Wine cellar management for serious collectors and large cellars

Wine cellar management changes character as a collection grows. At a few hundred bottles you can hold most of it in your head. At a few thousand, spread across a home cellar, a fridge and off-site storage, you need a system that knows where every bottle sits, how it's categorized, what it might be worth and what you've sold.

This is the second post in our series on how Selara Sommelier serves every kind of collector. The first covered starting your first collection. This one is for the other end of the market, meaning serious collectors, large cellars and the people who help look after them. We'll be specific about which plan includes what.

A quick map of the plans

Selara Sommelier has three plans. Premier Cru is free and covers up to 100 bottles in one location, with flat storage and up to 8 AI uses a month.

Grand Cru covers up to 1,500 bottles across up to 3 locations. It adds nested bins, custom taxonomies, the sell ledger, label deep fill, the Origins map and a generous AI allowance.

Grand Cru Exceptionnel has unlimited bottles and locations, plus deeper bin nesting, spatial bins, household sharing and unlimited AI.

Every plan shares the same import limit of 10,000 rows and 25 MB per file. At the time of writing, Selara Sommelier is in the final stages of beta testing, and every user is invited to use a free Beta tier with all the capabilities of Grand Cru Exceptionnel. Changing tiers later doesn't affect your wine data.

Bringing a large cellar in

Big collections usually arrive as big spreadsheets, often built over many years with their own conventions. Selara Sommelier's importer is built for that:

• It reads .csv, .tsv, .tab, .txt, .xlsx, .xls, .json, .numbers, or .xml.
• You choose which tabs of a multi-sheet workbook to import.
• It recognizes collector habits such as section headers written once above a block of rows.
• It matches columns to its fields and flags anything to confirm, then shows a preview before committing.
• Storage names in your file map to your locations, and location and bin stay separate.

From CellarTracker, location and bin come across as location and bin, notes stay notes, and drinking windows are kept on the bottle notes. Our guide to switching from another cellar app covers each export route, and the spreadsheet migration guide covers cleanup.

For new arrivals, merchant PDFs, auction settlements and photos of invoices all work. On Grand Cru and above, label deep fill goes beyond what's printed on a label and researches the remaining fields for you.

Nested bins give every bottle a place

In a large cellar, "Basement" isn't an address. You need Room, Rack and Slot.

• Premier Cru keeps storage flat, with one location and no nesting.
• Grand Cru adds nested bin paths up to three levels deep, for example Room, then Rack, then Slot, across up to three locations.
• Grand Cru Exceptionnel unlocks deeper nesting, up to ten levels, across unlimited locations. That suits a home cellar, a wine fridge, a professional storage facility and a country house, each with its own internal layout.

Exceptionnel also adds spatial bins, a visual layout for each location so you can see where your wines sit in the room.

Taxonomies that match how serious collections are organized

Every plan includes two system taxonomies. Restaurant Wine List groups wines by Color, then Country, then Region, with optional appellation. Auction House uses a fixed list of collector categories based on auction conventions, including Red Bordeaux, White Burgundy, Champagne, Red Rhone, Port, Madeira, California Cabernet Sauvignon and Meritage, and many more.

The Auction House view is especially useful when you're thinking about consigning, because your cellar is already grouped the way catalogs are.

On Grand Cru and above, a custom taxonomy wizard lets you design your own structure when a template doesn't fit. Perhaps you organize by drinking window, by producer family, or by a mix of region and occasion.

A clean record for selling and gifting

Serious collectors sell. Sometimes it's a few cases at auction, sometimes a quiet private sale, sometimes trimming a vertical you've overbought. Selara Sommelier's sell ledger, included on Grand Cru and above, is built for that.

• Move holdings through to-sell and sold ledgers.
• Record sales with tax-oriented fields.
• Track proceeds and realized gains.
• Export to CSV and PDF for yourself, an advisor or an auction house.

It isn't a marketplace. It's your own record, designed for collectors who sell or gift thoughtfully.

Market value

Market value is a Grand Cru and Grand Cru Exceptionnel feature that shows your total cellar value, your most valuable holdings and your top gains. The figures are cached and refresh periodically. Our market value announcement covers how it works.

As with any market estimate, these figures are for guidance. They're personal estimates for planning, not an appraisal, an insurance valuation or tax advice.

Household sharing and delegates

Large cellars often have more than one person looking after them. A partner may pull bottles for dinner, an assistant may log deliveries, or a family member may help keep records up to date.

Household sharing, included with Grand Cru Exceptionnel, lets you invite collaborators to help manage your collection. Instead of passing a spreadsheet around and hoping nobody overwrites anything, everyone works from the same cellar.

The Origins map

On Grand Cru and above, the Origins map plots your holdings as producer pins around the world, covering wine, sake and spirits, including Burgundy villages, Champagne houses and Napa AVAs. Open a pin to see what you own from that place, jump into any wine, or ask Selara Sommelier's AI about it. For a large cellar, it shows where your collection is concentrated and where the gaps are.

AI that scales with the cellar

The bigger the cellar, the more useful a knowledgeable assistant becomes. Ask how many magnums you have, which bottles to drink soon before they pass their best, or how a producer fits the rest of the collection. The assistant can also carry out changes across the cellar for you, and it always asks before it makes them.

Grand Cru includes a generous AI allowance. Grand Cru Exceptionnel offers unlimited use for the most complex cellars.

Occasions at scale

Even a large cellar is meant to be enjoyed. Stage bottles for a dinner, a tasting or a family event. Staged bottles appear in their own list while staying in your cellar record, and a single click moves each bottle you opened into history. Selara Sommelier can also prepare a custom wine list for guests.

Wine cellar management for the cellar you have, and the one you're building

Whether you manage 500 bottles or 15,000, the goal is the same. You want to know what you have, where it is and what to do with it next. If you're coming from a different tool, our guide to choosing a wine cellar app explains where Selara Sommelier stands out.

Compare the plans or see how the cellar book handles bins and taxonomies.