Interesting. Do you mind saying why you chose VinoCell over CellarTracker? Does it do something better than CellarTracker? Or was it just a random choice?
I was aware that VinoCell exists, but I really don’t know anything about it. So so would live to hear the perspective of a VinoCell user.
Id be interested as well! I don’t think ive ever heard specifics about the tool from anyone so id love to learn the details, especially since i highly respect @Jeff_M1 and know he is a savvy collector with a great palate/ taste in wine 
200 would fit into a wine fridge, so you would be able to look at them and see what is what. If it gets a lot bigger, there are things like Excel and Cellar Tracker, but physically I put regions near each other. I have a bunch of Spanish wine so that goes in one place, roughly by region but not obsessively, same with France and Italy and CA and WA and Austria and Hungary. The rest is kind of “everything else”.
Maybe its because i have room but I haven’t found it difficult to find things when grouped by variety, then region, then producer. There is a bit of shifting bottles that takes place after large purchases but it doesnt take much time.
I also find this is easier when taking guests to the cellar to select bottles. Just did this two days ago with some guests who wanted pinot. Asked them for preferences and quickly pulled a number of bottles from which they could review and select what we drank.
I used Cellar Tracker years ago when the collection was only about 350 bottles. Mostly due to a belief that this is how one manages their cellar. Until I realized that it was wasted time for me. I remembered all the bottles and where they were, so tracking was unnecessary. Now with over 1500 bottles I still don’t find the need for software.
I enter them all in Cellar Tracker, and in the cellar itself I have alphabetized blocks of shelves reserved for American Reds, French Reds, and Other reds, then another section with whites/rose/bubbles.
Well, an interesting aside I’d love to hear people discuss - for those with huge collections of wine, are these mostly or all high end bottles? Because IMHO a lot of wines are not meant for aging.
I’m operating with a wine fridge at home and external storage. I am sorting the incoming bottles that will go to external storage into boxes based on when I expect to drink them. The next couple of years are covered by the wine fridge, but the idea is that in a few years I will pick up the boxes that say 2027.
Not exactly optimal, but that will have to do until I someday have my dream cellar…
I’m another VinoCell user. I chose it because I really like the graphical representations of the various racks and boxes in my cellar. Or cellars (I have passive overflow storage under the stairs. And some more in the mechanical room that I started to use after I bought a heat pump water heater which keeps the room nice and cool).
I am not going to claim a “huge” collection by any means, but I think that, for most of us who have been accumulating for some time, the answer is no - these are not all high end bottles. Obviously, there are exceptions, including on this board, but anyway…
I don’t at all agree, though, that only high end wines will age well (I don’t really know or care what “meant for” aging means, only whether the wines last and improve over time for my palate). If you choose well made, balanced wines, even very modest examples can and do age beautifully. We have many cases of wines like Riesling (both dry and off-dry), NV champagne, Loire chenin blanc, nebbiolo from Alto Piemonte, village burgundy, even albarino that were inexpensive and are absolutely age worthy. The only wine in our cellar which we really think of as drink now is still rose. Pretty much everything else we look at on a trajectory of 5, 10, 20 or more years of development ahead. Only very rarely in our 25 or so years of this hobby have we had a wine we really misjudged, which went over the hill too quickly. Sure, a few case ends that we didn’t get to which ended up being a little past prime, but even those usually have some pleasure to impart and, at the very least, teach you something.
I put everything in cellar tracker in the location they’re in (house, offsite, offshore). The house and offsite I generally group by type of wine then region but it’s a loose grouping. I might end up with a Rhone next to a Loire but it probably won’t be next to something from Napa.
Which NV Champagnes are you aging?
It also depends on what you consider aging. Just this week, we drank a 2021 Sandar & Hem rose that we both felt benefited from the extra cellar time. I don’t know that two years counts as aging but it is one reason why we have a cellar. We rarely drink anything within the first year of release.
Well, last night we had a gorgeous Egly-Ouriet rosé Nov 2014 disgorgement. I understand that isn’t an inexpensive wine now, but it was when we bought it!
Seriously, though, the answer is pretty much all of them!
I think almost all NV Champagne benefits from at least 3 years or so on cork, and many 5+ including our house pours like Hébrart BdB. When we reload, we put the new cases in the back for a few years. Lilbert for sure, Diebolt Prestige, Roederer 242, Agrapart Terroirs, Rodez, Krug (same deal as Egly of course), and many others. I’m not as convinced on zero dosage wines, but those are not my preference anyway.
Thanks Sarah! Ive been aging some NV Gaston Chiquet Brut and NV Aubry Brut to see how it changes. The Chiquet I opened did well, the Aubry not as much. Will have to check out the ones you listed as well.
I use cellartracker and just put new bottles in any empty spots. I used to try to organize by region but as your tastes change and your storage gets full that will become more difficult. I just want to know where it is and that is what cellartracker does.
I didn’t have the same luck with the Egly rose. They were great at 5 but the three bottles I let go to 10 years post disgorgement all ended up down the drain. These do seem to be the exception as I have other NV at the same age that were great. Only here bottles and from different disgorgements and all purchased from the same source.
Sorry to hear. Not sure what happened there. I’ve had 11 bottles from that same 2014 disgorgement in the last year and all but one corked bottle have been great, no hint of oxidation. I don’t think they will go another 5 years, mind you, but who knows? I still have 2 or 3 getting close to 15, mostly for science. Will have to try one.
Oh no! With >1700 bottles, I have many wines that are not high end. I have a large collection of German Kabinetts that I drink regularly from. Many Brunellos, too, that I like with food.
One great advantage of cellartracker is the ability to identify whats drinking now. Means you can easily look through a scaled down list when you’re deciding what to pull out to drink. It’s easy to forget about bottles.
The most important factors as regards physical location of bottles is having the ready-to-drinks easily accessible and the wait-5-years out of temptation. This can be tricky if you have double depth cubes like I do. They’re super efficient for space but awkward if you need to get at a bottle in the back row. I try to put the not-ready bottles at the back but if I’m adding a newly purchased not-ready bottle, getting it to the back is a pain. Any genius ideas out there?