Dear CellarTracker member,

It has been an exciting 5 months since my last newsletter, so there are a number of things to update you on

NEW CONTENT CHANNELS

Last year I expanded upon the concept of pre-integrated 'Content Channels' from a mix of professional reviewers and respected bloggers. I am very excited to announce two new channels:

• VINTAGE TASTINGS: Reading about John Kapon's vinous exploits is enough to make anyone jealous. John oversees the auctions for New York’s Acker, Merrall, & Condit, America’s oldest wine shop, dating back to 1820. He also pens “Vintage Tastings,” an excellent email newsletter that reviews old, prestigious wines. From Champagne to Burgundy, Bordeaux to Piedmont and so much more, John frequently tastes simply remarkable wines and studiously and passionately describes his experiences. I have dined next to John (it is a little difficult to pry his attention away from his wine), but you only have to read a few of his reviews to see the fantastic result of that intense concentration.
• ROCKSS AND FRUIT: Lyle Fass' Rockss and Fruit is a gorgeously written blog and set of wine reviews from a hardcore, anti-establishment purist. His self-proclaimed "daily report of the wine wars from the front lines" takes a no-holds barred approach representing the "forces of good (natural, unique wines showing terroir) vs. the forces of evil (spoofulated, high alcohol boring wines that all taste the same)." Lyle doesn't mince words and is even known for the occasional rant, but his passion and palate are undeniable. (Astute CellarTracker users will notice that I actually unveiled this channel with no fanfare back in February, but it is certainly noteworthy as a new channel.)

These channels join the existing set of nearly 80,000 reviews from Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, Roy Hersh's For The Love of Port (with a newly revamped site), Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Library TV, and Bill Nanson's Burgundy-Report, all described here.

NEW FEATURES

You can always read about the new features here, but I wanted to call out a few areas of significant improvement:

• Improved barcode support on both the PC and Macintosh. Also of note are the fantastic dual-barcode labels with a perforated tear-off so you can easily keep a copy of the barcode even if a scanner is not handy. When anyone ever asks me what my own favorite feature is on CellarTracker, I always turn to the barcoding support without which I would be a wreck.
• Significant performance improvements, especially when you click MY CELLAR. (Performance is always an ongoing challenge as the site grows, so every few months I tend to place special effort on hardware and software optimization.)
• User-interface cleanup on the wine details pages, specifically aimed to "tame the mass of data" for the busiest of wines. (And lots of new options so that each registered user can tune the display as they wish.)
• And while still in a somewhat embryonic state, I have added several building block pieces on the road to much richer "social networking" functionality. These include the following:
1. The ability for each user to designate favorite authors and to ignore specific authors.
2. Much better exposure for the "cellar buddy" feature so you can build a circle of virtual friends who can see your wine list.
3. Each user can now create their own public or private profile (complete with photo), and user handles throughout the site are linked to the profile pages. For example, here is my grinning profile. Please take a moment to update your own profiles here.
4. Ultimately these features will lead to a richer ability for users to interact with each other IF THEY SO CHOOSE. And of course, for those users who just want to use CellarTracker a cellar management tool, I have not lost focus on that core aspect of the site.
• Improved FAQ and documentation.
• And there is so much more to come over the rest of the year...

A NICE ARTICLE...

In a recent article by Mike Steinberger in the World of Fine Wine entitled "The Future of Wine Writing", CellarTracker was prominently noted as a "challenge to the established order," something which I tried hard to place in an appropriate context. I highly recommend reading this thoughtful piece. (On a separate note, even before this great article, I was already big fan of this publication and of Mike Steinberger's thoughtful writing there, on Slate and elsewhere.)

METRICS

It has been a noteworthy several months with several BIG milestones passed including more than 50,000 registered users, more than 500,000 tasting notes, and, a quiet 'behind the scenes' milestone of more than 10,000 unique, paying subscribers. I am DEEPLY thankful for all of your generous support, especially given the fact that CellarTracker is a 'voluntary payment' site.

Since its launch in 2004, registration has grown to more than 52,000 members. On an average day, you are adding 12,000 bottles to the site for a total of 8.7 million bottles inventoried. The database includes more than 470,000 wines from 42,123 producers, easily the largest of its kind. The CellarTracker community has also emerged as an abundant source of wine reviews with more than 800 wines reviewed in a typical day for a total of 560,000 wine reviews, all written by you, real wine enthusiasts. Peer or 'amateur' reviews are not a replacement for those written by professional critics, but to put these numbers in perspective, you are generating as many reviews in 2 weeks as the Wine Spectator publishes in an entire year. You have created the largest collection of wine reviews in the world, all freely available for the wine-loving community to enjoy. The site is also quickly becoming one of the most heavily visited wine websites with more than 13 million page views each month from more than 250,000 unique users.

The bottom line is that with each new user, CellarTracker gets more useful for everyone. All of this is a testament to the passion that wine inspires and power of community, core principles of CellarTracker from its inception.

Finally and most importantly, I want to thank all of you for your participation, support, encouragement and suggestions. It is my honor and pleasure to serve you!

Cheers!
Eric LeVine
www.CellarTracker.com