What's new

Every sparkling wine begins with the same small piece of chemistry: carbon dioxide dissolves into wine under pressure. Open the bottle, lower the pressure, and the gas forms bubbles on its way out.

Wine Companion now speaks more clearly across learning games, tasting tools, vintage charts, and everyday navigation. Friendlier feedback keeps the wine fact in focus, while concise labels make each next step easier to spot.

Vanilla is often the first clue that makes someone say, “This wine tastes oaky.” It is a useful clue, but it is only one note in a much larger chord.

Identify now compares its top three grape matches two at a time. Pick the side that tastes closer and its sensory clues join your tasting note—pear, herbs and flowers are far more useful than a mysterious “option B.” The shortlist reshuffles smoothly, explains what changed, and keeps your chosen match in the tasting. AI profile controls now stay tucked away for admins.

Identify already turned your tasting clues into a shortlist of likely grapes. Now it gets there faster — so your wine has time to breathe, but you do not have to wait. Describe color, aromas, acidity, tannin, and body in your own words, and Wine Companion matches those puzzle pieces with typical grape profiles. Photo identification keeps its careful visual analysis.

Romania's curriculum now follows the national register: eight viticultural regions, 37 podgorii, 48 independent viticultural centres, and 131 centres inside podgorii. Romanian terms remain visible with English and German explanations.

Map Challenge covers the eight regions through a clearly marked administrative proxy built from all 852 official locality assignments. Both modes include terrain, rivers, cities, the Danube delta, neighboring borders and a country overview with Bucharest, Iași, Sibiu, the Black Sea and the active viewport. Tooltips retain Romanian originals. Space or Enter submits locate-one answers; corrections name both the selected and correct region. Labels wrap long names, and short landscape results reclaim the full content width. Finer maps remain blocked where administrative polygons cannot distinguish legal peers. Profile Check provides three source-reviewed grapes per Level 1 region without invented area or percentage values.

A new Journal story turns growing-season weather into clues you can taste: ripeness, freshness, structure, and the different paths grape varieties can take in the same year. From there, jump straight into Vintage Explorer to compare regions, years, and varieties. Friendlier prompts across Explore, Learn, tasting cards, and guided paths make the same wine knowledge easier to use. Every Journal story now ends with helpful tools, lessons, and related reading for your next step. Journal stories can also be prepared ahead of time: admins see the planned release date, while readers discover each story automatically when it becomes available. Three complete stories are already lined up for the next three weeks, with new heroes for oak, sparkling methods, and the science behind fruit aromas.

France’s Map Challenge now covers all 15 national orientation regions and a much broader reviewed set of appellations, communes, and named origins. Bordeaux’s broad Right Bank shows 12 distinguishable Blaye–Bourg and Libournais origins together.

Source-backed wine geography replaces angular sectors. Aligned maps use centered anchors, prepared callouts, quiet parent outlines, and the open space above or below long regions. Dense questions color every peer but label six candidates. Areas without reusable geometry remain study content.

Profile Check derives Levels 1–3 from difficulty and shows at most the three largest grapes with a documented regional share of at least 5%. Hectares and percentages appear only as a source-backed pair; partial lists are not normalized to 100%. Official figures add Beaujolais, Jura, and Rhône Valley profiles, while other regions remain qualitative. The screen-fitting workspace adds complete Corsica relief and ocean, the Moselle, and Libourne context; incorrect map claims reveal both regions. Profile breadcrumbs show the complete country-to-region hierarchy.

Wine-region search now recognizes reviewed alternate spellings and names while keeping one canonical display name and geographic identity. Matching ignores case, accents, punctuation, and appellation-type words, so established variants such as Naousa and Naoussa resolve to the same region instead of producing a false mismatch.

Map Challenges now open much faster across every released country. Marker positions are prepared before release instead of being calculated from thousands of boundary points in your browser. Versioned map assets and a reusable canvas also make the next question appear promptly.

The interaction is clearer too. Submit and feedback stay above the map, assignments show their map number, and you can replace or swap an answer without starting over. Hovering links an assignment with its region in both directions. Compact, neutral results make your answer and the correct position easier to compare on desktop and tablet.

Germany’s curriculum has also been reviewed from Anbaugebiete through legal Einzellagen. Small and fragmented regions keep visible connectors and coherent highlighting. Nahe and Saar now remain continuous at vineyard zoom, while unavailable levels stay explicitly unavailable rather than being filled with administrative substitutes.

Advanced map quizzes now cover 1,165 legal Rieds across the complete source-backed Lower Austrian curriculum. The new maps keep their local origins, surrounding regions, and national overview aligned while clear numbered markers make even small vineyard sites playable.

French L2 areas now use detailed INAO geometry. Spanish lower-level maps zoom to their L1 parent, use official MAPA geometry for protected origins, and name Mallorca in the Balearic context. Italian L2 maps share the national coordinate system and finer Istat geometry. Portuguese L2 maps share the mainland-and-island overview, use smoother geometry, and remove internal municipality lines from combined areas. Dense maps keep numbered callouts separated. Chile's national map keeps its authored portrait extent and distinguishes neighbouring land from the Pacific; its L2 maps inherit terrain, water, settlements, and borders while focusing on their parent. Argentina's L2 challenges separate North, Cuyo, and Patagonia, focus on their L1 parent, and render neighbours as land rather than ocean.

Coastal wine maps now distinguish ocean from land with a clearer version of the shared map-water blue. Mainland and island panels keep a visible sea margin around their land mass, while the same source-backed coastline mask, subtle land relief, and transparent unused layout space remain.

The quiz now remembers your most recent game type, question count, difficulty, filters, and map options. Returning to the quiz restores that setup, while Play again starts a fresh round with the same choices immediately.

Germany’s map catalog now carries 111 legal Level 4 packs for Ahr, Mittelrhein, Mosel, Nahe, Pfalz, and Rheinhessen. Level 4 · Legal makes the authority explicit.

Every vineyard map uses one national coordinate space with inherited rivers, settlements, terrain, and ancestor context. Breadcrumbs show Levels 1–3 without revealing the answer.

Germany Level 2 now contains the exact 51 official Bereiche. Districts, cities, and incomplete evaluation geometry are no longer quiz answers. Mittelmosel uses Bereich Bernkastel, Terrassenmosel uses Bereich Burg Cochem, and Franken has its 12 legal Bereiche.

The library also contains all 739 current VDP identities and 1,587 separately sourced legal Einzellagen. Of these, 1,572 have reusable legal map geometry and are playable. Exact locality peers remain preferred; otherwise a singleton is compared only with same-tier sites from its own legal source pack. VDP map challenges still await reusable boundaries.

Austria's advanced Map Challenge now takes you one level deeper into Kremstal. Locate and match all nine official Ortswein origins, from Krems and Stein to Höbenbach and Krustetten.

Austria's advanced Map Challenge now covers complete statutory local-origin sets for Carnuntum, Eisenberg, Wiener Gemischter Satz, Wagram, Thermenregion, Kamptal, Wachau, Weststeiermark, and Vulkanland Steiermark. With Kremstal, that is 117 verified Level 3 origins—without presenting ordinary administrative municipalities as wine origins. Wagram rotates between two readable map sections, while shared boundaries in Thermenregion and nested origins in Wachau are scored correctly. Kamptal derives its legal origins from official Ried and Subried polygons. Weststeiermark maps four origins from the complete 94-cadastral-community definition; Vulkanland's official Gnasbach boundary divides Trössing correctly. The national outline, four Level 1 states, and administrative Level 2 and Level 3 contexts now share one pinned April 2026 BEV source. Dense maps use perimeter markers and subdued leader lines to remain readable on desktop and short-landscape screens.

Terroir can sound mysterious. In practice, it asks a concrete question: how do place, weather, grape growing, and human choices meet in one wine? Champagne gives us a vivid answer.

Map questions now keep the prompt, map, and submit action in a tighter learning flow. Selected regions stand out more clearly, and answer feedback opens above the map so you can review the result without losing your place.

Map Challenge now takes you through Austria, Germany, France, Georgia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, and Chile. Locate individual regions or match several in one round, then use Profile Check to connect available regional grape data with the right place.

Choose a geography level separately from quiz difficulty to practise broad regions, subregions and origins, or the available specialist appellations and sites.

Every map includes its source credit, and the new Data sources page explains where the boundaries and vineyard figures come from.