The Digital Wine Cellar
Cellar Tracker is the most popular, and probably the very best, on-line cellar tracker and community wine review site out there. It’s popularity owed to the fact that it’s simply a great system to track what you’ve got and what you’ve drunk as well as what others in the system have had to say about a particular bottle of wine.
It’s no coincidence that other similar systems, seeing the success of Cellar Tracker, would pop up. One such newbie in this category is Logabottle.com.
Not nearly as robust as Cellar Tracker, Logabottle is a system meant to allow drinkers to share their notes on wines. Any system like this only works well when there are lots of people participating and the folks at Logabottle are hoping to increase that number.
TECHNOLOGY…WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
I look at the likes of CellarTracker and Logabottle and am taken a back at the way technology has changed the interactive and social element that wine geekdom has always inspired. Less than a decade ago there were very few ways to interact with others who shared your interest in wine and who may have shared an interest in the same bottle of wine you had in your cellar or were contemplating purchasing. Today, if you want a plethora of opinions on a potential purchase of cork popping you can probably get it in moments by using systems like Cellar Tracker, logabottle and the various wine forums around the web.
Writing this I wonder the one on one aspect of wine appreciation is degraded by the ability to interact electronically, rather than face to face. I don’t see evidence of this. In fact, though I don’t have confirmation of this, I’d bet the ability to find others through the Internet who are of the same wine mind as you has probably led to even MORE face to face meetings among wine lovers.
Thanks for the mention Tom!
I for one agree that more interaction between wine drinkers online will lead to more meetings in person. Sometimes it can be hard for wine lovers to find others with similar tastes or even just a similar passion for wine.
Any community that helps facilitate those meetings is a good thing in my mind. That’s certainly one of the things we’re hoping to accomplish at logabottle.com.
Figured since you were on the subject I had to plug the company I am a partner in – eSommelier.
Although not a “community product” it does bring a collector closer to his/her wine cellar by instantly showing them what they have, where it is, how much it cost and when it should be drunk. Our goal with eSommelier was to create a high-end product that isn’t beholden to the family PC, but rather a simple to use yet sophisticated touchscreen computer system that can reside in the wine cellar.
I won’t blather on about how great the product is, but encourage anyone with more than 1,000 bottles to check it out; http://www.esommelier.net.
Joe:
Thanks for chiming in. If I’m not mistaken I think I recently saw eSommelier highlighted in a magazine that showcased the best use of electronics in a home in America.
Does that sound familiar?
Tom…
You might also want to check out WineFetch (http://www.winefetch.com). Its search engine and a cellar and tasting notes tracker. They have some community information, but not as much as ct right now.
My Virtual Wine
I received an email today from Logabottle.com suggesting that my readers and I might be interested in joining. I’d already read about Logabottle on Fermentation, so I wasn’t completely unfamiliar. I have to say I’ve come to pretty much the
Tom,
Sorry – just saw your comment. Yes, eSommelier was part of an installation that was featured in the Electronic House Best Homes of the Year issue. The install was done by MediaWorks NW based in Sacramento. The house is incredible an MediaWorks did an amazing install. Look for more eSommelier PR in the coming months.
Many thanks for the kind words about CellarTracker.
Increasingly I am struck by the power of the community, and how thousands of amateurs can nonetheless work together to create a resource that is very complementary to what professional wine writers create. CellarTracker users have now generated 125,000 tasting notes with nearly 400 new notes per day. In other words, in 3 days the community writes as many notes as a publication like the Wine Advocate does in 2 months.
These notes of course can’t compare to notes from a calibrated, consistent professional. However, they are very helpful when trying to assess the readiness of a wine in your cellar. It is rare that the pros circle back and revisit wines, even those that may not be ready until 5-15 years after the original review.
Anyway, it is very exciting and motivating seeing all the tools popping up on the web for tracking inventory and tasting notes or trying to bring collectors together.
Great collection…..!