Cellartracker, do you or don't you?

[rooman]

Are people using it? Do you input all your purchases? If you are who do you follow?

[Red Bigot]

Don't use it, seldom visit. I can see why it's attractive to a lot of people, but I still prefer my own standalone system

[Loztralia]

I do, and I input everything that isn't certainly going to get drunk in the next six months. Even though my "cellar" is only 100-150 bottles at this stage I've already found it a real boon after my (a) my Excel started getting out of hand and (b) more importantly, I shifted a whole bunch of stuff to off-site storage where I can't readily double check what I've got.

I don't consistently follow anyone as I haven't done any real investigation into who I find reliable - but I'd be interested in hearing any thoughts from more experienced users.

[PaulV]

Wouldn't use anything else

[rooman]

Paul et al,

Do you use the same handle you use on Auswine forum? I konw Graeme G does, I have seen a few of his posts.

Mark

[Michael McNally]

I track. Most of the time anyway. Handy tool.

Cheers

Michael

[Waiters Friend]

Not at all, in fact I need to update my Excel cellar list for insurance purposes. Cellar is now well over 700 bottles, and increasing in quality, but I go into it and look at what needs drinking, rather than divining a program to anticipate what I need to drink. It's possible I will miss a couple on the way through, but very few so far.

Cheers

Allan

[pizzler]

I sure do for a lot of reasons:
1. I don't have to type everything in most of the time except for the rare times I'm introducing a new wine to the site.
2. I can follow what others are saying about a wine. Tastings are like polls...snapshots in a moment in time. Some wines change a lot in a short period of time, so I can validate or question what the experts are saying. There are CellarTracker members whose opinions I value as much as I do the experts.
3. All the reviews i subscribe to are listed in one convenient place.
4. I use it to fine new wines to try.
5. When I keep my inventory up to speed, it's also good for that....though I'm bad about doing that.

[Craig(NZ)]

Cellar who?

[Rednick]

Yup, just trasnfered everything over and think it's great. The ease of historical record keeping, being able to get info from anywhere, the link with Jancis and the reporting are all great. I was blown away by my varietal report, with Shiraz tying with Pinot and GSM blends for my 2nd most popular varietal - if you had told me that I wouldn't have beleived it!

[Bick]

Not really, I'm a "woefully out of date Excel spreadsheet man". I look wines up on cellertracker now and then for reviews though.

[GraemeG]

Yes, definitely (same user name as here, as mentioned). Oddly, more for the tasting note record-keeping facility, rather than the actual cellar record. Although, my old spreadsheet - much modified and with graphs! - is very quick and easy to use, and I still maintain it, but CT gets the nod for the purchase and consumption history tracking, which I'd never bothered to try and maintain otherwise. My spreadsheet was strictly "live" - I recorded vendor, date, price, etc, but once the wine was all gone I deleted the line, so things I don't have in stock now I have no historical record of.
But the ability of CT to keep the TNs is the killer feature. I've had 5 TNs for 96 St Henri over 7 years on there, all tidily in sequence, which I really can't do any other way. Plus, organising the TN's into events and having them viewable is a terrific feature - especially for non-CT users, who can go to the site and see such things.
Obviously, community TNs are of mixed value, and since I don't give scores I'm not concerned about average values and such, which seem to bother a lot of people.
And if I was a single man with disposable income to spend on expensive foreign wines, and subscribing to Jancis, Burghound, etc, I'd be thrilled to have their notes viewable in CT too. I suggested to Campbell he might think about CT integration for WF - he's considering it.

I read somwewhere that Eric LeVine was responsible for writing all the error messages when working for Microsoft - no wonder he's written such a great programme. If anything would have given you great insight and experience, it's detailing and handling the mistakes in Microsoft programmes...

cheers,
Graeme

[JDSJDS]

I'm a big fan and user of Cellartracker. Of course using it to keep track of your cellar is very useful, but the mulitple notes on wines through time are even more valuable. Of course, not all notes are as useful as they could be, but it's the only way to get a sense of where a wine is at right now, and how it might be open or closed when you are considering popping a bottle. Really, how useful is one review of a wine a few weeks after it has been bottled? That's what most critics provide. It's much better to have viewpoints over time, I think, as all wine changes considerably over time.

And being able to view reports over you consumption over time, by region, by varietal, etc is fun as well, as is the Wine list feature. The one part of the report section I hate is looking at purchases over time - it's very sobering to see how much I spend on bloody grape juice! But it's actually helped me keep my purchases in check lately.

[AndrewCowley]

I use it mainly for the tasting notes. The drinking windows are useful too, however I find having another drinking window on top of those published by JH, JO, etc... tends to just add to the confusion. Whose drinking windows do you trust the most? I am still to figure that out.

[fatdoi]

I started using it (same name as well) about 1/2 year ago, painful at first but once got 90% of things in, it was a joy to use it. At least i don't have to be totally relying on my brain to remember all the wines & by printing my own wine list, I can really see how my style/purchasing has changed through the years.... also reading others tasting notes gave me alot of kudos on purchasing/auctioning the wines I'm looking at.