Paper has long been associated with wine. Tasting notes, pencil annotations, and tickets in jacket pockets have been a natural part of the festival ritual for years. This year, La Bouteille de Champagne shows that even this world can enter the digital age without losing its character.
Paper tickets, tasting cards, and the complicated search for information about wines—an experience familiar to most visitors to wine festivals. However, the upcoming edition of La Bouteille de Champagne shows that even in the world of wine, digitisation can bring a small change with a big impact.
This year, the festival has partnered with the Czech project deguapp, which, in addition to modern tasting notes, brings a digital concept to wine events—from ticket purchase to the tasting itself. This is not just a technological innovation; rather, it is an effort to simplify organisation and give more space to the wine experience itself.
A paperless festival without unnecessary worries
One of the changes is digital tickets with QR codes. Each visitor has their ticket stored in their profile, clearly and without the need to print anything or search for it in their email. This makes admission to the event faster and smoother—a detail that significantly affects the atmosphere of the entire festival.
The same principle applies to the tasting itself. Instead of paper tickets and cards with technical information about the wines, deguapp offers a complete overview of winemakers and their wines directly on your mobile phone. Basic information such as the variety, vintage, or production method is always at hand. This saves time, energy, and paper, but above all it saves attention, which can remain focused on the wine.
This naturally moves conversations with winemakers forward. Instead of repetitive questions about technical details, there is room for discussion about the winemaker's philosophy, terroir, or approach to wine ageing.
"Deguapp is primarily a tasting app for the public and gastronomy professionals, helping them to delve deeper into the world of Champagne and record everything essential about wine—whether at home when opening a bottle or at a festival such as La Bouteille de Champagne. At the same time, it is a comprehensive solution for wine event organisers, helping to enhance and improve the experience for visitors and winemakers alike," says Filip Trpák, author of the deguapp project.
More space for wine, taste and your own notes
The app also includes an interactive map of the festival, which will help visitors find their way around the New Town Hall. Visitors can easily find specific winemakers without getting lost.
Deguapp also allows you to save your own tasting notes and ratings. You can easily return to the wines not only during the festival, but also long after it has ended. When tasting turns into a purchasing decision, another practical feature comes into play—the ability to order your favourite wines, often in discounted sets tailored to your personal preferences.
Users can also create tasting notes at any time for hundreds of other wines currently in the database. At the same time, deguapp is working on additional wine regions that will expand the current focus on Champagne to include other interesting areas.
"I dare say that a similar solution was missing from the market in this form. Our inspiration for La Bouteille de Champagne comes from events organised in the Champagne region itself as part of 'Les Printemps des Champagne'. Even there, paper tasting cards are still used. Personally, I find deguapp to be a much more convenient, efficient, and up-to-date platform for storing information about individual wineries, winemakers, and wines, as well as the emotions we associate with them through personal experience," comments Miloš Danihelka, one of the founders of the La Bouteille de Champagne festival.
Nuances are decisive when it comes to wine—and at wine festivals, comfort and the quality of the overall experience are becoming increasingly important. The combination of La Bouteille de Champagne and deguapp shows that modern technology does not have to disrupt tradition. On the contrary, it can support it.
Less hassle, less paper, and more focus on aroma, taste, and conversation over a glass.
For more information about deguapp and the upcoming festival, visit deguapp.com, where you can also purchase tickets. Their number is limited, and interest seems to be growing rapidly this year.
