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Solutions for a Smart Wine Cellar

Modern technology is bringing cutting edge management capabilities to the ancient art of wine collecting

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Technology offers some wise ways to manage your wine collection.

Caspar Benson
Technology offers some wise ways to manage your wine collection.
Caspar Benson

Until very recent history, wine collecting—an art form nearly as old as wine appreciating—was a labor of love, with heavy emphasis on the "labor" part. Maintaining an expansive private collection of fine wines required meticulous note taking, vin-centric vigilance and, possibly, staff members.

Fortunately, modern technology has reduced the management burden so buyers can focus on the "love" aspect of building a collection.

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Below, we’ve highlighted some current technologies that allow the avid or the aspiring collector to make the most of their cellar and its contents.

Securing the Sauvignon Blancs

As it is with so many things in life, security is the chief concern when building a wine collection.

The Elertus Wine Protection System offers peace of mind for a number of environmental threats, from temperature to teenagers.

elertus.com

Consisting of a series of sensors which track light, humidity, temperature, power outages and even open doors, Elertus notifies oenophilic homeowners, via a corresponding smart device app (available for iOS and Android), whenever one of the pre-programmed metrics hits dangerous territory.

Paired with smart home temperature-control technology, like Nest, owners could troubleshoot potential collection corroding events at their L.A. estate while enjoying the slopes in Aspen.

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Managing the Malbecs

Any avid collector knows (even if they are not willing to admit it) that half the fun of building a collection is to obsessively geek out about it.

Enter the aptly-named app Cellar Tracker.

A companion piece to the CellarTracker.com website, Cellar Tracker offers the ability to easily manage wine collections.

CellarTracker.com

Users can add new bottles via the app’s built in barcode scanner (or label recognition software), keep apprised of their collections’ value by cross-referencing bottles with Cellar Tracker’s database, and track the wine they’ve been enjoying—whether at home or out on the town—with the app’s consumption history feature.

Moreover, users can educate themselves or others on a wide variety of vintages. Cellar Tracker grants access to nearly 6 million tasting notes, from professionals and users, and a community of like-minded individuals ready to share recommendations.

The best part of the Cellar Tracker, which admittedly isn’t the prettiest product in the app store, is its usability. Built by wine collectors for wine collectors, Cellar Tracker clears the most important hurdle for any management system—offering an intuitive and simple experience that users can commit to.

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Preserving the Pinot

Collecting is wonderful, but we must not lose site of the reason for the season—enjoying wine.

And for the collector who wants to preserve package-perfect bottles until complete consumption, there is only one choice for a bottle opener: the Coravin.

Eschewing the traditional technique of cork removal pre-consumption, the Coravin anti-corkscrew pierces the cork with a needle, turning the bottle into something akin to a tap. Upon removal of the Corvin (and the needle), the cork naturally reforms, preserving the contents and allowing the bottle to be returned to its collection and enjoyed for years to come.