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South African wine bottles get 'smart'

15 September 2011

South African website wine.co.za is offering free QR-codes - codes that can be read by smartphones - to local wine estates for use on their bottles, giving consumers quick and easy access to information about the wine on the internet.

QR-codes (Quick Response Codes) are a kind of barcode that is printed on a product or label, which can then be photographed and interpreted by a smartphone. They usually contain links to enable easy access to websites, negating the need for consumers to have to type in long addresses or URLs.

"By placing a QR-Code on say a back label, a wine producer can supply much more detailed information about their wine, directly to the consumer, at the time of purchase," wine.co.za said in a statement this week. "In the case of wine.co.za, we have already created a mobi-page for every wine in our extensive database.

"This page will present the full technical analysis, tasting notes, accolades, contact details of the producer."

Adding value to marketing

According to wine.co.za, Wines of South Africa recently requested producers to take a look at QR-Codes as they add huge value to marketing wines, at very low cost, and with the free QR-Codes the cost remains very low.

All wine producers need to do is to ensure that their information is kept up to date on wine.co.za

To check out QR-Codes in action, go to www.wine.co.za/mobi and select a winery name to show a list of wines that wine.co.za has generated QR codes for.

Then use your cell phone's barcode reader to "photograph" that image. A web page will appear on your browser with everything about the chosen wine.

Many smartphones come preloaded with QR-code readers. Otherwise, QR-code readers can be downloaded from the native "app" store.

SAinfo reporter