What wine tracking software do you use for your bottles and reviews? I normally just toss reviews into these forums or into articles I'm writing. However, Peter was suggesting I use a bottle tracking system and scan in bottles as I get them to help keep track of what vintages and such I have.

I looked at CellerTracker but that's an online system and I really want something on my home PC. I've seen many websites die over the years and don't want to lose my data or rely on something external.

Do any of you guys use PC software?

I found this one -

http://www.amazon.com/Multimedia-Wine-Companion-Ultimate-Cellar/dp/B000GWFRG4

Multimedia Wine Companion: The Ultimate Wine Cellar Log & Expert System

I have never used it though.

Thanks! That seems close but it makes you hand enter each bottle.

I've been doing some searching and it is amazing to me that there aren't lots of options out there. I want software that resides on my PC and that I can scan bottles into the system with. Surely there must be something out there?

There are a lot of PC based systems and they all have the same major drawback that creating your own database or using a spreadsheet does, and that is that you have to enter a lot of data -- indeed you have to enter every single item about the wine that you want to record.

If you want, as Lisa does, to scan the barcode on the back label of a wine bottle and have the wine instantly recognised and the data fields propagated, it isn't going to happen, because there is no database of wine label barcodes. And even if there was, it would be out of date with the next vintage.

That's why an online system has the advantage: the chances are that the wine you want to add to your database has previously been added by another user and all you have to do is say add 2 bottles of that to my account. And if you buy a new vintage which isn't in the database, you take an existing record of a previous vintage and create a new entry by changing the vintage.And if you have a wine from a winery that is not in the database, you take an existing entry that closely matched (e.g. appellation and variety) and create a new entry by changing the winery name.

So why Cellar Tracker rather than Snooth or Corqed? First reason is the sheer number of wines in the database. "more than 79,000 members, adding or removing nearly 12,000 bottlesa day, a total of 12.5 million bottles. The database includes more than 614,000 wines from 51,000 producers"

Second reason is the amount of facilities the product has, and third reason is the fantasticly responsive support. (not to mention that usage is free although a voluntary subscription is requested, one which I happily now pay after using CT for some time and growing to appreciate it. And, for the first time ever, actually knowing what wines I had!

Now to barcodes:

Lisa wants to scan a bottle and for it to update the database. You can do this with CT but with this proviso. Not all the wines have their barcodes associated with them in the database because people haven't entered them when adding the wine -- I never do -- and also because the same wine can have different barcodes depending on the market it is sold in.

But, CT is intended for barcode use. The idea is that when you enter a wine in CT it generates a unique barcode label which you stick on your bottle and when you consume the bottle you swipe the barcode and update the database. I don't print the barcode because I don't consume enough wines to make it worthwhile, but I do print a small label with the barcode number so I can identify the bottle (and as a way of ensuring and identifying that that bottle has been entered in the database.

So what about the risk of the creator/owner of Cellar Tracker being run over by a bus?

You can easily download(and upload) your CT database as an Excel spreadsheet as backup and to import it into any PC database you might fancy.

What else? Thousands ot tasting notes, create a TN for your wine and it will format it for insertion into many different forums and post it into several at the click of a button, integrated with Twitter.......

Give it a go...

You do make a compelling argument for the system! I suppose it's interesting that I am so very much against having my data on an external server, when I put so much of my life on the web. All of the websites I own are completely under my control - nobody else has access to the raw data, I back my files up, they are all mine. I don't use gmail for example - I don't have my private, personal mail in any one else's third party hands. I feel very strongly about that. So this falls into the same category - I don't want a third party server having my private information.

Alcohol falls into the "medical" area and I can imagine for example insurance companies getting their hands on that data and then making judgments on people based on what they see there. I just feel strongly that that sort of information should not be out of a person's individual control. I'll think about this some more!

I understand your concerns, but...

You can create a anonymous account, with totally privacy which Eric LeVine (the creator/operator) calls paranoid setting.

So no one can identify you (except, I suppose, from your IP address on the server logs -- but you can anonymise that via proxies.)

As for back ups, if the site goes belly up* you are no worse off than you are now, but better off, since you'll have all your wines on Excel with all the appellation data that you didn't have to type in.


*unlikely except on occasion of Eric's incapacity since I believe he is making a good living from the voluntary payments/

Regarding privacy see http://www.cellartracker.com/ow.asp?PrivacyOptions

Regarding some neat features see http://www.cellartracker.com/ow.asp?HiddenGems

I will try to get used to the idea, it is really funny that I don't mind online banking at all, and do pretty much everything online, but I refuse to have "personal databases" in someone else's server. It's a quirk of mine I suppose. My entire life is online, but I want it under my control as much as possible.

In the meantime though it is fascinating to me that apparently nobody sells a commercial product to fill this need! Surely at least one company would have seen the market and jumped into it? The database issue isn't a serious one, they could just provide automated updates of the wine database just like anti-virus people do ...

The wine database at CT has been created by the users and is continually being updated by users.

Naming standards are gently enforced by Eric -- one particularly complex issue is Burgundy vineyard nomeclature, another is naming of blends. 'Red Bordeaux blend' is preferred for any red wine with more than one of the five Bx varieties, but historically some entered Cabernet-Merlot others Merlot-Cabernet &etc

Doesn't matter if its a single user database, but to get the best from the huge 12 million plus bottles and growing every hour it important.

There is, AFAIK, no free open public database of wines such as the open free-DB of CDs.

That is so amazing to me. I am so used to iTunes having this massive, free database of every record ever created anywhere in the universe. I have a lot of extremely eclectic CDs and I've never had to hand-enter a CD unless it's from a local band that I was supporting. To think that the wine industry doesn't have some sort of database of wine bottles is just bizarre. There are DVD databases and book databases. With all the interest in Wine, surely there should be a wine database?

And even let's accept there isn't a wine database for some reason. Why aren't there more wine software options? Are there really NO people in the world that want to manage their bottles in some sort of rational way without using CellarTracker online? Does nobody want to have at-home PC software doing it? Look at how many billions of copies of birding software sells every year, tracking birds. I love birding, but are there really that many more birders than wine drinkers?

I think there are a lot of wine database software packages around. Certainly many adverts for them.

But you can't beat CT for all the reasons I've mentioned.

Well, the CD database is user generated*. But recordings are a lot easier, there's one.

With wine you have a new one every year theres all the appellations and I'd guess many many more brands and names every year than recordings.

*As is the CT database.

I'm not sure that the CD database is user generated. I'm sure some tracks are put in by users - but if you go to the iTunes sales site they have millions and millions of CDs in there that they sell, and they have the track names, artist names, record company names and everything for every item they sell. All of that came from them when they prepared all those songs for sale.

That's a very interesting question. How many new songs are released every year? How many new wines are released every year?

Well I have found that the iTunes system currently has over 10 million songs available for sale. So those are all songs they have cataloged, indexed and made available on their site.

According to a wine site I tracked down, there are just under 8,000 wineries in the world right now. If we assume each winery has about 10 wines each, that would be 80,000 new wines each year.

OK a RIAA report indicates that about 35,000 new albums are released each year in the US. So about 8 tracks per album, that is 280,000 new songs each year, in the US alone.

The advent of selling music online via downloads has changed the landscape regarding indexing music...

As yet, we can't download a glass of our favourite wine, and buying online is held back by a compination of restrictive laws in the largest potential market and the cost and awkwardness of delivery to the end consumer.

The CD database I was referring to is http://www.freedb.org/

I definitely agree 100% about the insane shipping laws!! I am more than happy to sign for every bottle I receive, but I should have that choice to receive any bottle I want. I will pay the taxes. I just want to be able to get them.

I will keep up my letter writing on the topic!

When we first started our wine cellar, I kept an Excel spreadsheet. That was quickly outdated and a nuisance to keep up. My husband thought he could write a program, but it would be prone to the same problem: entering each wine by hand. Scanning seems the perfect solution. Retail outlets obviously have the software, but I wonder if someone still has to enter their inventory by hand.

I'll check out the link provided. Thanks.

According to their site: One of the most valuable features of CellarTracker is the ability to print individual barcode labels for each bottle in your cellar. Using these barcodes, you can easily and accurately record consumed bottles as well as exercise the ability to batch update location and bin with the assistance of a barcode scanner. You can also add wine to your cellar by scanning an Existing UPC.

Right but again CellarTracker is an online system I want an off-line system, something that lives on my PC, not on an external server. So that's what I'm looking for.

I suppose I should at least test CellarTracker out at some point so I can compare it in my reviews to the other things I try.

The bar code number only identifies the bottle. Its just a number. The number is read by the scanner and a database searched for the details associated with that number.

Without such a database, the barcode number printed on a wine label is useless. CT's database contains many of the numbers with their details but it is not exhaustive although it can be updated by users.

I do agree completely, the scanner software needs to be able to match against a database of UPCs