Cellar Records, Wine Tracking, Tasting Notes - Spreadsheet vs. Apps or Programs?

[penegal]

I know quite a few people like to drink wine immediately upon purchase, but I do keep a "modest" cellar at château penegal.

Once a cellar passes a certain number of bottles it does get hard to keep track of what's what and where it is. To date, I have been trying to carefully create a spreadsheet of the wine I have, regions, variety, purchase price, history, providence, approximate drinking windows, and occasionally tasting notes. I have got to the point that I am not convinced that a spreadsheet is the best tool, as it gets quite clunky once it has a lot of data in it.

There are a number of commercially available tools and apps for different aspects of recording cellars, or documenting tasting notes.

Which of these do AFFers / FFWLs use?

What are your thoughts / reviews / recommendations?

 

[AnonymousCoward]

Cellartracker.

Plus a page in OneNote where I keep track of mixed boxes when I consolidate half drunk cases.

I use these as they work/sync across all my devices.

 

[Radiq]

I normally just lurk but signed up to answer this.

I use Cellartracker. It's free, has apps for both IOS and Android as well as a browser site. It tracks all your bottles and allows you to print off a hundred different reports including ideal drinking years, varietal breakdowns, regional breakdowns etc.

Other users will upload tasting notes on the same vintage as they drink it helping you gauge whether it is time to open that bottle or not and if you are a Wine Companion subscriber you can integrate the JH tasting notes as well.

I know people who use it for as little as 40 bottles up to the thousabds, personally I sit at around 150 bottles and would be lost without it.

 

[AnonymousCoward]

I use Cellartracker. It's free, has apps for both IOS and Android as well as a browser site.

It even has a Windows Phone version

 

[Radiq]

It even has a Windows Phone version

There you go! I struggle to even get most of my Ipad and Iphone Wine apps on my Android and they have a windows app!

I forgot to mention they also cross borders being international so all your French, US, Italians etc. are on there.

 

[TomVexille]

Another one for Cellartracker. You can even give each bottle a specific location if desired.

 

[ste667]

Sorry to sound like a broken record but cellartracker here too. Just scan the barcodes with the app and in go the wines. I entered my 250 odd in under an hour.

 

[VPS]

another +1 for cellar tracker - like the iphone app plus windows access as well - mind you it's a bit scary when you calculate how much you've consumed recently

 

[Daver6]

To help convince you, cellartacker.com without a doubt. Nothing else comes even remotely close.

 

[Buzzard]

Sorry to sound like a broken record but cellartracker here too. Just scan the barcodes with the app and in go the wines. I entered my 250 odd in under an hour.

What about the 8 dozen unlabelled cough, er wine, I got recently

 

[Steady]

Cellar tracker here too - what I find scary is it displays how much I have spent on wine.....

 

[Wozza]

Right - that's it - I am ditching using the Wine Companion cellar tracker and will switch to the real deal Cellartracker instead...!

Great question Penegal. And thank you to all the recommenders above. Much appreciated.

 

[ste667]

What about the 8 dozen unlabelled cough, er wine, I got recently

maybe best to keep those off the books

On a serious note I found about 90% of my mainstream wines in the database already so there wasn't much manual adding to do. All my wine is from Oz though, so not sure how international wines fare..

 

[AnonymousCoward]

What about the 8 dozen unlabelled cough, er wine, I got recently

Wouldn't a cooking ingredients app be more suitable for tracking those? G,d&r

 

[blackcat20]

Sorry to sound like a broken record but cellartracker here too. Just scan the barcodes with the app and in go the wines. I entered my 250 odd in under an hour.

Except sometimes scanning the barcode brings up a random, completely unrelated wine :shock:

Cellar tracker here too - what I find scary is it displays how much I have spent on wine.....

Ah yes. I'm not sure whether to be proud or horified by the figure in ours. At least I can take some comfort in the fact that many bottles were purchased well below RRP.

 

[ste667]

Except sometimes scanning the barcode brings up a random, completely unrelated wine :shock:

I've found that happens when it mis-scans the barcode and only gets some of the numbers. Usually a repeat fixes it.

 

[carwashhair]

I'm using a spreadsheet at the moment, along with vivino. I've scanned my wines into vivino, then go back and rate them once I start 'liquidating' my assets. May have to give cellartracker a try!

 

[poochio]

Thanks for this post. I've been using a spreadsheet which is invariably out-of-date - I've now downloaded and look forward to giving cellartracker a try

 

[Teebs]

Yep - CellarTracker as well here. Just returned from the Coonawarra and had all purchases scanned and filed in quick time.

(Highly recommend the Coonawarra Vignerons Cup btw.....brilliant value day)

 

[MadMick10]

Another one for CellarTracker. I find it really quick and easy to add bottles using the bar code scanner or the photo label capture. Only problem is remembering to remove the bottles, or mark them as "consumed" on some nights when I divulge in more than one bottle!