We recently launched PourPlan, a new website that helps wine lovers discover and plan visits to tasting rooms in Woodinville and beyond. I wanted to share a little bit about how we built it, because the tools and technologies available today make it possible to develop something like this much faster and more efficiently than even a few years ago.
PourPlan started with a simple idea: make it easier to choose where to go wine tasting. There are plenty of winery websites out there, and lots of scattered reviews and recommendations, but no single place that brings it all together in a structured, easy-to-use way. We set out to change that.
From the beginning, we knew that manually gathering and maintaining data about tasting rooms would be a massive effort. To tackle this, we leveraged AI APIs to help automate the process of extracting and summarizing information about wineries, tasting experiences and wines offered. This allowed us to go from raw, unstructured data on the web to clean, structured information that powers the site.
On the development side, PourPlan is built with Django, an open-source web framework that makes it easy to develop robust, database-driven websites. We used Cursor, an AI-powered coding assistant, throughout the project. It was invaluable for speeding up everything from boilerplate code to solving tricky edge cases and refining our UX.
We’re just getting started, and PourPlan will continue to evolve. But this project reinforced something I’ve seen again and again in recent years: the right combination of open source tools and AI assistance can dramatically accelerate what small teams (or even one person) can build.
If you’re curious, check out our guide to wine tasting in Woodinville, and let us know what you think. And if you’re working on your own projects, I highly recommend exploring the latest generation of AI tools — they can make a huge difference.
