English-language version of the wine platform wein.plus launched

Complete website now available with all wine reviews, encyclopaedia entries, news and contributions in English.

The European wine platform wein.plus launched the complete English language version of its website a few days ago. This means that English-speaking wine enthusiasts, vintners and traders currently have access to more than 140,000 wine reviews by the wein.plus tasting director Marcus Hofschuster, almost 24,000 entries in the world's largest wine encyclopaedia, hundreds of articles as well as all news.

The conceptual and technological realisation of the concept, on which more than ten specialised programmers and database experts worked, took more than a year. Working in the background of the translation process is the sophisticated, AI-supported translation technology of deepL.com from Cologne, which the wein.plus team further refines with a specially developed thesaurus. In this way, even special terms from wine tasting, for example, as well as technical terms are displayed correctly

International networking of wine enthusiasts, vintners, traders and service providers

"For wein.plus, the complete English language version is the first important step in our approach of networking vintners, wine merchants, service providers and wine enthusiasts internationally as well," says company founder and managing director Utz Graafmann from Erlangen. For example, it is very important for export-oriented German vintners to make Marcus Hofschuster's wine ratings available to their customers in Great Britain, the USA, Scandinavia and Asia, even for past vintages. The winemaker, service provider and trader profiles on the platform, which are translated into English, also make it easier for German service providers and traders to purchase and search for suppliers and partners. In addition, the largest wine encyclopaedia in the world, which is the responsibility of Norbert Tischelmayer in Wien, is now available to all interested parties worldwide for reference. Conversely, it is now possible for English-speaking observers abroad to follow current developments in the German, Austrian and Italian wine scene without a language barrier. A few sections of wein.plus were already available in English before, but not to the extent and with such high translation quality as now.

More than a year of developing the necessary technology

"It was a highly complex, elaborate step for which we invested a lot of time and money," reports Graafmann, "but by creating the necessary database technology, we opened the door for the international development of wein.plus." Other language versions are already in the pipeline. "Due to the Corona pandemic, the digitalisation of work, production and communication is advancing at breakneck speed," emphasised the wein.plus managing director. "This will also change the entire wine scene drastically faster than most experts have predicted so far. We will lead the way in this development because it will help our members."