Cellar guides
Practical answers for keeping wine at home.
Inventory, storage, drinking windows and notes. Each guide solves one job and says where judgment still matters.
Getting started
10 Wine Inventory Apps for iPhone: Prices, Screenshots and Our Picks
Compare ten US App Store wine cellar apps with public prices, three iPhone screenshots each and clear reasons to shortlist them, including Cellar.
How to Start a Wine Collection: The First 12 Bottles
A first dozen chosen by role rather than score, the storage question to settle before buying, and the four fields worth recording from bottle one.
How to Inventory a Wine Collection Without Losing a Weekend
A shelf-by-shelf way to inventory a home wine collection, record the details that matter, and keep the list accurate after the first count.
Wine Inventory Spreadsheet or App: Which One Fits?
An honest comparison of spreadsheets and wine cellar apps for counting bottles, recording locations, keeping photos and updating the collection.
Moving a Wine Spreadsheet Into an App by Hand
Most apps cannot import a spreadsheet. Work shelf by shelf, record four fields, photograph the label, and keep the old file until the new list is proven.
Wine Cellar App Without an Account: What You Give Up
What a local wine inventory means for privacy, offline use, backup and moving the cellar to a new iPhone or iPad.
Storage and equipment
No Wine Cellar? How to Compare Storage Spots in Your Home
Compare wine storage spots at home by temperature, light and holding period, with a reusable location worksheet.
Wine Fridge Capacity: Measure It Before You Buy
A practical capacity check for wine fridges that accounts for bottle shapes, shelf spacing and the access space you actually need.
Wine Fridge Stopped Working? What to Do First
A triage order for a failed wine cabinet or a power cut: what to move, what to leave, and what to record so a strange bottle years later still makes sense.
How to Organize Wine by Rack, Row and Box
A practical location system for wine racks, cases, coolers and overflow boxes that makes every bottle easy to find again.
How to Find Any Bottle in a Wine Cellar Quickly
Use label text, stable rack names and exact rows to find a bottle even when you only remember its region, producer or part of the label.
Moving a Wine Collection? Keep Every Bottle Location
An inventory workflow for a cellar move: label boxes, record their contents, replace old rack locations and reconcile each box as you unpack.
One Case, Three Places: Track It Without Double Counting
Follow a twelve-bottle case through a rack, cooler and original box. Record partial moves and openings while keeping the collection total correct.
What to Check Before Buying a Wine Fridge
Compressor or thermoelectric, noise, vibration, shelf type and where it will stand. The questions that decide whether a cabinet suits your home.
Should Wine Be Stored on Its Side or Upright?
Cork on its side, screwcap either way, and what humidity actually does. The rule matters for years of storage and not at all for next weekend.
What Temperature to Set a Wine Fridge To
One steady number for storage, what dual zones are actually for, why a kitchen fridge is not a substitute, and how to check what your cabinet really does.
Buying and receiving
About to Buy Wine? Check What You Already Have First
A pre-purchase check for duplicate bottles, outstanding orders and forgotten tasting notes, with a simple way to decide how many bottles to buy.
Wine Delivery Arrived? Check It Before You Shelve It
A receiving checklist for wine orders: compare the bottles with the invoice, record shortages, and shelve only what actually arrived.
Wine You Own but Cannot See: Undelivered Bottles
How to record futures (en primeur), in-bond and on-order wine so future bottles stay in the collection without breaking the count of what is on the shelf.
Buying Wine at Auction: What to Check Before Bidding
Read the condition report before the tasting note, add the premium and shipping before comparing with retail, and treat delivery as part of the storage.
How Much Wine Do You Actually Drink in a Year?
Count your own openings to get a real yearly rate, then use it to size purchases, storage and the bottles you are holding for later.
How to Remember a Wine You Liked but Do Not Own
A twenty second capture for restaurant and tasting wines, and the rule for turning a remembered bottle into a purchase you will actually drink.
Choosing Wine as a Gift Without Guessing
Three questions that replace guesswork, the categories that are safe without being dull, and why the card matters as much as the bottle.
How to Order Wine in a Restaurant
Signal your price without saying it, use the tasting pour for what it is actually for, and capture the wine you liked before you forget it.
Buying a Wine From a Birth Year: What Survives
Most wine from a given year is long gone. Which categories last, how to judge condition when buying old bottles, and what to do if the vintage was poor.
Holiday Wine Planning: What to Buy and When
A four-week plan for the season: what to order early, what to buy last, how much to hold back for gifts, and what to do with what is left in January.
When a Wine Club Delivers Faster Than You Drink
How to tell whether a subscription is filling your rack with wine you will not open, and the four ways to fix it without canceling in a panic.
Labels and records
How to Scan Wine Labels Into an Inventory
How to photograph wine labels for reliable text recognition, check the details, and turn each scan into a useful cellar record.
Wine Label Terms: Which Field Does Each One Go In?
Crianza, Spätlese, DOCG, cuvée and reserve explained by what they tell you, and where each belongs in a wine record rather than what they promise.
Non-Vintage Wine: What Should You Put in the Year Field?
How to record non-vintage wine without inventing a vintage year, including Champagne label dates, purchase dates and disgorgement information.
Gifted a Bottle of Wine? How to Identify It
A label-first checklist for gifted wine when you have no receipt, including producer, cuvée, vintage, size and a safe way to record uncertainty.
Wine Bottle Sizes and What They Do to Your Count
Why a jeroboam is three liters in one region and five in another, and how large and small formats change your count, your racks and your drinking windows.
Inherited a Wine Collection? Sort It Before You Move It
A triage method for an inherited cellar: record what is there, read fill levels and closures, and decide what to drink first, keep or have valued.
Two People, One Wine Cellar: Keeping the Count Right
A simple household routine for recording bottles opened, moved or given away, without duplicate edits or guessing what disappeared after dinner.
Duplicate Wine Entries: Merge Them Without Losing History
A cautious cleanup method for duplicate wine rows that preserves quantities, locations, purchase details and tasting notes.
Wine Inventory Count Wrong? Find the Missing Bottles
Trace a wine inventory mismatch by location, vintage and bottle size, with a worked example of when to move, correct or leave a count alone.
How to Back Up a Wine Cellar Inventory
How to export a complete Cellar backup, save it away from the phone, and restore it safely without overwriting the wrong collection.
Wine Collection Insurance: What to Record First
What an insurer needs from a wine inventory: quantities, purchase evidence, storage details and photographs, recorded before anything goes wrong.
Organic, Natural and Biodynamic Wine: What Each Means
One is a legal certification, one is private, and one has no definition at all. What each term guarantees, and what none of them promise.
How to Photograph a Wine Collection for Your Records
Three photographs per wine and one per shelf, taken in a way that stays readable years later, for finding bottles, proving quantities and selling.
Drinking and after
Which Wine to Open Next? Build a Three-Bottle Shortlist
A simple method for choosing the next bottle using drinking windows, quantity remaining, occasion and your previous tasting notes.
How to Track When a Wine Is Ready to Drink
A practical way to record wine drinking windows, adjust uncertain dates, and decide what to open without treating a range as a promise.
How Many Bottles of Wine for a Dinner Party?
Work out the number from guests, hours and glasses per bottle, split it between sparkling, white and red, and set the bottles aside before the day.
How to Host a Blind Wine Tasting at Home
Pick one variable, bag four to six bottles, use a scoring sheet with two useful columns, and compare the ranking with the prices at the reveal.
How to Write Wine Tasting Notes You Will Actually Use
A short, personal wine note format that records the bottle, the setting, what changed in the glass, and whether to open another one.
How to Track Opened and Finished Wine Bottles
Keep the bottle count accurate, preserve a separate note for every opening, and see what remains without deleting the wine history.
Wine Left After Dinner? Store It and Note the Date
A practical routine for leftover still and sparkling wine, with sourced storage advice and a reusable bottle note that prevents forgotten opening dates.
How to Tell if a Wine Is Corked, or Something Else
Separate cork taint from oxidation, reduction and heat damage using what you can smell, and record enough to ask a merchant for a refund.
Wine You Will Never Drink: How to Let It Go
Four honest exits for the bottles occupying your best rack space, and the one line to record so the same wine does not arrive again next year.
Wine Serving Temperature: A Practical Chart
The temperature each style shows best at, why room temperature is colder than your room, and two rules that get most bottles right without a thermometer.
How Long to Decant Wine, and When Not To
Decanting does two jobs. Which wines need air, which only need the sediment left behind, and why more than two hours is a risk rather than a benefit.
How to Open a Bottle of Wine Without a Corkscrew
The method that reliably works, the one that works with patience, and the ones that send people to hospital. Plus what to do with a cork that crumbles.
How Long Does Unopened Wine Last?
Rough shelf lives by style, why storage matters more than the calendar, and how to tell whether a bottle is aging or just getting older.
Wine and Food Pairing: Four Rules That Do the Work
Match weight first, then use the four levers that actually change how a wine tastes with food, choosing from the bottles you already own.
How to Chill Wine Fast Without Ruining It
Ice and water beats ice alone, salt beats both, and the freezer works if you set a timer. What each method costs in minutes, and what breaks bottles.
How to Taste Wine: Look, Smell, Taste, Decide
A four-step method borrowed from the way professionals taste, reduced to what is useful at a kitchen table, ending with the conclusion most people skip.
Wine Terms Explained: Dry, Body, Legs, Finish
What the words on a shelf talker and a back label actually describe, which ones are useful, and which one tells you nothing about quality.
Vertical and Horizontal Tastings: How to Run One
One wine across vintages, or one vintage across producers. How to set either up at home, what to pour first, and what the comparison actually teaches.