I keep a separate excel spreadsheet called Wines Ordered which lists by merchant all pending wines. When I order a wine I list it there. If I am not home when I order a wine, I email myself a reminder or flag the confirmation email from the store. When shipping season arrives, I know what merchants to contact. When they wines arrive, I delete them off that list. I must admit that each year or two I find a wine I ordered but forgot to enter on the spreadsheet. So I need a better system of flagging those confirmations from my email…maybe putting each of them in a separate email folder.
And I agree…I never add these wines into my inventory until they arrive…too many times a merchant could not find the wine when ready to ship or it ended up being a different wine and the order gets cancelled.
Different subject, perhaps, but although a Cellar Tracker subscriber, I have never put my cellar on it. Have wondered how much hassle it would be and what if any benefit I would gain over my current system…except the ongoing appraisal of your wines would be cool, unless I am mistaken about how that works.
I used to just use an Excel spreadsheet, but didn’t keep up with it as diligently as I’d have liked. Things got lost in the shuffle during an international move a few years back when I left a bunch of bottles in a friend’s cellar. The upside is that when I went to pick them up earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised by bottles of Dujac CSD, Leoville las Cases, and DRC that I’d completely forgotten about.
Now I’ve joined the ranks of Cellartracker users, which is great, but probably means I won’t experience that kind of windfall again.
Everything about CT is superior to a spreadsheet system, in my opinion. Valuation is a big one, as is the ability to see reports of what you’ve spent over various time periods, consumed over time periods, etc. and to see your cellar sliced and diced in many ways without having to manipulate your spreadsheet. What are my top 10 producers? What % of my cellar is white versus red? How many unique wines do I have? How much have I spent over the years on XX producer versus YY producer? Which of those is worth more now? Tons and tons of questions like that, which it is probably possible to determine with your spreadsheet, but much more cumbersome, even if you’re an Excel whiz. If you are really only interested in a total number of bottles, I suppose the spreadsheet is fine.
It’s probably relatively easy for you to upload your sheet. There’s a function for it, and Eric and his team are a big help. How difficult it will be depends on how well your wine descriptors match what’s in the system and thus how many can be identified. But once it’s in, I think you’ll be very happy. I have never heard a single person say it was a waste of time.
Spookily I did mine over the weekend as well. Still putting the updates into CT and doubt I’ll get accurate numbers in/out but ~ 1 in 25 not removed when drunk, with slightly lower numbers not added to CT when I bought them. A handful missing at the last audit turned up in this one.
One thing I do try to do as part of the audit, is to restack the mature wines to the top and the recently acquired cellaring wines to the bottom. Doing that really does help when I dive in to grab a bottle for the evening meal, knowing that the most likely candidates are on top & hence easy to see / get to
I must say that this is a feature I do not find that great on cellartracker. Maybe because I buy a good bit of wines of fairly small production (Burgundy, late harvest German wines) and have a decent amount of wine with some age on them, but I find the valuations to be inconsistent and head scratching.
I’ve been keeping my CT very up to date but sometimes I miss drinking a bottle and have to adjust afterwards. CT on my phone is just so darn useful, at home, at Costco, at K&L, pretty much anywhere…
I try to keep CT up to date so that I don’t have to do an inventory. I’ve only ever done one, in 2009 when I switched to cellartracker from excel spreadsheets.
With due respect your current system for flagging pending wines sounds like a decent amount of work with self-admitted issues.
The pending function in CT is so much easier to work with. No managing emails and email folders. Just click on pending and see what’s out there. When it arrives, mark it as arrived and chose the storage location. It couldn’t be easier. And as Sarah mentions the reporting around pending is great.
Pen and paper works for Me.
Have been using a ring binder with accounting ledger sheets, since mid 90’s, to keep track of the cellar.
I can’t do any statistic moves though. -But the wines are divided into sub-categories of course, so it’s not just a long list of mixed wines.
I also note My pending stuff like this.
Great joy from searching for a special wine in the binder, much harder physically finding it in the cellar.
The problem (which not everyone, including Eric it seems, see it as such) is that CT looks first to any recent auction prices of the wine as the value before looking at purchase information. As a result, some recently purchased bottles may have a “value” well below what you paid - that may or may not be the correct way to do it, but it does create some oddities especially when auction markets are thin for your particular selection of wines.
I just went through an inventory as well. Had been a couple of years since the last one.
Cellartracker works great for tracking your cellar and pending purchases.
I tend to be a data geek and enjoy all the reporting available on purchases, consumption and trends over time
When doing the inventory this time, decided to add barcoding to all the bottles. Bought a dymo printer.
Quick set-up and easy to print out labels for all the bottles in your cellar…
Wish I had done this years ago.
A 5 second scan of the bottle to track when you drink or move the location.
Highly recommend for anyone who is not doing this on CT, or is considering adding their bottles.
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