The Auswine Forum

Hello I was wondering what style of system do various people use to stock take their cellar I know we have programs to give you a pretty good idea but does anyone go to the extreme and go thru their whole cellar and double check their collection against their system records or do you have a book? I did my cellar last night and found some wines not recorded and drinking really well about now and i thought my system was a good one !

Pay a penny for your input

Regards Dazza

I moved house nearly 3 years ago and decided since i hadnt done a stocktake since that it was time as i often add without recording and many times grab a bottle as im flying out the door and dont cross em out

After counting up 3x 6 packs and comparing to my list i decided life is too short and I had better things to do with my time so it all remains unreconciled to this day

Stocktaking is boring!!

My cellar is not that extensive - maybe 15 doz - so I have a handwritten piece of paper that records what I've got stashed under the house.

Every so often I remember to look at the list and see what's up or overdue for drinking (Crap! Is that St Hubbies pinot still there!).

Then I put the gardening clothes on and crawl under the house. Bang my head on the bearers, swear profusely. Swear profusely again at the cat who's decided to follow me in to see what's going on and is now in my face.

Retreive a couple of bottles. Reverse process as above. Try and remember to cross bottles off the list.

There must be a better way....

Ha ha, very amusing Sparky.

Personally, I tried to update everything on RB's cellar database. I got along nearly one side of the cellar and planned on doing the rest later. Then I bought a whiteboard so I could write what I put in and what I took out to hopefully reconcile everything. Since then, nothings been updated and nothing reconciled and nothing gets written down anymore.

I can remember where most stuff is but occasionally forget about cases and have nice surprises. I more or less know what I've got and can find most of it but the memory isn't always quite what I think it is. I should really get down there and sort it all out properly but when does one have the time for these things? Even when I'm not working, time is limited.

I use the RB Database - simple to use. Once the cellar is set up and the records entered, I have an exercise book that I record the ins and outs to the cellar and update the database from time to time. Which is okay until you have a few mates around, stagger into the cellar, blindly grab a couple of bottles, and continue the party.

It's all about theory anyway - I always struggle with the term serious winelover - you are one or the other! There will always be anomalies when alcohol and work are combined.

Cheers
John

I have about 25 dozen bottles only, and use no system at all, I'm afraid, except that I have them in something a little like alphabetical order, and separate the white from the red (small corner in which the white takes refuge).

The advantage of this approach is that every now and then, I find something that surprises me.

You Have all made me feel better now as i thought how poorly i kept the books mattered Well my books are not too bad really and like most of you generally know what is in there and whats ready to drink . I have just got into RB,s wine system and it seems to work well once info is put in there and i suppose thats the time but what happens if there is a fire or stormwater damage and the cellar needs to be claimed on insurance Where to from there

Regards Dazza

I use an excel spreadsheet nowdays that is approx 80% accurate. The missing stuff is CD stuff from the HV. I initially used one of the threads on this forum that had people listing what were the gems in their's cellars to build my own list then copied into the spread sheet. Now that I have made it this far, I try to keep it up to date by copying in the purchase orders since 99% of what I buy is online. Currently runs to about 240 lines. Over time I have been adding in scores and drinking windows from WS, JO etc whenever I am bored at work. Whilst it is a tad retentive, I have grabbed a few wines recently that were fast approaching the end of their drinking window.

Maybe Im just too much of a newbie, but I've found www.cellartracker.com to work extremely well. Best bit is, the database is on a server somewhere thats backer up on a regular basis.

I go down to my cellar regularly to do a stocktake and re evaluate, I always open a bottle up when I arrive, a quater of the way through I open a second bottle. I nearly always wake up the next morning telling myself I need to do a stocktake in the cellar

David....

I too have gone down the excel spread sheet route. It has the wine name, vintage, producer, grape variety, region, the date I last tasted/drank it, tasting notes, my rating out of 20, the cost (for insurance purposes) and a drink by date.
I am retentive and record in and out. It helps having my main cellar off site. The cellar at home I don't bother with. The wines only wait there for a couple of weeks before being drunk. With a couple of filters in place I can find the wines that need to be drunk before they fall out of the window.

Lochness Dave wrote:I go down to my cellar regularly to do a stocktake and re evaluate, I always open a bottle up when I arrive, a quater of the way through I open a second bottle. I nearly always wake up the next morning telling myself I need to do a stocktake in the cellar

David....

Dave your style of stocktake is pretty good and i think your system so far is the best system ever come across Go Dave Go

Hmmm, pretty ineffective system I guess. Everything on a word document. About 80 cases in all. Fastidiously catalogued. General order? Well the '96s in one pile, the '04s in another pile, and the rest in another. Section for "drink soon" and "older singles".

Cheers,

monghead.

dazza1968 wrote:I have just got into RB,s wine system and it seems to work well once info is put in there and i suppose thats the time but what happens if there is a fire or stormwater damage and the cellar needs to be claimed on insurance Where to from there

Regards Dazza

Hi there,

I share my cellar space with 3 other family members and as such i have also recently used the RB's wine access database to collate what i already have and also to enter in what i have recently bought. The install file is not too large and i have uploaded it to file storage online just in case for insurance purposes. As long as i do this every 3 or 6 months or at least each year i figure i should be fine.

TC

Well, I have to be the one to mention Cellartracker I guess. It's a pretty neat program that allows you to not only input your wines to keep track of them, but also gives you hundreds of thousands of tasting notes on your (and many other) wines. It also allows you to create reports that can show you, among other things, how much you've spent in each quarter, or what regions/appellations your wines come from, etc.

The tasting notes from other users are the best feature, as they give a pretty good idea of how a wine is progressing over time. Some of the notes are pretty lame, but multiple notes on wines in your cellar are an interesting thing to track.

No affiliation, etc.

+1 CellarTracker

I try and ensure i mark something as consumed when it is drunk. I think there are a few that got missed (things like Moscato over Christmas).

I never did a full stock take when I started the Cellartracker so I have the fortunate experience of grabbing a bottle and going to mark it as consumed, only to discover it as never emptied . This is nice when it means levels are not trending down, although makes it harder to convince the Mrs that we need more

M

Lochness Dave wrote:I go down to my cellar regularly to do a stocktake and re evaluate, I always open a bottle up when I arrive, a quater of the way through I open a second bottle. I nearly always wake up the next morning telling myself I need to do a stocktake in the cellar

David....

I think I'll adopt this approach over my current approach, because at least I can then say I have a stocktaking methodology.

I put most of my wines bottle-on-bottle wines in same-vintage bins/shelves of 18-50 bottles and record the bin code against the wine in my database. Same are stacked in original or mixed cases.
http://redbigot.info/Cellar/cellar1.html
If you have more than about 1,000 bottles and don't have a tracking system of some sort you are likely to not be managing your wines anywhere near optimally. Good records are also essential for insurance purposes.
My biggest problem is that when I put away new purchases I sometimes move other wines between bins without updating the database, or forget to record the final location of the new wine.
About every second Easter I do a thorough stocktake to update locations and usually find a few wines I didn't record into the database and don't find some that I've drunk but didn't update in the database.
Occasionally when I can't find something I bought recently I'll do a partial stocktake as I hunt for it.