Excel is static. Cellartracker is dynamic and evolving. And designed by a wine lover for wine lovers. Comparing excel to Cellartacker is akin to comparing a horse and buggy to a 21st century car.
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Interesting thread! Iāll chime in. I agree with the sentiment someone else said above, that it started with accurate inventory (buys and drinks), and Iām sure a spreadsheet can do that. To me the benefits are all the other features- tasting notes by others, my notes on consumed bottles, drinking windows, etc. Even as an inventory example, I might pull the last of 6 bottles I bought and see āI drank one in 2014 with my brother visiting; took one to inlaws cookout in 2016; one on valentines day 2018, etcāā¦ maybe your spreadsheet can do that but if youāve added functionality to be remotely comparable to CT, youāve likely put in a ton of work.
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I love CT and pay for it despite using my own excel file, because I think CT has been incredibly useful and I want to support what Eric has done. For the moment, I still find my excel file to be the path that makes most sense for me.
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very much so. Manually moving a bottle from the cellar sheet to the drank sheet is a pain. But as others have said, sometimes we forget even to remove the bottle from CT. Without a doubt though the excel file is tedious and not for everyone or even very many at all. I do also put if it was decanted, slow oxed, how long until it peaked after openingā¦ But getting some of such information from the many others who are on CT and have opened the wine more recently is insanely valuable. I have 5 tabs of CT open right now and several computers/ phones. Life would be very different without it.
Regarding 1) there is no need to enter everything at once. Most likely you have different sections in your cellar for the ageworthy stuff and the daily drinkers anyways. Easy to just enter one shelfboard every couple of days/weeks - that is at least how i did it with my 600+ bottles collection.
Regarding 2) to mention how not tech enthusiast i am: I bought my first mobile maybe 5-6 years ago. I really dont like to have too much tech stuff around. However, cellartracker is shockingly easy to use and is perceived as foolproof even by me.
Regarding 3) You can just treat every shelfboard as one storage location. While it is possible to distinguish between storage locations as the more general unit and the specific bin, its not necessary. For me every shelfboard is a location. Even for big wine fridges with about 40 bottles per shelfboard, this defines the location precisely enough to find everything quite quickly.
4) I can understand. However, i guess, over time the kind of stuff you find changes. In the first 10-15 years, the likelyhood of killing wines by storing them too long and finding the corpse is rather low - at least if one does not mix the daily drinking stuff with the bottles actually meant for storage. If you find deceased overstored wines in this phase, its just rather cheap daily drinking stuff and thus not too annoying. However, after 20-30 years, this might change quite a bit. And when the āOh no this was a wonderful wine 5-10 years agoā moments end up to be more frequent then the occasions of spotting a bottle that one forgot about and that is now in the drinking window, it might be less pleasant.
Also, havinga cellar trackers account with the whole collection entered is nice for older ppl (or rather their heirs). If the day comes where someone inherits the stuff, having some information with it like drinking windows or information about the value might be quite helpful for them.
However, what i dont get is why people show their collection publicly via cellar tracker - its like presenting to thieves what bottles they can find to steal there. This is particularly problematic since most professional wine theives look for customers before they actually steal the wine to thus avoid risky selling activity of bottles that have been reported stolen to the police. I absolutely would not want precise information about my wine collection in the public domain. The amount of people that allow everyone to view their wine collection puzzles me.
Bumping this forward, as I hope some people have an answer better than mine. I have heard of folks using their barcodes or using the PC or tablet in the cellar, and those methods are likely using tools or functionality I donāt take advantage of in CT, and are likely more efficient than my paper trail method.
My method for audit is a printed list from CT. I sort by variety first (since my physical cellar is laid out that way) and print a list, or group of lists. A list for Syrah, Pinot, Merlotā¦ Each variety sort is alphabetical since that is default and that is how I attempt to organize my wines in my physical cellar. I then take my paper list into the cellar and start matching the bottles to the list. If the wine and number of bottles listed matches. I check it off with an actual marker, pen to paper. If I bottle is missing, I flag it as MPD āmissing presumed drunkā on my paper , and remove it that way from CT later. If I find a bottle physically present but not on the CT list, I write it down and add it later. I usually do this section by section, variety by variety and if things are organized pretty well I can knock it out in a maybe 10 hours for ~1000 bottles. I have done this maybe 4-5 times since I started using CT in 2009 and every time I have had more bottles āmissing presumed drunkā than not recorded but physically present. Is it foolproof, no; does it make me think I have an organized cellar, sorta.
Itās not about spreadsheets. Itās about the actual bottle: looking at the shelve or the Eurocave. Pull out a tray, pull a bottle off of a shelf-explore what you have.
A piece of paper or a computer screen does not replace holding the actual bottle.
I type this with a bottle of ā14 Cayuse Bionic Frog sitting on my table because I considered opening it earlier. Looking and holding the bottle is a different passion, a love totally apart from a spreadsheetā¦.
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I replied to this thread about 2 years ago. Iām still using a spreadsheet and that suits me fine. I have one question:
If I import my spreadsheet in CT, will the format structure remain the same, that is, column names and how I list wines within a
particular region? Or will CT force me to use a particular format that doesnāt match my sheet? If the latter, Iām not interested.
Can you explain what column names you are refering to? And how do you list your wines within a particular region?
CT database fields should align closely with most common ways of listing wines, producer name, variety, region, sub-region, vintage, etcā¦ Once you have the database populated in CT you can sort, group, create various views and reports.
Column names in my sheet. Region or sub-region (only used for France and Germany, California is one bucket), Quantity, Shelf Location(s) in my lockers. Within each region/sub-region, I list by vintage, oldest to youngest. I want to keep that same structure. If I wish to see the wines from a particular producer, Iāll do a sort.
Maybe its stated above, but I like the āothers notes on my winesā so I can see what may be drinking well.
I am a big fan of CT
Cheers
That is not the default sort, but yes, you can create that view by subregion then sort by vintage. I donāt do it but you can set up custom views and reports, so the prefered sort is one click away.
āSaved Searchesā are your best friend on CT. I have over 30 that I use regularly
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Have I told you today that you are my hero, Bob?
Yeah, but will you still love me tomorrow? ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
I am reconsidering entering my stuff in CT with an upcoming move and significant change in inventory as I keep and shed wines. The main reason I havenāt used it before as I started using an Excel spreadsheet a long time before I ever even heard of CT.
One negative with cellar tracker is that the only option is a 100 point score scale. I wonāt dwell on it but I have a number of reasons for really disliking that scale. And I donāt like the idea of translating my 5 point scale into a 100 point scale, because of those aformentioned reasons. It would be nice to have an option where you set your own maximum scale like 20 as some British critics use or another number like 5 like I use. Cheers.
Well, in effect there already is a 3 point scale with the āNeutralā, āLikeā, and āDonāt Likeā buttons. All CT needs to do is add a āReally Likeā, and āLove Itā button to get to where you need!
![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I could make that work Bob.
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I have a CT account, just re-upped and like it. I havenāt entered anything in it for months. My problems are many. The biggest is that like some others here, Iām lazy. Lazy to the point that learning how to effectively use it just wears me out, and I generally hate putting stuff on an app.
Another reason is that before I found this site and de negoce, I didnāt need any tracking. I went to the basement, looked in the case or two I had, picked one, and drank it. When the supply began to exceed my capacity to drink, I bought a rack, then another. Then I got a cheap 36 btl fridge, and i still knew where everything was. With rack space of about 10 cases I joined, and started to try to organize, just about when I started buying lots of de negoce.
Cam ruined me. My ācellarā turned into chaos. I sorta planned to turn a basement storage room into a real cellar, but Iām lazy, and my wife had other ideas. The wine went into Costco fold out storage boxes in what had been my basement office. Then the boxes got stacked.
I spent time identifying rack 1, row 2, then crate 1, box two, you get the idea. Then one night I realized that if I really wanted that cab buried in the bottom crate, it would require work!
As lazy as I am, I figured out a new way. The really good stuff, my grandsonās birthday wine, I think 216, is in the fridge at 55, with the other high priced de negoce and the few other expensive ones I bought. About half of the other ones are stored cold in a fridge that I planned to convert, but again, Iām lazy.
So, without CT, I know generally what I have. When I think about entering all the bottles, I generally decide that Iād rather open another one, then spend time entering them.
Iām really thankful that I found CT and used it right from the start. About 2 years ago I decided to start collecting some wines and at that time I somehow imagined that something like 75 bottles would be a nice collection. Since that time Iāve purchased 1400+ and it seems like it would be impossible to keep track of anything without CT. Iām really good about staying on top of things too, probably because Iāve worked in logistics/warehousing for 25+ years.