• The core data on the site about which I am very, very anal are the actual definitions of the wines. The power of the site is in describing these accurately and in a way that is shared across all the users. When you click on the link in the upper left to Add Wine, that launches you into a little wizard where you pick/add your producer and then choose from current wines or add new ones.
• If you have an existing spreadsheet, database or data in a cellar management program, please read about the BULK IMPORT TOOL.
  
• Once you have the wine definition, you can start hanging lots of your own data off of it:
  • Inventory: All counts on the site are derived from rows in the Inventory table, one per bottle. Each bottle can have an associated size, location (Cellar, Seattle Wine Storage, Kitchen Fridge etc) as well as a detailed bin location (case #12, r1c12 etc.) Inventory can also have an associated purchase, so that you can tell where you sourced the bottle, especially if you ever buy the same wine at different times, prices and from different sources.
    
  • Purchases: these are optional, but they are great to have. If you have purchase data the best thing to do is add the purchase, and then as part of that screen you can also have the wine added to inventory automatically. For pending future purchases (from a website etc), there is an option to mark the purchase as not delivered, and then there is a nice list (click Pending Deliveries on the left) to see all of these pending purchases. When you do get the wine it is just a few clicks to add them to inventory from this view.
    
  • Tasting notes: Please type ‘em in, share, we all want to see what you think of a wine! In fact, that is the WHOLE point of this thing for me. If you enter your notes into the site, you can search them, select them and easily even publish individually or in batch to various wine bulletin boards. The site also contains links to filter the notes to just show notes from other users on wines currently in your cellar.
    
  • Consumption history: The site provides you with an editable history of the bottles you have consumed, gifted, bought from a restaurant wine list, returned as defective, sold or traded etc.
    
  • Personal data: You can also add a private note (gifted to Fred, he hated it), valuation (good for insurance purposes) and private drinking window.
    
  • Professional reviews: Each user can copy & paste reviews to which they want to refer to later. For copyright reasons, these are for the personal use of each user and not shared across the site.
  
  
• And of course, then you can start running lots of cool reports. There are too many to list, and I will be adding many more, all geared to helping you find the right bottles to drink now and to let the ones rest that need it.
  
• And there is lotsa other cool stuff: Custom barcoded labels so that you can identify every single bottle; a view tailored for your Blackberry or web-enabled cellphone (www.cellartracker.com/phone); a built in bulletin board so that you can ask questions and interact with other users; use Excel web-queries to suck your data down and do your own reports, pivots, charts, rudimentary backup etc.

1. Click “Add wine to my cellar” in Common Tasks.
   
2. Enter the producer or wine you want to enter into CellarTracker and click “Search” to search the database for that producer or wine. To limit your search to wine producer’s name only, select “Producer name” before clicking Search.
   
   • If the wine producer exists, CellarTracker will display the list of known producers that match your request. Select the producer you want and click on it to get a list of all known wines in CellarTracker by that producer.
     
     • If the wine you want exists in CellarTracker already exists in the vintage you want to enter, select the vintage and wine.
       
     • To add a different vintage of a known wine or a different wine based on a known wine, click “Add New Vintage or Wine Based on this…” for a wine. Make any necessary changes such as vintage or varietal and click “Click to Add New Wine.” For more information on this screen, see “Entering a new wine producer and wine into CellarTracker…”
   • If the wine producer does not exist, see “Entering a new wine producer and wine into CellarTracker…” for how to proceed.
3. Go down to Purchase Information and “click here to add a new purchase…”
   
4. Enter the number of bottles (quantity) of your purchase, bottle size, store, price, order notes, and any other information you wish to track. NOTE: To enter a new store, type it in the "add new store" text field next to the store combo box.
   
   • If the wine entered is in your cellar, just click “Add New Purchase” to add the wine to your inventory.
     
   • If the wine entered is a futures purchase or you haven’t taken delivery yet, select “Delivery is still pending” in the Delivery section and then click “Add New Purchase”.
5. The wine is now added to your current inventory or pending purchases.
   
6. To add another vintage of the same wine to your cellar, go to the Other Vintages section in the task bar and select the vintage if listed or select new vintage to add a new vintage of the same wine to your cellar.

1. If your search for a wine producer was not found in CellarTracker, click “CLICK HERE to create an ENTIRELY NEW WINE.”
   
2. CellarTracker will bring up the Edit Wine Information screen to let you enter the wine in question.
   
3. There are a number of fields to enter, but luckily the online help is very good for each field. However, let’s walk through entering a wine to show you what goes where. Though it is already in CellarTracker, this is how you would enter the 2001 Amphora Jacob’s Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon from Mounts Vineyard in Dry Creek Valley.
   a. Type – Red
   b. Vintage – 2001
   c. Producer – Amphora
   d. Varietal – Cabernet Sauvignon
   e. Designation – Jacob’s Ridge
   f. Vineyard – Mounts Vineyard
   g. Country – United States
   h. Region – California
   i. SubRegion – Sonoma County
   j. Appellation – Dry Creek Valley
   k. Options – Use this to set how the vineyard name is displayed for example
   l. UPC Code – Leave blank if it doesn’t exist or you don’t care to track it.
   
4. You have now entered a new wine into CellarTracker! To add it to your inventory, go to Purchase Information and click the “click here to add a new purchase…” link
   
5. Enter the number of bottles (quantity) of your purchase, bottle size, store, price, and any other information you wish to track. NOTE: To enter a new store, type it in the field below the combo box.
   
   • If the wine entered is in your cellar, just click “Add New Purchase” to add the wine to your inventory.
     
   • If the wine entered is a futures purchase or you haven’t taken delivery yet, select “Delivery is still pending” in the Delivery section and then click “Add New Purchase”.
6. The wine is now added to your current inventory or pending purchases.
   
7. To add another vintage of the same wine to your cellar, go to the Other Vintages section in the task bar and select the vintage if listed or select new vintage to add a new vintage of the same wine to your cellar.

1. Click “Add wine to my cellar” in Common Tasks from the CellarTracker's Home page or task bar.
   
2. Enter the producer of the wine you want to enter and click “Producer Name” to search the database for that producer.
   
3. If the wine producer exists, CellarTracker will display the list of known wines.
   
4. If the wine you want to enter into CellarTracker already exists and in the vintage you care about, select the vintage and wine.
   
5. Go to My Inventory and click “click here to edit MY inventory…”
   
6. Select Add and enter the bottle size, quantity, and location. Click “Update and Done” to add the wine to your inventory.

1. Select the wine to delete from inventory and bring up the wine summary page.
   
2. In the wine summary window, go to the “My Inventory” section and click the D next to the bottles in inventory.
   
   • Select the specific bottle by barcode or purchase or take the default bottle chosen to remove from inventory.
     
   • If you just drank the bottle and want to remove it from inventory, select "Drank from my cellar" under Track Consumption Data. Also, CellarTracker can help you track a return, sale or trade, gift, or purchase at a restaurant for this bottle. Select the appropriate choice for this bottle.
     
   • To add a tasting note for this bottle, enter the note and an optional corresponding score.
     
   • To remove the wine from inventory, click “Consume This Bottle”.

1. Select the wine to bring up the wine summary page.
   
2. Go to Professional Tasting History and “Click here to manually add a new professional (copyrighted) review...”
   
3. To view a professional review from Wine Advocate, International Wine Cellar (IWC) or Wine Spectator (assuming you have a valid subscription to the desired service), click WA, WS, or IWC and CellarTracker submits a search for the wine in question to find the review. If you want to enter a BurgHound, Purple Pages, or other publication review, obtain the review in question.
   
4. Select the main text of the review and copy it onto the clipboard.
   
5. Paste the review text into the main body of the professional review and enter the other information including the score, reviewer, and publication. To enter a BurgHound, Purple Pages, or other review, you will need to manually enter the publication and review the first time by typing the publication and reviewer into the text field below the combo boxes. CellarTracker will remember new publications and reviewers for future use. For Wine Advocate and International Wine Advocate reviews, you can copy and paste the URL of the review into the web page section to link back to the review later. Web links to Wine Spectator reviews are not supported, as they too long to enter into CellarTracker.
   
6. Click “Add Review” to submit the review and return to the wine summary page.

1. Select the wine to add a tasting note and click it to bring up the wine summary page.
   
2. Click "Add a tasting note" under Tasks (this wine) on CellarTracker's task bar
   
3. Add your review, date, and score and click “Add Tasting Note” to add your personal tasting note to be viewed by you and the rest of the CellarTracker community.

1. Download the CellarTracker webquery example spreadsheet by clicking "Download to Microsoft Excel" from Common Tasks from CellarTracker's Home page or Task bar.
   
2. Open the CellarTracker webquery.xls example spreadsheet
   
3. On the Login worksheet, enter your login name and password
   
4. If the External Data toolbar is not visible, enable it from View>Toolbars>External Data.
   
5. Click Refresh Data on the External Data toolbar and Excel will now download your cellar data to the spreadsheet.
   
6. Click Save to finish creating the offline copy of your cellar data.

1. Launch a supported web browser (Safari will NOT work)
   
2. Enter the desired URL for your query (see Creating and Editing CellarTracker Web Queries below) with your login and password
   
3. Once the web page loads, do a Select All (command A) and Copy (command C) all the contents of the query.
   
4. Launch Excel and open an existing or create a new worksheet
   
5. In a new worksheet, do a Paste (command V) to insert the previously copied web page
   
6. Excel will paste the tab-delimited contents correctly into columns as desired. Save the worksheet.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Vine

Eric;
 
I like the way the group report for the cellar looks as follows:  Vintage / Region / Producer.  This will facilitate choosing wine for consumption.  A further question would be can this custom "look" become the default look when I open the web page and press "My Cellar".  I'll try this now but last evening it did not work.  Cheers
 
Vine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Granger

I could not find any instructions for uploading a database into wine tracker. I use Excel and have thousands of bottles in my cellar and tens of thousands of tasting notes. I've spent decades getting and keeping this organized and its too daunting to enter this one wine at a time. I will enjoy the rest of the site and the people who contribute though.
thanks,
Joe Burke
Boston, MA

quote:

ORIGINAL: sjed55

I just started using CellarTracker and have a question regarding location management. I entered Racks 1 thru 20 for my cellar and when I ask for a location report it lists 1 then 10, 11, then 2,3,4 etc. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks - Scott      

quote:

ORIGINAL: Granger

I could not find any instructions for uploading a database into wine tracker. I use Excel and have thousands of bottles in my cellar and tens of thousands of tasting notes. I've spent decades getting and keeping this organized and its too daunting to enter this one wine at a time. I will enjoy the rest of the site and the people who contribute though.
thanks,
Joe Burke
Boston, MA

quote:

ORIGINAL: bflats

With the new link,  can I download purchases made in my Winebid.com account directly to my CellarTracker.....and if so, how?

quote:

ORIGINAL: jsm
A quick question that I didn't find the answer to on the board. Once I have entered a bottle without an associated purchase price - I don't seem to find a way to edit that particular data. I suppose I could delete the bottle and enter it again but that seems a bit clutzy. Am I right that that is the only work around?

quote:

ORIGINAL: mckelvey

Any thoughts on having wine pairing capabilities?  Perhaps key foods as an additional field in the public tasting notes section that could be searched for matches within your wine cellar.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Eric

quote:

ORIGINAL: jsm
A quick question that I didn't find the answer to on the board. Once I have entered a bottle without an associated purchase price - I don't seem to find a way to edit that particular data. I suppose I could delete the bottle and enter it again but that seems a bit clutzy. Am I right that that is the only work around?

Check out this thread: http://www.cellartracker.com/forum/Purchase_History/m_4309/tm.htm

One of these days, I am going to make this a LOT easier.

1. I am conducting a '98 tasting later this year. I see that a number of users have been able to setup a 'tasting event' wich comes up each time a featured wine is accessed. How do I do this?
   
2. Is there any way I can 'flag' these wines in my cellar prior to the tasting?