The Complete Wine Cellar System [Ring-bound]

Howard A. Goldberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

The gastronomic, financial, intellectual, aesthetic, and social pleasures of wine collecting often lead to the necessity to create and maintain a wine cellar. This down-to-earth guide to conceiving, building, and using one offers in-depth explanations of the whys and wherefores. The text explores such fundamentals as understanding ideal storage conditions, designing the cellar, and choosing the appropriate storage apparatus for a particular collection. Goldberg explains the principles of organization (by grape, region, producer, and vintage, among others), and offers guidance on stocking cellar by acquiring bottles from merchants, wineries, mail order, and auction. He also suggests defining goals, such as short-term drinking or investment for resale, in order to plan the best wine cellar possible for each individual's needs. The book is accompanied by a CD with specially designed software to help you record and keep track of your wine collection. Both the CD and the book are packaged in a beautiful binder with paper included on which to print a restaurant-quality wine list.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Howard G. Goldberg, a staff member of the New York Times since 1970, has been a wine writer there since 1984. He writes a Sunday feature called "Wine Under $20" and a Sunday column on Long Island wines in the paper's Long Island section. He is the American-auction columnist for Decanter magazine and the New York correspondent for decanter.com.

Product Details

• Ring-bound: 96 pages
• Publisher: Running Press (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762415576
• ISBN-13: 978-0762415571
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 12.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,815,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Wine > Cellars

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bogus Software; good booklet, January 10, 2004

By 

George Ellis (Orlando, FL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Wine Cellar System (Ring-bound)

I received the Wine Cellar System as a Christmas present. It consists of a very limited "database" for keeping track of wines, a folder with some fancy parchment paper, and a booklet on wine cellaring. The booklet is very interesting but should cost about $10. This is most lame program I have ever seen and the publishers should be ashamed to offer something like this. It has no preloaded content and is nothing more than could be easily created in Excel or Access. Don't waste your money on this one.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Software is awful, February 1, 2005

By 

J. Marks - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Wine Cellar System (Ring-bound)

I agree with the earlier reviewer. I was shocked at how simple the software is. The entry page for each wine is fairly comprehensive, but if you want to print a full list of wines, the program sets about half a dozen fields set fields which cannot be customized. Whether you want those fields or not, that's what you are stuck with. Also annoying, the software does not allow you to "minimize" the program. You have to "quit" the program to look at something else on your computer. This makes it impossible to easily reference other electronic materials (like the Wine Spectator's web site) or cut and paste from different source while inputting data into the wine software. It's like they never bothered to update software that was developed 10 years ago.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lame effort on a cellaring system, May 28, 2009

By 

A. Toler "JustDawleyGirl" (Elk Grove, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Wine Cellar System (Ring-bound)

What a big bummer this was. We have amassed a very cool and impressive cellar and wanted a way to track it for information purposes, ageability monitoring, insurance purposes (value), and just how many bottles we have in stock of each varietal. This thing sucks. As the other reviewers mentioned, there is absolutely no flexibility in changing the program fields, columns or formatting. Something as seemingly simple as just wondering how many bottles total you have of wine is not documented anywhere. Everything the other reviewers have mentioned I echo in my own sentiments. I hate to say it, but you are almost better off having nothing than trying to spend the time to make this program of any value at all only to be frustrated, discouraged and disappointed with the end result. There is too much to harp on that's just bad, bad, bad about it that I can't think of a single positive comment about the software. There is a huge need for something sophisticated and more malleable for the wine drinking public to utilize to manage their own cellars without having to learn how to use something like FileMaker or spend hours and hours creating in Excel. Something that interfaces with the web would be extremely helpful, too, so that your values and information is always up-to-date. I highly DISCOURAGE anyone ordering this product unless you have nothing but time, money and patience to waste. :(