner producer pages, restock alerts, and features that make multi-retailer hunting less annoying

Some of that is live now. Some is still on the way (email alerts first). Coverage is smaller than Wine-Searcher and I’m not pretending otherwise. But I will be doubling down if there is interest in the project.

So yeah, similar but a different focus. VinoScout’s focus is to be a tool that can actually be opinionated for Australian buyers, because that’s the whole audience.

If you’ve got PRO already, I’m keen to hear what still frustrates you about hunting wines in AU. I don’t actually know anybody that pays for Pro. I don’t know if that is specific to my circles or a general Australian thing.

Cheers,
Brad

[BPej]

I'd also say, how does this differ to another forum that I am on ( and a few here are on it too), that is based in Canberra and been running for two decades.
Cheers Craig

Hi Craig,

Hard to say without knowing what it is? I'd love to check it out though. I haven't found anything besides winesearcher that is comparable yet. If it ticks all the boxes, I might just sign up instead.

[BPej]

There's been similar websites around for years, even though yours does scrape the smaller independent wine retailers I can't imagine anyone would pay any fee because most of those retailers are by far not the cheapest way to purchase wine.

I mean it's not really doing much more than Google, other than giving you an alert.

There's a lot of tools now being built with AI super quick, and people offering them for free so unless you can offer something very unique and special it's going to be very hard to convince people to pay a subscription and scraping prices online is not going to be I personally believe enough to warrant people to pay a fee.

There's already multiple websites I can think of that do a similar job, though they don't track the really small winery retailers and even though people want to support those businesses they are by far never the cheapest.

Would you mind sharing some of the other aggregators you've seen? The only ones I've found so far focus on big name brands.

I've been using Google just like everyone else, sometimes I would say you are right, others I find there is some small retailer I've never heard of buried 5 pages down with a better price than anybody else. We all know Google favours the best SEO and not what you searched for so understandably there are mixed results here and this is where I'm trying to level the playing field.

At the moment I'm not updating the prices that frequently because thats the highest expense of the whole thing but the plan would be to update them a often as possible to catch all the clearance prices and things like that, then I can send out notifications to the people interested. I am finding prices jump around more than I first thought.

But all your points are valid. I'm trying to combat a lot of them but the big question is does that make it useful enough?

I'd love it to stay free but its not a viable option without bringing in some other way to fund it.

[Mike Hawkins]

Hi, how does this differ to winesearcher? Cheers

Hi Mike,

Fair question. There’s overlap today. Both help you find a wine and see who’s selling it.

Wine-Searcher Pro (free tier isn’t really comparable) has to serve everyone, everywhere. That means a huge messy catalogue, sponsored results, and overseas listings mixed through. Auction prices get mixed in too, which can distort what you’d actually pay at a retailer. The user experience is pretty clunky and not great if you just want to scan prices and products quickly.

VinoScout is deliberately narrower. Australian retailers, Australian buyers and more room for smaller producers instead of mass plonk. I’m sure some will sneak in but I’m trying to keep the quality of the wines listed high.

What I’m aiming at for Aussie buyers specifically:

• Less noise from the rest of the world when you’re shopping here

• Retailer pricing only, so you’re comparing shop prices rather than auction listings

• Easier compare across AU independent retailers and vintages

• Follow wines and price-drop alerts built around AU retailers (email alerts still coming). Free during beta, later those member features will likely sit behind a paid plan, hopefully at a more approachable price than Wine-Searcher PRO

• Over time, more AU-focused stuff. Better coverage of the online shops we actually buy from, cleaner producer pages, restock alerts, and features that make multi-retailer hunting less annoying

Some of that is live now. Some is still on the way (email alerts first). Coverage is smaller than Wine-Searcher and I’m not pretending otherwise. But I will be doubling down if there is interest in the project.

So yeah, similar but a different focus. VinoScout’s focus is to be a tool that can actually be opinionated for Australian buyers, because that’s the whole audience.

If you’ve got PRO already, I’m keen to hear what still frustrates you about hunting wines in AU. I don’t actually know anybody that pays for Pro. I don’t know if that is specific to my circles or a general Australian thing.

Cheers,
Brad

I use WS Pro and exclude auctions. The global and regional options are quite good. Other than the continuing costs, I can’t fault it and find it handy for spirits, specifically cognac, as well.