Anyone who stores their wine in racks should be using Cellar Tracker. It may not be as enjoyable to face your computer instead of your racks as you ponder your choice, but it’s foolproof if you log the bottles in and out.
My racking is three bottles deep, so I wouldn’t be able to see most of my wine anywsy. When I need to put away more wine, I simply do a sort by bin number and make a note of which bins contain fewer than three bottles. Then the new bottles go in those spots, wherever they my be.
I honestly don’t understand why anyone with racks would do it any other way.
I honestly don’t understand why anyone with racks would do it any other way.
OCD, while you are riding your bike, I am fondling my bottles. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink")
You might as well face facts, you gotta get another unit…like tomorrow.
Mine is organized by grape/style, then country, then producer.
For me at least it’s the easiest way to track things down.
So for example if trying to find a bottle of Saxum, all Rhone grapes are in one area of the cellar, then separated by old world/new world, then Saxum wines are grouped together.
Cellar organization is a fond memory that fades as soon as the cellar or a section of the cellar is full.
Honest ? - You buy a 6 pack of 2012 1er Vosne. Your cellar’s red burg section is already full. You have 4 spots available in rhone & 3 spots available in Barolo.
Do you -
a. Leave 6 pack intact on the limited floor space you still have (your stacked cases already resemble a famous tower in Italy)?
b. Break open case since you hate cardboard and split between open spaces elsewhere in cellar?
c. As it is too laborious to designate bottles to spaces in CT, do you forget where you put that bottle and realize it will take you days of searching to ever find that bottle when you want it (aka the cellar surprise)?
d. Wish you could take a week off to empty the cellar of all its contents, try to reorganize it, and once finished schedule back surgery?
e. Hire a full time cellar minion that is allergic to alcohol & immune to temptation of theft?
I will be using a day or two over the Christmas break to choose d. hopefully without the surgery.
Organize? I know it looks chaotic but I where to find every single bottle in my messy cellar 
For the longer term bottles I track bottle with a spreadsheet and bottles are put in randomly. I know where every bottle is located by rack number (01-11). Makes things very easy to manage.
The racking or the staff?
I sort by region. I have a separate area of the cellar for long term case storage so I use that to keep the racks from overflowing. Of course you have to adjust occasionally but I love standing in the cellar just looking at the bottles, so that is not a problem. I also keep a rack for drinkers that my wife can pull at any time without any worry. That also is somewhat divided by region, and as it gets depleted I backfill from my main racks. That process tends to keep me in good shape so far.
Then again, when I finished my cellar and realized it was more full than I had planned from Day 1, I have somewhat curtailed purchases and focused on drinking down the lesser bottles.
Rack #1 - in my kitchen - casual drinkers not expensive wines, but good QPRs…
Rack #2 - in my basement - a total mess of various wines to age.
Variety of boxes in my basement - a total mess of various wines to age.
Rack #3 - in my parents house - domestics
Rack #4 - in my parents house - france
Rack #5 - in my parents house - italy
Rack #6 - tbd…
Sorted daily drinkers towards the top of the rack, more age worthy towards the bottom…
