If you would stop buying just singlets, you would understand the need for the help!
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Several years ago now, we built a new (bigger and nicer) wine cellar that organized (at least for producers for which I have a number of bottles) by region and then by producer. Unfortunately, what I drink and what I buy don’t match and so new bottles often go into the cellar using there where there are open spaces method.
That’s the easy part. Logging wines out when consumed is the tricky bit especially if you’re in the habit of popping into the cellar for extra ad hoc bottles mid evening. You really have to keep track of the empties!
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@Charles_Perry when I started collecting my goal was to be able to find my wine and store it efficiently. I looked at the apps available, say circa late 2015 and this is what I found.
There is definitely a graphical element where you can build out your cellar racking and now my off site lockers to know exactly where you’ve stored bottles.
If I click on a bottle and then show wine it will show the exact slot for me. Save the few times I try to be cool and just grab the wrong bottle without reading the label, this setup is very efficient.
I don’t import any of the wine bottle data, which is available on some but not all wines. I take pictures of the bottles and save them + name the wine, add varietals and AVA, etc.
Having these visuals of white v red v pink bottles + the different racking positions whether it’s a front or back slot in my 2 bottle deep cellar.
This visual lets me know where I have open bottle slots, if I have no space and also what’s not currently stored.
Since I’m now 1900 bottles deep, I wasn’t switching to anything else.
I like building my drinking lists, transfer lists from off site to home or vice versa.
I’m not huge with taking my own notes. I usually only do so if a bottle is exceptional, corked, off; or if I coravin something to go back and finish that bottle.
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Nice! That looks pretty awesome - the visual aspect is great!
Thanks for sharing - i had never seen a deeper dive into VinoCell 
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I am probably doing it wrong, but I tried with CT.
It does not show a visual of the collection - at least not that I can see - and it is time consuming to scan a bar code and enter the bottle. Maybe a minute for each bottle x 300 bottles is a good 5 hours with no breaks.
It is probably me and I am not getting it, but it does not seem worthwhile.
Eric Dinnocenzo
I hear you…but when you get to the point where you have been buying for years and your collection gets over 1000 bottles, i promise it’s worth it
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It’s a pretty clean interface. I’d say the knock would be lack of community notes that CT has and then lots of manual data entry.
The storage visual is really nice though.
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I know I am in the minority but for sake of adding another point of view - I use Excel for inventory organization. It’s not for everyone but I use Excel everyday for work and consider myself an advanced user. I also might have slight OCD so I know where everything is at. My collection is around 800 and is split between a few locations (a few fridges and a passive basement closet) and each has their own intentional purpose with corresponding labeling.
I don’t have the luxury of stacking cases if I don’t have shelf space so I try to maximize storage. This is where I find Excel extremely useful - planning future purchases and projected inventory of each location (eg loading up on strong vintages after taking into account consumption before delivery; alternatively knowing how little to buy while I wait for the next “great” vintage). I also have these assumptions linked to my personal finances.
Having said all of that, I still use CT so I’m dual maintaining my collection. Silly I know, but like others have said once you have done your initial setup it is easy to maintain. I find CT very valuable when it comes to recent tasting notes and integration with critic reviews.
I see a slot, I stick it in there. I want a bottle I go digging.
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The most effort is always the first entry if you’ve never kept an inventory. The only way you can get around that is to pay someone to do it. I wouldn’t recommend using barcodes anyway. Its more effort than its worth IMO. 300 isn’t really that many to put in. Get it over with now because your collection will likely only keep growing making that first inventory that much more difficult. Entering them as you purchase is much easier after that. Especially if Eric’s new thing where you just forward your receipts by email works as good as people say it does.
In terms of organizing, if you have all of your wine at home I would just make each fridge a location, including the basement storage. Then use bins for sections/shelves/boxes. Do not bin per bottle or slot unless you really just can’t help yourself. It only creates tons of busy work in the end. Make your bins an obvious section physically. Like one case box is one bin. In the fridges, use an obvious looking space that is a column or shelf and make that a bin.
One of the very best things about putting your wine into something like CT is that you never have to bother organizing by region or producer or type or anything. When you want to browse for a wine from say Italy, you pull THAT up in CT. When you decide what you want you just note the bin from CT and go to the wine.
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Strongly agree with Sarah. I have approx 3k bottles and most definitely they are not are all high end bottles. Lots of “entry level” wines from Spain, Germany, Italy, and NZ
I guess we must be buying different wines as everything in my cellar benefits and improves from some ageing. There are way too many examples to list.
Just to be clear I do not buy $5-$10 supermarket wines and then cellar them and expect them to magically improve
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I want to put a slightly different notion out there about organization. While I absolutely get the ease and practicality of putting each bottle in whatever slot is available, marking it in CT, and being able to look up the location online/fetch it when you want it, there is something to be said for being able to stand in front of, say, the champagne section when you want a champage, and browse in person. I like the geographical physical journey through my cellar. I like going down there with Jonathan, touching bottles to remind ourselves what we have when we’re choosing a wine for dinner. Yes, all of this can be done online, likely faster and more efficiently, but there is joy and romance in the physical as well. It’s a bit like walking through the shelves in a library when I wanted a book…Yes, I am old enough to have wandered through libraries.
Just a different perspective, not practical for many situations, but a big source of pleasure for us.
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I would agree with this if you say have a large collection and can display it in such a way that it makes it worthwhile. And most importantly the time to do the upkeep to make it work.
I just think there is a knee jerk reaction to always have to put similar bottles next to each other. People often need to be reminded that its unnecessary and not practical in many cases. I get the romance of it but in many cases(sounds like the OP) there is no use in it unless one just has the time.
In my dreams of I have a large, perfectly displayed collection where browsing is a fun activity for me and anyone whom I may drink with. In my current reality browsing is CT is still quite fun. 
Of course, sure - that’s why I said it’s not practical for many situations. It wasn’t at all meant as a “this way is better” suggestion, just an aspect no one had mentioned so far.
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I totally get you. How about a Dewey Decimal system for wine!!
It also allows for that interesting experience of coming across a bottle and being like, oh, I didn’t know I had that … although, the downside is that, at that point, the bottle will probably be way past prime!
I do know what I’ve got and use CT, I just don’t really organize it
Designed an excel spreadsheet that works for me, even though I don’t know anything about excel spreadsheets. I have a pad of paper in the cellar, and when I add or subtract bottles I scribble them down. I periodically update my inventory from that paper every few weeks, which takes about 15 minutes. Having gotten lazy about listing everything once some years back, forcing me to do a painfully complete inventory of about 2000 wines, I swore that no bottle would cross the threshold of my cellar ever again without my noting it. For me, listing it and later updating on the computer is easier than dragging my laptop in with me each time. Adding new wines to the excel inventory is pretty quick, as it recognizes and offers drop down choices of previous producer and vineyard names as you start typing.
I have shelves organized by region. In Burgundy, the vast majority of my cellar, they are organized by vintage, then by producer. In other regions such as Northen Rhone, Piedmont, Oregon or CA Pinot, they are organized by producer then vintage. Finding specific wines I want to pull does not seem to be very difficult.
I put bottles wherever there’s space. I keep track of where they are with Cellartracker. If Cellartracker didn’t exist then I’d use a spreadsheet or some other online cellar inventory app.
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+1. If you don’t do the above, you will run out of that category’s room. Example if it was Bordeaux, those wines can take a long time to fit into your drinking window and therefore build up and take away slots that might be currently used for say an earlier drinking window, domestic Sauv Blanc. Now as your cellar ages and/or evolves, you will start pulling the aged Bordeaux while now getting into Barolo and maybe now not drinking domestic SB.
Now with CT it will show you the wines that should be drink now or those that have much more time/life left. It creates a one click of- what should I drink now as I don’t have a desire for anything specific or it allows you to sort by price- so you don’t get a bit tipsy and have the best idea ever to pull your 2025 Petrus or 2027 DRC…