Wine Collector App

My father-in-law, a wine enthusiast, had been tracking his collection in an excel spreadsheet for years. Everything was manually input, and there were all sorts of other data points he would have liked to track (reviews from his favorite publication, food pairings, which were enjoyed by his family and friends), but never did because of the time it would have taken to source and add. Existing apps like CellarTracker included too many social features, or other forms of bloat for his needs. Also I'd never built a React SPA or used a SQLite database before, and wanted to give it a try.

A full-stack wine collection management application with a React frontend and Cloudflare Workers/D1 backend. The app integrates with professional wine databases for automatic wine and review import, uses AI-powered food categorization for intelligent pairing suggestions, and provides granular features like bottle-level tracking, QR code scanning for quick tableside use, and comprehensive search, all with a privacy-first approach.

For the last six months, the app has fully replaced his spreadsheet, with new features like food pairing and QR scanning added every so often, enabling comprehensive wine tracking.

After lots of market research (aka talking to my father-in-law about the way in which he tracked his collection) and user testing, I landed on a React + TypeScript frontend with TanStack Router/Query, Shadcn UI, along with some custom components and mobile-first design. I built a Cloudflare Workers backend with a complex D1 (SQLite) schema for wines, bottles, tastings, food, and people.

I used Auth0 to implement Google sign in, and discovered a hidden, publicly accessible way of querying a notable wine publication's backend for professional wine data and reviews, which I had no qualms with doing, since he has long been a paying subscriber. Added AI-powered food categorization using Cloudflare Workers AI and Meta's Llama 3.2, and provided a single, intuitive search bar for wines, foods, and people.

To my father-in-law, I demonstrated specific usefulness as a son-in-law, and, to you, my ability to create a sophisticated modern full-stack app, with an LLM integration for enriching data, reverse-engineered APIs, as well as my own professional API + data management, in a real-world, privacy-focused application.