CellarTracker « My Wine Education

CellarTracker

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Kevin and I have started to acquire a rather unwieldy wine collection. There are wines everywhere! Upstairs, downstairs, in boxes … OK, so we need a second wine refrigerator – possibly one that will hold whites and reds. We have over 80 bottles. I realize that by real world standards that’s small, but still I’m impressed. I had no idea. A good number of those are aging, with the furthest Drink By date being 2016, so they’ll be sitting in the wine fridge for a while.

My tasting notes are all crazy too. I keep them in a Tasting Notebook, complete with wine label. But there’s really no rhyme or reason to the notebook either, and no simple way to find out what we drank and if we liked it.
Enter Cellar Tracker. I had originally tried to create an Access database, but that didn’t work out very well. I didn’t find Access user friendly and I didn’t have the time to learn more about it. But Cellar Tracker does the same thing – it organizes our wine. It lists everything we have cellared, plus tasting notes for everything we have consumed. It has most wines already entered – I just have to enter in the purchase location/cost and any personal notes I might have before (or after) drinking.

The best thing about Cellar Tracker is that it’s a universal database.
I can search for, say, a 2003 Ledson Pinot Noir from the Russian River
Valley. Cellar Tracker will pop up with tasting notes for everyone
subscribed (over 10,000 people) who have tried that wine. When I enter
my own information, I can see how many other bottles exist in the
community, what the average community cost was, and other things.
Cellar
Tracker is also SHAREWARE. Technically, you can use it for free without
ever having to pay. Until recently it was freeware, and it hasn’t
changed too much. But once I got past 50 bottles, I figured I ought to
pay the guy his $20. It’s really a great deal. It saves me a lot of
time and gives me guidance.
We can now access our wine info
anywhere and anytime that there is internet access (there’s even a
mobile site). We’re geeks who love wine …