I let mine slide a couple years ago when I got slammed by work and wasn’t buying much wine anyway (small racks were full). So I had about 75 bottles in there when I took a break and just replaced a case at a time as we drank stuff.
Fast forward and now I’m more at 150 bottles and decided to update things before the cellar is completed in a couple weeks. Four hours later and I have 17 remaining bottles to find or delete. Man that was unpleasant but I guess it could be worse.
Good advice. Ive been pretty good about keeping it +/- 5% accurate with 350-400 btls. I do a cleanup once or twice a year and find the errors to be with daily drinkers like seghesio zin, merry edwards SB etc.
Agree completely. Just get in the habit of never moving wine into storage without entering and train folks to deposit empties a certain spot for removing. Took a little effort to get the in habit. Now its 2nd nature and we just do it.
I use the labels and barcode scanner to input inventory. Was a bear setting it up, but would never go back now. Pending delivery wines are added as soon as ordered (usually). Labels are printed when the bottles arrive, stuck on the bottle and scanned into bins.
Only issue with inventory reconciliation is my wife throwing out bottles we drink before I scan them in. Every once in a while I see a bottle in my inventory that I know I drank or can’t find. But it works itself out when I go to pick a bottle and it’s not there.
I have a system that keeps my virtual cellar close to 100% accurate.
One part of the system is to create temporary locations when I purchase wine. For instance, I buy a case of wine and put it into the Cellar Location and the Receiving Area Bin.
If the Receiving Area Bin still exists a couple weeks later I haven’t done my due diligence, because in my real cellar there is no receiving area.
This has two meanings. Missing presumed drunk is when I’m trying to find a bottle that must have been pulled at the end of a long social. It is also what my wife tells my kids when it’s their bedtime and I’m still not home from said social…
I pretty quickly stopped even trying to track daily drinkers. Not only did get to be too much overhead-to-value, it also started to seem like intentionally leaving that level of intake history detail was maybe not a good idea… Like something that could be used against me in court someday. Not that I plan to be in court someday… But why leave a potentially incriminating trail of empty bottles in case that day finds me?
“I’d like to draw the jury’s attention to the defendant’s CellarTracker history. During the month in question he polished off over 50 bottles…”
The Costco receipts would be further damaging to my case.
Of course it is tonguein cheek. Wife and I open a bottle most nights, and occasionally two. Quick math on that places us around 30 per month… A prudish jury might look askance.
I have been a religious user of Cellar Tracker since 2004 and when I do my annual inventory of my ~2000 bottle cellar I am rarely of by more than a bottle or two. CT is the best.