Drawing straws over who’s stuck as designated driver or scrabbling to come up with enough friends to fill a costly bus hire?
If either of these sound groan-inducingly familiar, one of Adelaide’s best kept secrets might just be the answer to your winery whines. The Vined app makes booking a wine tour as simple as booking an Uber, whisking you off for a day of cellar door sight-seeing directly from your home. Newly launched in early 2021 the app has already coordinated over 150 wine tours across South Australia, but remains relatively under the radar.
If you’ve ever been unwittingly assigned the role of Chief Wine Tour Organiser amongst your friends, you might have found yourself swamped with a back and forth between transport companies, winery bookings, dietary requirements, deposits and bank transfers. App founder and creator Rogelio Galdamez says this frustration formed part of the inspiration for Vined.
“As the most organised of my group of friends I was always nominated by default to coordinate any of our wine tours! Living so close to some of the world’s best wine regions I wanted to take the stress out of visiting more of our beautiful state” he says.
Vined works with over 250 wineries, breweries and distilleries in South Australia from Down the Rabbit Hole to d’Arenberg, allowing you to personalise every detail of your day all in one place, with lunch and tastings options at each stop. Users are invited to select their wine region from the lush vineyards of Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek and the Adelaide Hills, entering the desired number of passengers, tour date and time, and pick up location.
You can save the hassle of deciphering who’s buying what round with the app’s bill splitting function that evenly divides the cost between all those on the tour ahead of time. Remembering that rich Rioja or tasty Tempranillo is also made simple with a built-in Wine Diary that includes room for tasting notes, and adding your most-loved venues to your favourites list.
Download the Vined app here or find out more on Instagram.