When Was the Last Time You Did an Inventory?

WINE TALK
61

Astroglide or KY?

62

Even talking about inventory sets people on edge.

63

I do the same. I enjoy doing wine inventory, it gives me a chance to at least glance at everything I have and think about whether something is getting ready to be consumed or needs to sleep longer. And I usually find about a dozen errors, wines I drank, wines I bought and didn’t add to inventory, wines in the wrong place…

64

I’m 65 and I’m quirky too.

To answer the OP. My last inventory was slightly over 2 years ago. I did the CT print out as noted above. I did another print out 3 months ago, but haven’t had the time to inventory. Most of my wine is labeled and in brown shippers in my basement. When I condense these as I drink down, I don’t always make a notation on the box. My other issue is when a winemaker such as Myriad makes a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Cabernet Sauvignon G3. When you’re bending over picking up bottles from the box, the small print (G3) can be overlooked. Sometimes I’ll pull the wrong bottle and not know it until I go looking for it a year later. By that time I may or may not have figured out the error.

Keep in mind my cellar is (only) 210 bottles. That’s down from 250. Yeah yeah. I know. What am I complaining about. But this is part of my (if I my quote my quirky friend above), quirkiness.

#Embracing65

65

I probably should inventory. I am missing 4 bottles of '96 Dujac Ech right now. Can’t find where I buried the damn things. Know they are in the cellar somewhere…

66

Every year or two, to correct the missed bottles in/out, but also to move newer bottles down to the more inaccessible places in the cellar, and to unearth bottles that are ready / near ready / over-mature to locations it’s easier to grab them from.

My stash isn’t huge, but it’s still a fair amount of work, the approach being

  1. Print out CT inventory by location
  2. Take each location / bin in turn, empty all (except perhaps the really buried stuff that is destined for the long term)
  3. Mark the missing or unlogged bottles on the printout & mark any change of bin (I try to minimise this)
  4. Replace in the bin according to likely drinking date
  5. Repeat for each bin
  6. Update in CT

Due one of these sessions soon, possibly next weekend

67

As I am also 65, but not quirky, I do it the same way as Ian just posted, every year or two. Averaging 750 bottles in 4 locations over the past ten years, and I haven’t found the collection off by more than 2%.

The problems mostly crop up when shifting a bottle from one location to another, but the Bulk Relocate feature helps tame that issue.

Chapeaux to Monsieur Levine!

68

Merci vielmal!

For me, with 9,397 total bottles purchased since 2002, I have come up with a total of 9 bottles that I had to mark as “Missing or presumed drunk.”

I was perfect for about 8 years, but life and some transatlantic moves got the best of me. Still, not a bad hit ratio.

69

Thinking about going to a scan/barcode system when I finish the cellar in a few months… Any guidance, is it actually helpful?

70

I’ve done some work setting this up on cellars for other people. There is a lot of work up front printing the bar codes and attaching them. Then there is the maintenance of making more with each new addition to the cellar. Some of these cellars the owners had assistants to do a lot of this work.

Some people swear by it. They like the ease just using the scanning gun when they pull a bottle.

I think it’s a matter of how much time you want to spend doing the extra sort of organizing and labeling this entails. Plus how diligent you are about marking your bottle consumed from your inventory.

Personally I don’t think the extra work for bar codes is worth it if you are not a business with the need for accurate inventorying.

I should note that CellarTracker is set up to make bar codes and print them without a lot of extra work from the user.

71

Most recent: two weeks ago. As several others have said, I try to do about once a year, without sweating a particular date, but it had probably been 2 years. ~50 bottles drunk or given away without recording – way more than I’d have guessed, as I feel as though I record pretty religiously. ~15 moved or misrecorded the location originally. Half a dozen incorrectly recorded as drunk (pulled but returned without noting the return?). Not a single arrival that I had failed to record; I guess I’m more consistent on that front!

– Matt

72

Organizing the wine cellar is an outlet that allows me to be mellow about other stuff in my life over which I have no control. Like the myriad of packed, semi-unpacked and unpacked boxes from our downsizing move last week.

Between bottle tags and religious use of CellarTracker I can almost always pinpoint every bottle.

73

I love that phrase, but altered it a tad…“Missing and presumed drunk.”

Could apply to me, or the bottle! [cheers.gif]

74

The one good thing about moving everything to open storage is that I have 2 storage companies doing inventory for me now.

75

I am trying to be good at it. But, I still found few days ago some bottles I did not account for (as well as bottles accounted that I don’t have- though only a handful of the latter)

76

My carrier requires a quarterly inventory. I know I’m off because stray bottles keep showing up in the cellar. However, I’m reasonably comfortable that my inventory is pretty close to accurate.

77

Never

78

I finally put all my wines into CellarTracker about three years ago, so then. All my wines are in my cellar in my basement, so I don’t have to worry about off-site mistakes, only my own mistakes.

I am sure there are a few mistakes (there are even a few mistakes I have found over the years in how I entered wines into CellarTracker) but I have been pretty good with inflow and outflow, so I don’t think there are too many yet.

My bigger issue is I need to reorganize. When I first built my new cellar a couple of years ago, I had things pretty well organized by producer, but with inflows and outflows, the cellar is not as well organized anymore.

79

I just did . Rainy day in NY, and I just bought a case or so last week that neeeded to be put away. Have a under cabinet kitchen wine fridge and store the rest in the basement .

Started with 83 bottes . Added 1 I found and removed 9 that were not previously accounted for, so I now have 75 bottles.

Surprised it was offf by so much (percentage wise). Have to remind the wife to let me know when she consumes wine , I guess .

80

I try and inventory 2 to 3 times a year.
Despite trying to keep it accurate, I always find bottles I didn’t know I still had, and some I thought I had, that i don’t. Usually just a few.