Wine cellar inventory in Excel: template, columns, limits

A spreadsheet is the first tool most enthusiasts choose to manage their cellar. It is free, flexible, and already installed. Well-built, it serves you well for years. Poorly built, it becomes a file you never open again. Here is how to build it, and how to know when to move on.

Essential columns

One row per wine, or better, one row per bottle if you track locations. The columns that make a useful inventory:

• Estate or producer.

• Cuvée, if any.

• Appellation and region.

• Vintage.

• Color: red, white, rosé, sparkling, sweet.

• Format: 75 cl, 37.5 cl, magnum.

• Quantity.

• Unit purchase price and purchase date.

• Location: cellar, rack, row, slot, depth.

• Drinking window: start year and end year.

• Notes: what you think, what you need to know.

Add a "Status" column (in cellar, drunk, out of stock) rather than deleting rows: the history has value.

A few helpful formulas

• Total bottles in the cellar, by summing quantities filtered by status.

• Total value at purchase price, and an "Estimated value" column if you take the time to fill it in.

• A calculated "Ready to drink" column: true if the current year falls within the drinking window.

• An automatic filter on headers: this is the most useful feature in the whole file.

How to keep it up to date

A spreadsheet does not fail from a lack of columns, it fails from a lack of entries. Three habits keep it alive:

• Log bottles on the day of purchase, before putting them away.

• Log opened bottles the same evening, with a quick note.

• Do a physical inventory once a year, and fix discrepancies.

If you share the cellar with someone, keep the file in cloud storage so anyone can edit it. It also serves as a backup.

Where spreadsheets fall short

A spreadsheet can count and filter. It cannot read a label, estimate a value, calculate a drinking window, or display a rack. Three signs you have outgrown it:

• You no longer open it in front of your racks because it is not on your phone, or not practical.

• You have bottles "somewhere" that the file cannot locate.

• You want to know what your cellar is worth and what to drink tonight, without recalculating everything.

Switching from a spreadsheet to Tannin

Tannin reads your Excel or CSV file as is. Standard columns are recognized in French, English, or Spanish, and you see a preview before importing. Once the entries are created, you draw your racks and place your bottles; if your spreadsheet had a location column, it is already done. And you can always switch back: full CSV export is available at any time.

If you are starting from scratch, a ready-to-fill template is available in the app, with the columns described here.