HOW do you organize your cellar, given that stuff is constantly coming in and out, being forgotten, put in boxes instead of being on the racks, running out of room on the racks, taken by wives, etc?
How do YOU organize your cellar - assuming you’re able to reasonably overcome #1, what’s your system? By region, producer,etc? Right now I’m small enough (and varied enough) that ‘by region’ would be really tough to implement, so it’s just alphabetical by producer, which is still hard to remember how I classify things (ie “Chateau” doesn’t go under ‘c’, but occasional “Domaine” ends up under D, are the Ken Wrights under K or W, etc.
Reds (the majority of my collection) in one section, whites in another, then by regions, then by varietals, then by producer, then by vintage. Where possible, I try to put similar varietals next to their counterparts from a different region.
Wines that need a lot of age go in “lay down” cases on the shelf that spans the room at the top of the racks.
After that, to be honest, with odds and ends, I often just stick them in available holes and try my best to remember where I put them. I try to do things that will provide cues, like Cab Franc in the Bordeaux section, but it’s not always possible. Since these often go in the lower portion of a rack, I try to leave a space between them and the wine above so I can get a better view of the label, but when it fills up, this also is not always possible.
I use my CT database to jog my memory from time to time and remind myself of wines I may have forgotten.
Type, region, producer, brand/verietal, vintage in theory for simplicity. The actual situation is more fluid. As I am trying to drink more of the older than I buy newer, holes are developing that hopefully will allow theory to become fact. CellarTracker and the Excel download are used. If I ever get an iPhone, CellarVu would be helpful and maybe change how it is organized. I need to wait and see.
I don’t have a walk-in cellar, but have several refrigerated cabinets plus a small amount of space in passive storage cabinets. I use Cellartracker, and with that, there isn’t much need to organize the wines in any sense, since you just enter and then look up the bin number on CT. When I first filled the units, I did some rough region and varietal clumping, but that gradually blends away over time, and as long as my CT is up to date, it really doesn’t matter.
The challenging thing for me is that I don’t want to go to the computer every time I pull out a bottle to drink. So I print out two wine lists, one by region and variety (similar to a restaurant wine list) that shows the bin locations and other information, and one that shows the wines by bin number. I mark off wines that I remove or add by hand, and then intermittently sit down and update the whole thing.
The next problem is that I’m not all that consistent about doing that either, and part of what I do when I update the lists is to just see the empty bin spaces, and that reminds me which bottles to mark off that I didn’t before.
There’s probably a much better way to go about all this, and I’m open to any suggestions. But I’d say I’m 95%+ accurate with my accounting, so a lot better than nothing.
Ours is organised by Region first, and then each region is organized by vintage.
The cases are on shelves organized in a similar fashion.
The way we’ve resolved the wife pulling stuff out of the cellar is pretty simple. We have a little stand alone cooler where we keep the daily whites, bubbles and dessert, and everything in there is fair game. For reds, We have set aside a mixed 6 pack box in the cellar with her name on it where she can choose anything she wants. My job is to replenish the 6 pack when the level gets low.
I should just draw a diagram… might be easier. I have a Le Cache. The entire right side is all pinot noir. The bottom 1/4 rows is Oregon, and everything else is Cali. On the left side grenache/zin in the upper 1/4. Syrah in the 2nd 1/4, Cabernet in the 3rd 1/4, and Frenchies, whites on the bottom 1/4. Sure, there is bleeding into other sections, but I try to minimalize it. I put the cheap drinkers on top of the racks in the free space above the racking next to either side of the cooling unit. And I have a case of bordeaux in wood on the floor.
I have a cellar and just put them where I have open spots and record in CellarTracker. I make an attempt at putting wines together by region but have for the most part given up. As long as I can find what I am looking for where it is doesn’t matter. Plus, when I started this little game I was drinking a lot of Cali Cab. Now I buy very few. I never imagined I’d own much Burgundy or German riesling but here I am. So, as my palate changes keeping perfect order isn’t going to happen, at least for me.
A combo of region and variety is the best I have been able to maintain. I gave up keeping producers together years ago. Basically, I have a wall of domestic Cab, a large section of red Bordeaux, large section of Pinot, and smaller sections of whites, Rhone varieties, miscellaneous reds, and sparklers.
By varietal then winery. If it’s on the floor it’s not yet in inventory. When it goes on the shelf it gets put on the list.
Luckily, I have a bit of a manufacturing inventory control background so I know about RTSing wine if I change my mind. lol
To select something to drink, I generally use a cellartracker view that is organized Varietal / Vintage / Producer.
Unless i’m looking for something from a particular producer, then I use Producer / Varietal / Vintage.
I’m fortunate to have a walk-in cellar w/ individual bottle racking. So as long as I keep the location up to date in CT, there is no physical organization involved - one slot is as good as another. The location is tracked in ‘bins’ which vary in size from 8-14 bottles depending on the racking. So a small amount of hunting may be involved, but it also keeps the amount of CT location maintenance quite reasonable.
When I started collecting, I wanted to organize by broad region and producer but soon realized that it was going to be incredibly inefficient and time consuming as wines were constantly being consummed and new purchases added. Very quickly my system became stick the bottle where there is room and just note its location. As long as I can find the bottle when I want to, I realized that for me I didn’t care one bit if a Burg was next to a CA cab next to a Barolo next to a CdP or if a case box had 6 bottles of Bordeaux and 6 bottles of CA pinot. Sure it would be nice in an ideal world to have the space to segregate by region or even within region by area and producer but that either takes a lot of reorganizing and moving around or takes a lot of space so you can leave open slots in racking or areas for new case stacks, etc.
This thread hasn’t given me any ideas on how to improve my organization, but it’s made me feel quite a bit better about the current state of my organization.
By varietal (in its broadest sense - I put the Grenaches and Syrahs together, for instance). Then by producer, then by vintage. Every now and then I spend a day in Cellar Tracker re-organizing to make up for the odd balls that get put in the nearest open slot.
Although my disorganization occasionally means I spend more time hunting for a specific bottle than I’d like, I actually don’t hunt for specific bottles very often. I go hunting for something to drink, and I always fond something. And sometimes what I find is something I had totally forgotten I had, which is a delightful little surprise during the course of the day.
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