How do you Organize your Storage

[John_O]

Fall of the Roman Empire Method:
Everything well organized by region and then watch it devolve as additions go wherever there is room.

Top row of racks designated: “Death Row”. Wines up next for drinking.

[John_Webber]

In the process of doing my first inventory ever. As I go, i’m utilizing a rack #, and column # in CT (e.g., 1-4) to organize the chaos. Most columns have the same producer or like styles/vintages, but that will thankfully be less important very soon.

[andy_velebil]

Basically, dry reds over there and Port over there. Though as one section gets full, then less full, there is a little overlap. Makes finding a bit tough at times, but it’s fun to find things I’ve forgotten I have when looking (even though I also use CT).

[Jeff_Fish]

@John O'Sullivan

Fall of the Roman Empire Method:
Everything well organized by region and then watch it devolve as additions go wherever there is room.

This. I started off organized by region, varietal, etc. Now, just jamming bottles with a bottle tag wherever there is room and the bottle fits. And I’ve found that the late evening, drunken cellar raids have greatly skewed my CT inventory.

[Andrew_Gelb]

Okay, here’s a hypothetical: How would you do it if you actually had empty space for all your bottles and you really were not going to make any significant further purchases?

In other words, imagine it will start out full and then slowly empty out…

Thanks,
Andrew

[Alan_Rath]

Andrew, I’d do it by region, grouping producers together, then vintage, putting the most drinkable vintages most accessible. But once done, I have no doubt it will slowly devolve into an entropic scatter.

[Andrew_Kaufman]

@Chris Blum

Just added 4 x 150 bottle eurocaves and I’m reorganizing things in my cellar. I have a wide mix of wines with various drinking windows. Do I store by grape, drinking window, other???

What are your preferences or mistakes/lessons learned?

I don’t my wife does and she never ever under circumstances makes mistakes.

[PaulMills]

Mine US wine is organized by region, then alphabetical by variety then producer, Old World is just by country because I don’t have as much. It takes some reshuffling every now and then but I am ok with it. Whites are in their own section. Daily drinkers and bottles that are intended to age truly long term are in another portion of the cellar.

[J_a_y_H_a_c_k]

@Chris Seiber

Joe is right, that whatever you start out with in terms of regions and all, it will eventually get mixed up as things come in and go out, unless you have lots of surplus storage all the time.

The best thing to do is use CellarTracker. Then it won’t matter what is where, so long as you have it inventoried in CT, you can just look it up on your phone, your computer, or on a printout that you do periodically.

Give each unit a name or number, then number the racks 01 through 10 (or whatever) left to right across the top, and A through L (or whatever) top to bottom. A bottle goes into Unit 1, bin 06D, and there it is.

I agree. I use a similar designation system in CT. My cellar has double racking, so I use a three dimensional designation. Right to left, top to bottom and front versus back. So, if I want a bottle of Saxum James Berry Vineyard 2007, finding it takes me as long as it takes to go to CT, type the name of the wine, see that there’s a bottle in 30-05-B, and go downstairs and go to column 30, row 5 down from the top and the back slot. It doesn’t matter whether the bottle in front of it in 30-05-F is another Saxum or a Raffault Chinon.

[PaulMills]

@J a y H a c k

It doesn’t matter whether the bottle in front of it in 30-05-F is another Saxum or a Raffault Chinon.

I drank a 2010 last night and tonight. Very good but too young.
Not that it has anything to do with this thread.

[Monte_Mast]

I just bought my third unit so I did a massive reorganization of my cellar.

I have an Avanti (165) I purchased new and two Craigslist purchases, a Vinotemp (500+) and a VintageKeeper (350). My whites, roses and dessert wines are in the Avanti. I tried to keep rieslings together as well as French and domestic chardonnay and it worked. The other two units are the reds. If i have a significant holding from a single producer, I put them together. If not they are grouped by region or variety as best I could. I have designated shelves for daily drinkers/need to drink soon wines that my wife doesn’t have to ask. At the moment I have some excess space so I tried to anticipate to anticipate future club shipments (and the fact I’m typing this on a flight to Portland now) so I could hopefully keep the organization pattern for the short term.

I catalogue what shelf every wine is on. The Avanti has 16 shelves so they are A01 through A16. The max I can fit on a single shelf is 11 so at worst it will be the 11th bottle I touch. The other units are double doors so for one the left is B and the right is C. (And D and E). I thought about doing a row, column and position (front or back) but I couldn’t figure out a good way to make it work when placement on a shelf frequently needed to change due bottle shapes.

I figure it will hold until right about when Berserker Day shipments hit because there is no anticipating what I might buy.

[Robert_Pollard-Smith]

@J a y H a c k

We just built a cellar this summer. They key is advance planning, lots of it. Once you figure out a system that will tell you immediately with a location designation from the database where each bottle is, it doesn’t matter where you put each bottle. Thus, for example, on the right wall of our cellar, we have 948 bottles in 24 columns of double deep racking. Due to a duct running through the corner of that side, not all columns have the same number of slots. So we decided to number each slot with a column, followed by number of rows from the top, followed by F or B for front or back slot. Thus, if I want to get a bottle of 2007 Saxum James Berry Vineyard to serve to some of my AFWE friends, it takes me [timing now with stop watch] 43 seconds from a dead stop to open a new tab in IE, log on to Cellartracker, wait for CT to load since Eric needs to speed up the server, and locate the wine in 21-21-F, which means that the wine is in the 21st column (which happens to be an all Saxum column but that doesn’t really matter) the 21st row from the top, and the front slot. It took a long time to accurately log in all the wine and do two data integrity checks to make sure it was correct. But it was worth it. Now if I can only find the time to do the other 500+ bottles on the left side of the cellar, it will be fine.

If you can’t remember what you own and you want to browse all the Barolo and pick one, you just do that on CT instead of in your cellar. It’s easier than standing in the cellar pulling bottles and looking at them.

I have three double-deep lockers offsite.

When I first set up the offsite locker that has double deep racking for 180 bottles (columns A-E, 18 high), I did the B14 (F or B) system. The F/B crap became so inaccurate so quickly that it lasted about 3 months till I blew it up.

The other two lockers are 1) cardboard cartons marked AA–ZZ, as needed (only about 9 cartons in there now) and 2) a 52" wide locker that has a 48x24 4-shelf stainless rack. Shelves are designated A-E (E being the space below the bottom shelf), and the cartons on each are A1-A15 etc. Very easy in Cellartracker, which at any one time is 99% accurate for 800 or so bottles.

[Chris_Blum]

Funny to see this thread necro’d.

I ended up buying the remaining three Eurocaves that the guy had (all scratch and dent). Alice has my US cabs, Bertha has my US pinots, Claire has burgs, Daniele has Italians and zins, Esther has syrah. Fifi has Bordeaux and Loire, Gloria has more US cab. (I also have an 8th one that needs more work to be operational. The bottom door hinge plate is partially off so the door doesn’t seal.)

I log wines into CT based on the box and the rack. So a bottle of Barolo might go in as “Daniele, bin 3”

So far, so good.

[Scott_Brunson]

Chris–I took the sliders out of my 1st EC. I managed to cram most of yesterday’s arrivals inside.
Just don’t ask me to find anything right now.

[David_Glasser]

I’d like the one on the bottom, please.

[Scott_Brunson]

bottom left?
85 Huet

[Sanjay_Nandurkar]

I prefer to have an organised cellar (grouped in order) rather than bottles put at random -but identifiable with CT or other software. I like to walk in to the cellar and know exactly where every bottle is without looking at the database.

Red Burgs in two shelves. Barbaresco and Barolo on another shelf etc etc . And further organised by vintage. Does mean lot of reorganisation from time to time.

Unfortunately, shelving is full right now which means bottles in boxes on the floor. But they too are organised into different regions. Not ideal but thats life.

[dsGriswold]

Constantly, it fills the time between drinking a bottle. I need to open up space on the left so I can move bottles to the left and open up space for new wines on the right. Unfortunately, I no longer much like to drink the wines on the left and prefer the wines on the right, so organization over there is a constant shuffle.

[David_Glasser]

Dennis, it sounds like it’s time to send those leftist wines off to auction. Of course, if you use the proceeds to buy more wine, you’ll be right back where you started with the organizing chores. But the wines on the left should be more appealing.

[Robert.A.Jr]

@David Glasser

Dennis, it sounds like it’s time to send those leftist wines off to auction. Of course, if you use the proceeds to buy more wine, you’ll be right back where you started with the organizing chores. But the wines on the left should be more appealing.

All my great wines are on the left, with the right reserved for those high-octane, loud ones.