cellartracker

Actually, that is sort of the antithesis of Jim. His main point, always, is that points don't matter, that there are many great wines that are affordable, and that beauty is all in the eye of the beholder and a meal with friends and good wine. I actually find Jim's writing to be the opposite of most wine writing. But, to each their own. Certainly I will agree with you whole heartedly on one thing--Jim's knowledge and experience are formidable. ← I think you read my comment wrong. I was using FloridaJim's wine writing as an example of reasonable wine writing/blogging. It just is a painful academic exercise for me to read about wine. Jim's writing style is perfectly acceptable. I just can't get into the subject matter. ← Gotcha. All I know is that when I read what Jim writes, I want to be there at the meal!

Dave, just curious, do you still find the site slow? Right around the time you write this I had just upgraded database servers and in general have done a lot of work on site performance over the past few months. Anyway, if there are specific things that still seem untenably slow, please shoot me an email eric@cellartracker.com or post over on www.cellartracker.com/forum And thanks everyone for the kinds words and recommendations!

Actually, that is sort of the antithesis of Jim. His main point, always, is that points don't matter, that there are many great wines that are affordable, and that beauty is all in the eye of the beholder and a meal with friends and good wine. I actually find Jim's writing to be the opposite of most wine writing. But, to each their own. Certainly I will agree with you whole heartedly on one thing--Jim's knowledge and experience are formidable. That said, you would be hard pressed to find anyone LESS pretentious. Anyway, to the topic at hand. Personally I just don't have time to keep up with blogs, but that is more of a technical aspect of how I like to experience cyberspace. That said, I am a big, BIG fan of the trend of rank amateurs (me included) sharing their opinions about a wine in whatever language they can muster. I think the challenge is a technical one: how to structure all of these thoughts and make them actionable, easily mined, and able to be used as a tool to help guide purchasing and drinking decisions. Amateurs will never replace the palate of a calibrated, consistent professional. However, all of these people writing in cyberspace does present a unique opportunity and resource, namely much broader coverage of the nearly infinite world of wines. One problem with the pros is that they just do not cover enough wine and, more importantly, rarely circle back 5-10 years later to let me know when I should actually drink those wines. And for someone who collects and drinks wines that are mostly at their best after 10-15 years (e.g. Bordeaux, Northern Rhone, German Riesling), the cost of killing a bottle too early (Ever open a totally closed bottle of Bordeaux? What a waste!), even just a few recent notes from amateurs on a wine can tell me all that I need to know about whether opening it is a good or bad idea. Anyway, just my penny or two. It's a rich topic and apparently one with some controversy.

It is $35,000 for this.

Thank you for the notes. Indeed, I had the 1998 Brune et Blonde last Fall from 375ml, and it was quite tight even then. Wow, what a showing for a 1980 Hermitage, even a basic negociant cuvee! You just have to (well you don't really HAVE to but I do) 1990 Bordeaux. There is something about ripe vintage Bordeaux that just works so well for me. Here is my note on the Brune et Blonde: 1998 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie Brune et Blonde - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (10/26/2004) Tasted from 375ml. This is a young and delicious Côte-Rôtie. The nose offers up notes of roasted meat and tapenade. On the palate the acid is quite aggressive showing a bright, cherry personality. (With a grilled ribeye this gets along wonderfully!) Savory and mineral laden with nice balance and a suave, silky texture. This wine has a long way to go before it really blossoms. With more air, a bit more structure starts to come forward on the palate. (90 pts.) Posted from CellarTracker

Max, Excel is a fantastic tool, and if you are savvy with pivot tables one can create some very cool reports. (I just finished a 13-year stint at Microsoft working in the Office team including Excel.) I too started out with my wines in Excel, but personally I was frustrated as it doesn't handle relational data very well. And since I like to code I decided to make something for myself that is web-based. One key thing is to consider how much data one wants to store and what you care about. For example, do you have a row for every wine or for every bottle? If the former, what happens if you purchase the same wine twice. Do you want to record that or just the average price of your purchases? Do you record pending deliveries in a separate sheet or in the main sheet? (I used to use a separate sheet, but it was a pain looking at my pendings separate from in stock.) What gets tough is that the same strings appear again and again and again, and you will get lots of typos. Databases like Access and SQL Server are good in that you would have a table of wines linked to a table of producers, appellation etc. Less chance for typos. Excel is also not a very friendly place to store tasting notes. You can do it, but really long text values are tough to print and search. I just found myself never taking them. If people want to store consumption history then you need another sheet. More data to maintain, copy around, opportunities for mistakes etc. Web-based doesn't have to be scary, although I know that it scares some people. Of course if you are here posting in a forum like this you probably aren't too scared. A few key things: All data that users enter into my site is backed up 48 times per day. Archives are stored on multiple machines in separate data centers. So if Seattle slides off the face of the earth, people's data can still be recovered and the site restored. There is a simple spreadsheet at www.cellartracker.com/webquery.xls. I encourage everyone to download it. It uses Excel web queries, so users just enter their username and password. Then the spreadsheet goes and fetches a copy of everything they have entered into the site. It is nice for backup as well as offline access. Users have a lot of control over the privacy of their cellar. You can read more about that here: http://www.cellartracker.com/forum/CellarT...ns/m_793/tm.htm Of course, web-based has benefits too. For example, you can access your cellar while you are at a wine store or even when you are out to dinner just using a web-enabled cellphone. I have saved myself a lot of unwanted purchases just by referring to tasting notes from other users or looking at my own purchase or tasting history. Sorry, I can't keep it all straight in my head. Also, people find that it is easier for them to keep their cellar up to date if they can enter a purchase right when it happens, such as when they respond to an email at work from a reseller or happen to make a web purchase. If your inventory only lives on one computer at home then you have to remember to go there and update it when you get home from work etc. There are other benefits to the web-based approach. For starters, the database of wiens is now 100,000 strong, and there are images for 20,000 of these (I just added image upload 8 weeks ago and people have been busy using it!). So adding new wines takes a lot less typing than if you are doing it all yourself. Also, users are posting more than 100 tasting notes per day with an archive of nearly 40,000 now. It is 1-click to see notes from other people on wines that you have. A lot of people find that up-to-date info on how a wine is drinking is really helpful instead of relying on a review from a critic that was written some number of years earlier. I hope this answers some of your questions and explains some of why people are so excited about CellarTracker. There is an awful lot more in fact.

Hi Rodney, nice to see you as well. I hope that things are very good for you and Elizabeth.

Where to begin... Seriously, if anyone has any questions, I am very happy to answer them here, via email to eric@cellartracker.com, or at www.cellartracker.com/forum. I don't want to overstep my bounds by overpromoting, so I would prefer to respond rather than spam if you know what I mean.

Thank you Mary, I will try!

Thanks everyone for such wonderfully kind words about CellarTracker! It is a labor of love for me. Please do let me know if I can answer any questions or if you have suggestions.