Wine Club Insider (the blogger formerly known as “WCI!”) here again!

So, you’ve built your new cellar, got your shelves installed, and your ready to open all of the cases of your wine club collection and put them away for years of perfect aging, but before you do, you really need to come up with a system to keep track of what you’ve got, where you got it, how much you paid for it, and where it is.

Trust me.

If you’re planning on collecting more than a couple hundred bottles (which can happen pretty quickly when you belong to a few nice wine clubs, and when people are giving you wine club gifts) this becomes increasingly important for a number of reasons.

The most important reason is because, except for a very few rare vintages, wine doesn’t last forever. As I emntioned earlier, wine is a living, growing thing, and like most living things, it will reach a point where it will pass its prime, and start heading downhill.

Now, personally, I love old wines, but there’s a tendency to “forget” about some of the well-stored bottles of vintage vino in your wine cellar, and next thing you know, your bottle of 1994 Napa nectar is on its way out.

I also like to have a reminder of where and when I got a bottle of wine, or if it was a wine club gift. I also like (and this is really important!) is that it gives you a record for insurance purposes, in case of a fire or other disaster.

My product of choice is actually the wine collection database template available with Microsoft Office Access. Yup. Microsoft.

I downloaded the basic wine club template, and within a 1/2 hour, I was up and going. Okay, by then I did have over 1800 bottles, so it took me three days to input everything, and get it organized, but it was kind of fun playing. I mean, wine is one of the only hobbies where to play with your collection negates its value… hey, while you can drive your vintage car, no one is going to give you $300 for an empty bottle of Opus.

After you’ve got your wine club collection entered in the computer, another good idea is to use neck tags when you put them on the shelf. These are available from several sites. I got mine from www.iwa.com.

Organized? Excellent! Next time we’ll talk a bit about the glasses and other necessities you will need to properly finish out your perfect wine cellar!

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider, out!