The Story Behind Tasty Ranks

The idea for Tasty Ranks came when my wife and I visited Fredericksburg, Texas in July 2025. I had planned visits to four wineries in a single day so we could make the most of our time tasting wines in the beautiful Texas Hill Country.

Our first stop was Barons Creek Vineyards, where our amazing bartender talked to us about the 5 S’s of wine tasting: sight, swirl, smell, sip, and savor. He offered two different tasting flight options, so my wife and I each picked one flight of five wines and shared, giving us the chance to sample all ten wines together. After each taste, I jotted notes on the paper menu - upgrading or downgrading each wine as we went - while asking my wife for her input as well. By the end of the tasting, we had a messy sheet of initials and multiple arrows pointing up and down. It was my attempt at figuring out which wines we liked best. Then came the decision point: should we buy bottles or join their subscription club? Using my improvised (and cryptic) scoring system wasn’t exactly helpful. In the end, we kept it simple - one bottle of my favorite and one bottle of hers - before heading to the next winery.

Our second stop was Signor Vineyards, one of the most beautiful wineries in Fredericksburg. This time, I didn’t have a pen and paper, so I opened a note on my iPhone to track our rankings. I typed each wine on its own line, but every time I wanted to rearrange the order, I had to cut and paste. To make things trickier, I added my wife’s initials and her top two picks next to each wine. By the end, our list looked like this:

Grand Pere EF1

Sauvignon Blanc

Sangiovese EF2

Grenache

It was at that moment I turned to my wife and said, “I’m going to create an app to make this easier.” Tracking and re-ranking wines in a basic text note was clunky, and if she changed her mind, I had to carefully cut and paste her rankings into the right place. There had to be a simpler, more engaging way. We ended up buying a bottle of each of the top three wines plus an extra Sauvignon Blanc as a gift. After a quick charcuterie tray lunch, we moved on to the third winery.

At Grape Creek Vineyards, the tasting format was freeform - you could choose any four wines from their list. My wife and I chose eight different wines to share, and once again, my iPhone note grew longer and more complicated. When it came time to decide on purchases, things got tricky. Our tastes overlapped, but not completely. We settled on buying my wife’s top three picks, which happened to be my #1, #3, and #4. But what about my #2? She didn’t care for it, so we left it behind. Oh well! With bags in hand, we moved on to our final stop.

Our last destination was Slate Theory Winery, a striking winery with an awesome (and chilly) cave tasting room. By then it was 5 p.m., and we had already tasted 22 different wines. Slate Theory poured us nine more, mostly reds, and it became nearly impossible to keep them all straight. My cut-and-paste iPhone system was reaching its breaking point, and the frustration was real. Enough was enough - this ranking process needed a better solution.

And Tasty Ranks was born.