Cellar tracker

[RichS]

Has anyone ever used this? Any views?

http://www.cellartracker.com/classic/intro.asp

What I'm actually really looking for is something that'll say "you have x bottles of y vintage that mature in z years, at your average run-rate you need to buy n bottles maturing in y years to keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed". Or even some bloody guidance somewhere as to how to calculate it yourself with a biro and a bit of paper.

It's the sommelier's night off, before you ask.

[majordad]

Sorry but the free version wont do that for you, neither will the pay one IMHO . It s good though, and I use it, when I remember !

[LooneyTunes]

RichS said:

Has anyone ever used this? Any views?

http://www.cellartracker.com/classic/intro.asp

What I'm actually really looking for is something that'll say "you have x bottles of y vintage that mature in z years, at your average run-rate you need to buy n bottles maturing in y years to keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed". Or even some bloody guidance somewhere as to how to calculate it yourself with a biro and a bit of paper.

It's the sommelier's night off, before you ask.

Eric has built a good product with CellarTracker - I use it a great deal when looking for insight into drinking windows (there are some reviewers who know what they're talking about) - but you can do what you want with Excel.

My cellar log includes cells and calculus that:
1) Allows you to enter a maturity window in a YYYY - YYYY format
2) Extract the start and end years
3) Split the difference
4) Add the difference to the start date (rounding as appropriate)

It's only a rough guide that can then be overruled as appropriate but provides a quick overview.

It's then a simple matter to filter by target drink date or run a pivot table to get exactly what you said you wanted.

I would suggest though that knowing you have "x bottles of y vintage that mature in z years" is less useful than knowing that in year XXXX you have x bottles ready for drinking. As a result, I also chart the maturity dates so that I can see what the maturity curve of my cellar looks like (so that I can see if I have a lot maturing at a particular point in time).

Ultimately its a futile exercise as, no matter how much wine you have, you'll find occasions when you don't have a "perfect" wine to hand.

Simple calculation that might help.
If:
1) You like your wines, on average, at x years old;
2) You drink an average of y bottles a week;

Then:
Your annual consumption is 52y (+ a bit for heavier weeks) so you'll need to be feeding wine into your cellar at that sort of rate to stay flat.

But (and this is the killer) if you're buying wine on release and ageing then you'll need a cellar sized at "x times 52y". So, if you like your wines at 10y/o and drink two bottles a week you need approx a 1000 bottle cellar being fed at a rate of ~100 bottles a year (to replace what you're drinking)!

Top tip: offsite storage will prevent your wife from realising the the true extent of any "liquid assets" you hold.

[RichS]

That's really helpful, thanks. Yes, I see the positive benefits of "off-siting"... Helps you also to avoid "just seeing if this case is ready to drink yet".

[LooneyTunes]

However, you've also identified there the main drawback of offsite storage: being unable to see when a case is maturing.

Wine Society and Berrys (plus I suspect a couple of others) now allow partial cases withdrawals which helps get round this problem.

Of course the other solution is to buy case (into storage) + a couple of singles (for home) so that you can taste a wine part way through its development and refine your drinking windows that way.