If you have 250 or more btls in your cellar, why are u not on CT?

WINE TALK
101

As someone who forgets what they ate 2 days ago I could not live without CT’s help for my 300+ bottles.
As an ex Purchasing & Logistics Manager of a warehouse comprised of 10K SKU’s it’s in my blood to keep my wine organized and quickly know where it is and how long I’ve had it and what I paid for it.

Money well spent. [cheers.gif]

102
  1. I have a thousand bottles, and I shudder to think of the work it would take to go through them all
  2. The idea of learning how to use a new program is a bit daunting to me, so I am not interested in going through that
  3. My cellar has a very idiosyncratic design, and the idea of trying to design the program to match my rack space and program that all it- makes #1 and #2 even more daunting
  4. I like poking around and finding bottles I had no idea I had (I recently discovered 2001 and 2005 Angelus which I had no idea I had ever bought. Cool!)
  5. I actually probably have a few accounts. When people ask me to look at their cellar, I go ahead and form an account, and since I can never remember what the old one was, I generally make another
  6. None of this is meant to be derogatory towards Eric, or the program or anything else. This kind of record keeping just isn’t for me.
103

I would highly doubt there is a mechanical system for sorting geographically, simply because machines do not think that way. That is a cool sort, though. I could see an E-W sort for the Loire… flirtysmile

104

Are you sure about the accuracy of the inputs?? [cheers.gif]

105

Well, with over 100 responses thus far it may be safe to say I’m the only person who uses FileMaker Pro. It works well enough for my ~750 bottles, although I’d undoubtedly be far better served if I migrated to CT. So I guess I’ll go with 50% apathy and 50% already using a system that more or less works. That and keep way too busy keeping my Grateful Dead collection properly organized.

106

I see one account from 2010.

For #3, we just give you two fields (location and bin) that are each 40 characters to describe where your bottle is. It happens that later this year, finally, I hope to create a more structured schema for this.

107

I love it to have my wines in a file to scroll down: region, vintage from old to younger - then geographically, then producers alphabetically :
for instance in Bordeaux:
Medoc
Haut-Medoc
St.Estephe
Pauillac
etc.

in Burgundy:
Chablis
Marsannay
Fixin
Gevrey-Ch
Morey-SD
etc.

For that I have created a special “Appellation number” for each village for sorting …

I could see an E-W sort for the Loire… flirtysmile

No problem, the few Loires I cellar go “downstream” … (from Pouilly-Fumé to Muscadet)

108

Same with your Rhone wines as well (and Rhine-Mosel-Saar-Ruwer Danube)…all going downstream? For Italian wines, with appellations on both sides of the peninsula, this could get tricky!

109

I (and everyone) can do it as I want - and I simply have a certain sequence in my head which I follow:
rather North to South in Germany,
North-West (Wachau) to South-East (Styria) in Austria …

In Italia it doesn´t matter to me, I have sold all my Italian wines 20 years ago … and I have now less than a dozen …

110

Just saw this thread and am answering the question posed.

OK, I consider Eric Levine a friend, I belong to Cellar Tracker, but I don’t use it. Not a luddite, just have another system that works for me.

I have about 1000 bottles in the basement. Once a year, late December, my friend and contractor Karen Robbins, who is a teetotaler, comes over. We have a graph paper pad. She knows that she just needs to write phonetically. Saves a lot of time. All cases are numbered with a magic marker. The wines, all on the raised concrete floor, are in general order, right to left:

right aisle
California reds
California whites
Other whites not from France
roses and whites that will be consumed before the next inventory, which do not get entered

next aisle
Mediterranean varietal reds

next aisle
red Burgundy and Piedmont

left aisle
white Burgundy, Alsace

against the near wall
Bordeaux

against the far wall
sweet stuff

There’s one 75 bottle rack with good stuff. One day after the annual inventory I replenish, taking the transferred wines out of the general inventory. Have a 5x15 graph for it.

When new wines come in, I number the cases and write down what came in.
When I drink something, I cross it off.

I can decide from upstairs what I want to bring up on any occasion. I keep it up to date. When friends visit, I invite them down and tell them to pick, with very few caveats, what they want to enjoy back upstairs.
Total time invested, probably 2 hours once a year and 1 additional hour spread over the year. Can’t think that going on to Cellar Tracker would take less time.

Case closed.

But I’m glad that Cellar Tracker works for so many other people and that Eric earns a living from his efforts.

Dan Kravitz

111

Gerhard,
If you are using “appellation number” as a geographic marker and each appellation number is distinct across all of the appellations that you list, then I believe CellarTracker could list your collection in appellation order.
I think it would be a fascinating exercise to see if this is the case. Report back to us!

112

Everyone can try for him/her/self …

It´s an access-file.
1st I have a region-code: A for Austria, Bd for Bordeaux, Bg for Burgundy, Rh for Rhone, SF for Southern France … etc.

Within each region I have an “appellation number” in (according to my ideas) geographical order:

In Bordeaux 1=Medoc, 2=Haut-Medoc, 2=St.Estephe …
In Burgundy 1=Marsannay, 2=Fixin …
In Rhone-Valley 1=Cote-Rotie, 2=Condrieu and Ch.Grillet, 3=St.Joseph … 8=Chateauneuf-d-P, 9=Gigondas, 10=other CdRh-Villages, 11=Cotes-du-Rhone, 12=Vin de Pays etc.
There are additional columnes for colour (blank=red, w=white, s=sparkling, z=sweet …
of course for vintage, for exact appellation, vineyard, producer, special cuvées etc., variety, bottle size, purchase price, value, number of bottles and location in my cellar, year/month of purchase … I also can add points, opening dates etc.

Then I can sort it according to my ideas … region first, then vintage, then appellation # etc.
Sure I can also use the search function, e.g. all Vosne-Romanées, all Rayas etc. … all 1982s …

When I want to add a new wine/vintage I copy a similar wine out of the sheet, paste it at the bottom, change the necessary details - and it will automatically be sorted according to my formulas.
That´s also possible with the whole range of a certain producer - when adding a new vintage …

Works perfectly for me, but the problem remains - keeping it updated!

113

I’m guessing your system wouldn’t work in CT unless you assigned completely different numbers for each appellation; ie, Burgundy appellations assigned 1-33, Rhône 34-56, Bordeaux 57-73, etc.
Other than this quirky geographical display requirement CT already handles all of your other fields listed. These are fields that many serious collectors add to their spreadsheets, just as you have. In 2009 I spent the five or so hours uploading my 2000 or so bottles. I was pleasantly surprised how CT provided this information and extended what I had independently created.

114

My wife subscribed to CT some years and maintains the account in her name. I think it has many great features but I’m to lazy to individually keep track of my 1200 or so bottles. My temperature controlled cellar is rather spacious at 14’x20’ in dimensions so I can easily keep wines well segregated in their racks. Barolo here, next the the BdM, next to the VNdM, next to the Chianti Classico. Burgs, Cabs, CdP, OR Pinot, etc all have there spaces in the racks. I know where most everything is . If I ever move again and have to consolidate into a closet, I might consider firing the system up.

115

I have set up CT a few times but always falls down on logging in and logging out. Currently have about 800 btls. I need a service that does the inventory management so I can just buy and drink! Call me lazy - got to be a better way

116

ADHD

1 Like
117

I am a huge fan of CellarTracker. It is how I choose which wines I am going to standup for near-term drinking and how long I need to decant wines based on recent reviews of my wines (which conveniently show up in a specific feed on both the desktop and mobile app). The mobile app is really great for adding and removing wines as I buy them. I just take a picture of the wine label and using the integrated Vivino technology, it pulls up the wine with all the detail so that I can add it with a click. I barcode my wines with the recommended barcoded printer so that I can track the drinking windows, but also because it makes inventory management so easy. When I pull a cork, I use the mobile app to scan the barcode and then consume/drink the bottle removing it from the inventory. The only thing I wish the mobile app did (and maybe it does and I am just not aware) is that I would love to be able to print the barcode labels from the mobile app when I add the wines with a scanned image of the label. Regardless, easy enough to print the labels from the desktop app. To each their own (much like wine) and I get why people may not want to use it, but some of the comments in the thread regarding not wanting to go to the trouble of entering the wines and not going back and updating your records based on what you drank are easily addressed by the mobile app and its label reader and barcode scanner technology.

118

I use the InVintory app which I find useful for me. Once I got everything in there putting it into CT would be too time consuming

1 Like
119

Yup.

Adhd. Lazy. Like surprises. Me.

120

1500 bottles. I’ve used an Excel spreadsheet since the 20th century. I’m used to it. If it’s not broken, why would I look for a fix?