Cellar inventory, an enlightening, exhausting week!

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:33 pm

After avoiding the issue for several years, I started an inventory of my entire collection on Feb 26,06. I started with the port and ended somewhere in Madeira, with stops and accounts in Hungary, Argentina, the U.S. , Italy, etc. and France.

I completed the voyage today, March 5, 2006. The total number of bottles was about 300 less than my estimate of 1500. There were 1206. The value surprised me at $100 plus per bottle.

The port, counted first, was 244 bottles at $100 plus per bottle average. The old Madeira averaged $250 plus/bottle.

I arrived at an arbitrary value by taking one of the lowest average offers on Wine Searcher for each wine.

I am not sure what it means but it was good to know what was on hand and where it was and some inkling of what it is worth.

I am not sure if any university advance degree seekers have ever studied the evolution of a wine collection and its relative value. I don't think very many people start out with a plan , although I have seen strategies suggested in various publications.

Ours has been the evolution of natural preferences with no thought of investment or an increase of value but that has happened any way.
It tells me that we must keep enough insurance and an off site inventory in case of an unthinkable disaster .
We also must insure that our wine room and its climate controls get regular maintenance and have back up plans and systems.
We also can enjoy the satisfaction that an enjoyable hobby has the side effect of an investment. Those 2003 Novals I bought are similar to an IRA, if the need arose. If it does not, we will enjoy drinking them someday!
I will say that our port and Madeira collection are a cornerstone of our "cellar' comprising over 25% of the total value and will only increase.

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:42 am

Richard,

I assume that you put this into a spread sheet of some sort, right?

From there, it is an easy conversion to CellarTracker and well worth the time, albeit I must admit I have not done so, as of yet.

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 6:12 am

Yes, I did put it into a spread sheet, handwritten, line by line in a spiral notebook.
Isn't the CT guy, Eric Levine? He has invited me to do that before. This means I have more work to do!

jon bricken · Post by **jon bricken** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:17 am

I would echo Roy's advice.

Cellar tracker is a great management tool for your cellar even if you have to manually imput the information again.

The great aspects of cellar tracker are the different formats which you can display your information, the thousands of TN's and the ability to print wine lists.

All in all I find it worth the effort.

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 1:11 pm

Yes, Eric is a good friend and solid citizen. In 2003, he joined a local (Seattle Tasting Group) that I formed with some of the Ebob locals and it has been great. I wrote about him and CellarTracker in the most recent FTLOP Newsletter.

Ricardo · Post by **Ricardo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:02 pm

Impressive. I never have thought about backup refrigeration systems, regardless being a good, better rational ideia considering the 'collection' and overall value.

I was born in Madeira and lived there for 18 years. My fathers still live there. I knew that some Madeiras could be expensive but never knew the Madeira's Noval Nacional. Is there one, or the high value is related to the antiquity of the wine?

Congratulations and ... enjoy your wines

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:29 pm

Here is one more vote for Cellar Tracker, from a very happy user. It is much easier than you think to input them. Since almost all of the wines are already in the database, you just add number of bottles and location, etc.

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:31 am

Now that I have the data, and maybe I am duplicating my efforts, I will start using Cellar Tracker.

Eric LeVine · Post by **Eric LeVine** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:58 am

Richard, bulk import from a spreadsheet should not be TOO painful, and typically it is 10-15 as fast as entering it the old-fashioned way. You can read about the process here: http://www.cellartracker.com/bulkfaq.asp

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:05 pm

Eric,

These are handwritten numbers. They are written on the walls of the cave in order to save papyrus.
Seriously, they are handwritten in a spiral notebook and I don't know your format but once I make the data entry, maybe we will be set for life!

I am a believer, Eric, anything to prevent a long week like the last one.

Eric LeVine · Post by **Eric LeVine** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:17 pm

Well, handwritten needs the step of transposing. Look at the recommended spreadsheet. You don't need a lot of columns, just UserWine1 (your wine name, avoid typos), the quantity and the bottlesize. And if you store box or bin numbers you can fill out the Location and Bin columns.

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 8:15 pm

Eric,
I went to the CT site, I gave money, I could not figure it out. The site is a little too complicated and high tech for me.

I tried to enter a wine and all of this irrelevant stuff popped up.

I tried several times and it is bewildering. I tried the help site etc. I got very frustrated. It is NOT straightforward.
I need an IT guy to walk me through it.

Eric LeVine · Post by **Eric LeVine** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 8:24 pm

Richard, I always ask people to try first before sending $$$.

So let's say that you want to enter a Taylor wine.
1) Click the link to add a wine: http://www.cellartracker.com/pickproducer.asp
2) Type "taylor" but a lot of wines have that. So type "taylor port" and you get a more appropriate list of every such wine ever produced: http://www.cellartracker.com/pickproduc ... ickWine=on
3) Click on the specific vintage, e.g. the 2000 Vintage Port: http://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=5304
4) At this point, you are on the page for that wine. You can add as little or as much data as you would like. If you just want to track a count, then click on the link to "Add to inventory" pretty much right in the middle of the screen: http://www.cellartracker.com/editinvent ... iWine=5304
5) Type the count of bottles and press UPDATE.

Does this cover what you were trying to do? Once you learn how to do the above the site should be pretty straightforward.

If you disagree, I am happy to refund your $$.

Eric LeVine · Post by **Eric LeVine** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 8:36 pm

Well, after one email to me, two private messages and the post here, I won;t even wait. I reversed the charge on your card.

I am happy to answer questions and see if we can get you up the learning curve. Once people learn a few concepts (mostly what I describe in the previous post), things are pretty easy. That said, I know technology can be frustrating, and there is certainly a lot I would like to do on my site to make it easier.

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 9:23 pm

Richard,

It really is easy than it looks. I am not much of a computer geek myself, but if I can do it, than so can you. Like anything there is a learning curve, take your time and pook around a bit. There are a lot of features, several I probably don't use. But the basics of just entering type of wine and quantity is much easier than you think. Don't give up yet, if you can figure out how to get onto the internet then you can figure out CT.

Richard Henderson · Post by **Richard Henderson** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 10:44 pm

I am trying folks. It is something like buying a special present for Christmas and finding out assembly is required. I am not an assembler!!!

I will regroup, take a kinder , gentler approach. Start over with lowered expectations ( which is a good thing) and get it done.....but not today.

Al B. · Post by **Al B.** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:18 am

Richard,

Let us know how you get on. I have looked at the Cellar Tracker site and have poked around a bit but I was also put off by things not behaving the way that I expected them to.

I guess that I need to follow Eric's instructions (thanks Eric!) and also read through the help pages on the web site before I will be ready to use the facilities.

Its just finding the time to do it.

Incidentally, I track individual bottles where I acquire them from different sources (ie. price, date of acquisition, provenance) and label each individual bottle so that I can track them in this way. Does anyone know if Cellar Tracker can cope with this?

Thanks,

Alex

Eric LeVine · Post by **Eric LeVine** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:25 am

Yes, CellarTracker lets you associate specific bottles with specific purchases. So you can track with great precision. In the instructions I gave Richard, just add a new purchase instead of adding 'naked' inventory, and then it will behave exactly as you want. You can even generate per-bottle barcode labels so that you can exactly recall which bottle is which.

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:02 am

Eric,

You are slipping my friend. It took an entire 7 minutes for you to hit submit from the time that Alex did. What took so long?

Thanks for your participation!

Al B. · Post by **Al B.** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:05 am

Eric,

Thanks for the reply. I guess I'll spend some of my lunchtimes mooching around the site until I am familiar with it.

Alex

For The Love Of Port

Cellar inventory, an enlightening, exhausting week!

Cellar inventory, an enlightening, exhausting week!

CellarTracker thread, a.k.a. ask Eric's advice.