VinoCell - wine cellar manager
reviews and complaints

Very nice app so far. I spend 5 minutes watching 2 videos that were kind of tough to understand because of the accent, but easy to follow. Had no issues creating my specific storage solution and mapping bottles in and out. I have not loaded all of our wine yet and it does appear this will be a bit of a chore, but also an expected one. We'll see how the usability is but based on the options I see in the interface it should be fairly straightforward and efficient.

I'm not sure what others expected of the interface, but in my opinion it is pretty decent if you take a small amount of time to understand what each icon is used for. Don't hope to figure it out, just load up the videos and you will be pretty happy with the app, I think.

I’ve now had this app for several years and I use it all the time to select what I want at the moment or when I’m out buying wines. I am still not using all functionality, and I am still very pleased with the app and my usage.
I’m about to add my distilled spirits to the app.

Original review below:
Bought this several months ago and entered the info from my small collection (less than 100 bottles, but growing slowly). Relatively easy data entry, lots of categories for information; more than I'm using at the moment. Occasional terms have odd English titles, but nothing that can't be easily discerned. Tutorials are good; accent of speaker is not a problem. User support has been quick and helpful. My iPhone and iPad are synced, as is my PC. Glad that I bought it. C'est tres bon!

Needs an update! I've been using it for a few months now. Things that can be improved are the instructions on how to do things. The creator made videos but they are woefully lacking. Perhaps the biggest issue is the lack of being able to print reports. Even simple things like a list of wines by type cellar location and drink by dates can only be viewed in the app and even then you still need to drill down to get all the info you need. The cellar layouts are unique but probably won't fit everyone's needs. Logging in wine and placing is simple and complex at the same time. Somewhat awkward then it needs to be. I wish they updated it much more often. It seems this perhaps is just a part time project. I've put a lot of effort into putting data in. They need to add label and bar code scanning.

Overall in concept this app is a good tool. I manage my fridge and bottle locations with the app, but only someone with a touch of OCD would spend the time to do this. The app takes way to much time to load up the bottles. The search function brings up bottles that other people have already loaded including all of their errors. To create your own entry takes several minutes. 10-15 depending on how detailed you want to be. Multiply this by the number of bottles in your cellar and you have a serious project on your hands. Other apps can find your bottle simply by taking a photo of the label. Not this app, it is manual entry only. I don’t think this app is good for the everyday users but serious cellar organizers will appreciate the features. The developers have a lot of room for improvements and they should start listening to the feedback.

I use this app to keep track of what wine we buy and what we have in our wine fridge. Overall, I'm quite happy with it. It is pretty easy to add a new wine to the list. I'm not a fanatic about all the details, but I do put in the winery, wine name, vintage, price, county/region/subregion, grapes and a picture of the label. It goes pretty fast. The ability to sync between the iPhone and iPad is great. If we see something in a store I can easily check if we've ever tried it, if we liked it, and what we paid for it. You can also copy a wine easily if, for example, you have a new vintage of an existing wine.

It gets 4 stars instead of 5 because if you mark a bottle as having been drunk by mistake there's no way to undo it and restore the bottle to your stockpile. Also the interface for placing bottles on racks is funky and confusing. I really don't care to go into that level of OCD, so I simply skip it.

We have 2 wine cellars in the house with just over 1000 bottles.

The good:
Search feature is flexible (sort of fun to "discover" wines I'd forgotten about)
Stability of app
Cellar design and options
Ability to share a dinner wine suggestion with spouse while being away
Wine notes and maturity details
Flexible wine entry details
Search for wine to enter
Duplicate feature

The less good:
Wine entry can be a little slow at first. Seems like there are 1 or 2 too many screens to get it done. But, once you get used to where things are it moves along faster.
Recently selected options show up in some of the screens (varietal) but not all. I.e. pain to have to search for US as the country each time.

Overalls it's a solid app that does the job well. We now use the app to select a wine and find its location before heading to the cellar saving us from standing in front of the cellar with door open looking at all the bottles and scribbled tags.

I'd recommend it to others and hope to use it for many many years.

My third wine app and finally I’ve found one that allows me to map my cellar graphically, track bottles by precise location and track maturity and apogée for optimum cellaring. Too many useful features to list. The combination of synchronized cloud and app is unbeatable. While the app doesn’t have the depth of information about wines the big sites do, I have yet to find one that does a good job of accurately combining and filtering all the crowdsourced junk information from users that aren’t matching vintages and bottles exactly. I also don’t care what people I don’t know think about a particular wine, but that’s just me. For me, I’d rather enter the basic/key attributes myself and then link winery-sourced information from the web and PDFs directly in the app. I did most of the basic entry from my laptop with copy/paste making it something that took just a few days for more than 300 different wines. I also did bulk uploads from my old app extracts and that worked flawlessly. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but I put a premium on accuracy of data about the wine I buy and cellar.

VinoCell’s app works great and is powerful but since you cannot “accurately” add many wines without a lot of legwork, it is a nightmare to use. My primary point here is that there are too many matches to choose from when searching for a wine in the app. When searching for wines I have purchased, that I am trying to enter into my cellar, there are many times just too many scattered matches; many users have entered their own version of a vintage release, so picking the right one with the most accurate information is a daunting task. Basically, if someone volunteered to enter all of my wines for me, I would use this app for my cellar management; but only then. I overlooked all of this because I wanted an app that shows the visual layout of all of my wine racks in my cellar. This app can do that portion and do it somewhat well, but in the end I just need to be able to know exactly where every bottle is placed in my cellar and be able to quickly add new wines as accurately as possible. CT is still the best app out there for this. I do wish CT had some aspects of VinoCell’s interface; but in the end, accurate and thorough organization and barcode/label matching is the clear winning component of CT’s features which unfortunately still beats all the other competition out there in app-based cellar management.

For those with a wine collection, VinoCell is far better at wine management than any other app I have ever checked out or used. It is only for iOS so if you have an Android, you can't use it, which is the one drawback. But if you have an iPhone or an iPad, it is invaluable. And, despite including an interface with Wine Searcher and Google search, data entry is still very manual (no barcode scanning yet). However, the app is impressive in its detail for organizing your wine collection information, from wine details and images to cellar and bottle tracking (completely customizable) to wine tasting notes and wine ratings. Perhaps the most impressive feature is the array of statistics: you can check the current value of your collection as well as incoming and outgoing stats and stats by country, region, appellation, varietal, years, maturity, etc. And you can access, edit and backup your app data through their website as well as the app, which you could do from any device, even ones that aren't iOS. It also includes importing and exporting features as well as sharing wine details via all methods normally offered in your device as well as creating PDFs of your wine details. VinoCell is the current version but the developer has been around and producing variations of this app for many years now and I have personally been using their apps for many years now. I honestly wouldn't consider using anything else.

We have a 600 bottle cellar and are in the process of transferring to Vinicava from a PC based app. We have been using the app for about a week. The app works as described and there is a series of six videos to help you learn the program. In addition to the videos, customer support is responsive to specific questions and they will add or correct information on grape variety, AVA, etc. immedietly, though little of that is needed as their information is comprehensive. It's nice to be untethered from the PC and be able to peruse our cellar from iPads and iPhones, which are all synced to the Vinicava cloud. There are two main parts to this app - the cellar management portion where you build your cellar (or cellars) and place your bottles, and the wine discription section where you enter relevant information about your wines. One thing that was not immedietly clear to us is that any modifications to wine information needs to be changed in the wine description half of the app rather than the cellar management part of the program. Therefore, you must be aware of which part of the app you are in - cellar management, or the wine description portion. If there is one feature that I would add to the Vinicava app, it would be the addition of a wine menu so wines could be viewed on an iPad in a presentation format much like a wine list in a restaurant with more information available when a specific wine is tapped. If you need to organize more than a couple dozen bottles this is a very worthwhile app.

This is a very comprehensive App and the learning curve is quite bumpy at the beginning because some of the features are not user friendly at all. You will have to devote some time to learn if you want to get the most of it.

This App has one major flaw, entering a new wine is a very complicated and time consuming thing. You cannot scan the wine front label nor the bar code like Vivino does. That leaves you with the only option to use the search option to find the wine that you want to add. The search icon to access the database to find your wine is on the top right and not in the main data entry area. When you start entering your wine most of the options that come up don’t have the correct harvest year of your wine specially if it is an international wine or if it is a recent harvest from [protected]. You have no other option to select the closest option and then change the year manually.

Furthermore you have to manually take picture of the label of your wine bottles, because the database does not include a picture. The App allows you to enter up to 3 pictures but you have to take those pictures manually to each bottle during the adding wine process. The other day it took me almost an hour to enter into the App a full case of 12 bottles, after navigating to find the correct year of my wines and taking manual pictures of all my wines.

Adding the option of scanning the wine label or the bar code to quickly locate your wine like Vivino does is an absolute must. If they don’t do it the App is too much time consuming and will require a lot of time to perform the most basic thing which is adding a new wine.

Having just completed a home wine cellar we were looking for some sort of a management tool to keep track of our wine as we built it up. I saw a few different ones and bought this on a leap of faith..and I have been very impressed. It seems very well thought out and constructed. More than a hodgepodge of features, it is a very flexible, customizable system that works surprisingly well. I might be jaded, but I expect apps like this to be a "work in progress" with full functionality coming in the near future. This one is very well done with a ton of features (like synching to the website, which I thought I would never use but have) that seem to work as intended right now!

The initial setup of the cellar configuration was easy and kind of fun (that's somewhat the point of having one anyway right?), albeit a bit lengthy. Once the cellar is configured I have found it pretty easy to enter new wines and "drink" existing wines. I did have to use the help videos two or three times, but even those were well done with good presentation software. There is a lot here, and it isn't extremely obvious what steps to take, but I'm getting the hang of it. We are having fun with the Tasting Notes part…that is a pretty nifty module that has a ton of categorized (taste, sight, aroma, etc) "tags" that you can drag and drop into your tasting notes.

I have not yet come to the time to use the app to help me search and sort the wine collection. It seems very robust and customizable in that regard too, but I am not there quite yet.

I do wish it could search reviews and prices -- that has been kind of a hassle to locate and input.

Anyway, we are very happy with the app. The price seems like a bargain.

This is a great tool for managing your wine cellar, whither you have a box of wine or a giant wine fridge. It has saved me from digging through boxes of wine and picking up each bottle to see what they are, and from rummaging around my small wine fridge on my hands and knees. The functions within the app are useful, the design is nice, and the ability to import/ export is a major bonus.

My only complaint is that, as I add wines to the database I find that I really have to use BOTH the computer and the iPad to enter all the information that I want. The online version speaks to the iPad/ iPhone app very well once the data is in, but the “Edit” or “Add wine” functions online are less useful than on the iPad. However, it IS easier to sit at the computer to do winery/ wine research and copy/ paste wine descriptions and photos into the website, than to enter everything manually or switch between Safari and VinoCellar on the iPad.

Some Examples:

You cannot (or at least I can’t figure out how to) search for a winery in the online version. On the iPad, a search within the app will many times find the winery and wine, and autofill many of the fields for you.

On the online VinoCellar, you can enter grapes by varietal, but not the % of each grape, while you can do both on the iPad.

On the iPad you can select the Capsule (Foil) color and cork style (Natural/ synthetic/ etc), but you can’t do that on the web version.

The online version doesn’t allow you to select how long the wines were barreled, wine acidity/ sugar/ pH, or add any winemaking info or soil types, while again, you can do all that in the app.

I realize that this is an APP designed for the iPad/ iPhone, and it works very well. I just wish that the online part of it was as easy to use so I don’t have to keep switching back and forth (and therefore syncing like crazy) between the iPad and Computer for entering data, taking pictures of bottles, and making notes. That being said, I have a largish wine collection, and I’m sure that once the bulk of the work is done entering all the information I can, this will be a much smaller issue.

How can you create 100s of input cells that ask details like effervescence? And have pull down menus that allow you to easily identify cork type, and not a freakin button to simply say how many bottles you bought and where to find then in your fridge.

Loads of extraneous data only important to a wine snob with the greatest interest in abstract details, and nothing that makes it easy for you to actual know what is in your collection

I can’t comprehend how this app received such positive reviews. From what I’ve read, I thought this would be an “upgrade” from using Wine Cellar. It’s actually just infuriating. This app requires way too much manual work.
It does not allow me to import my existing inventory with cellar rack location. It won’t even add wines by scanning the barcode.
I’m sticking with Wine Cellar.

This app was truly a disappointment. It’s “powerful” in the sense that it has numerous attributes that can be added, but you have to add them all manually. There’s no database that it pulls from except a very light version of incomplete user-added data with multiple vintage duplicates. I was very disappointed by this as I was hoping to find something with just a bit more detail and pizazz than CellarTracker.

The app works great but needs a few little changes. I emailed the designer/developer to recommend some very small changes that would allow users more control. What I got back was a email telling me that the app is designed the way the developer wants it and as the user I just have to make it work. I would think at $9.99 per app the developer might want to think of a better way of taking care of his customers.

For most enthusiasts this application is overkill. It is probably the most complete database wine management tool available. Some of the ‘web link’ functions were cumbersome or did not work at all. If you are looking to have a book chapter on each wine this app is for you. Most of us looking for a simpler page level database; year, winery, name, geographic origin, inventory, cost, value, tasting notes and maybe an auxiliary notes field.

This app is seriously short of delivering what it should for the price. Firstly there is no bar scan, there is no database to shorten the laborious process of entry. If that isn't bad enough ,syncing will lose much of the data and images you spent forever entering.

Finally in a previous review , it was claimed a user who gave the product 5 stars , had replaced a previous app he had been using for 15 years !

Apple didn't introduce apps until 2007.

Money back please

I just purchased this app and it is awful, do not buy it! I searched for some somewhat common wines from CA to input from my collection (Far Niente, Chalk Hill) and they had no information on either of the wines. Any one who is collecting is not going to be inputting wines they buy at the grocery store. Do not buy his app! There are free apps that have more info, do not make you input everything and are more user friendly I just wasted my $ and am really upset!

This app works better on an iPad than iPhone. On an iPhone, the search is terrible. It's hard to navigate. I don't use it at all in iPhone because every time I want to quickly find wine, it isn't synced. I do keep my cellar inventory and use this app on iPads. iPad search works fine. Requires manual sync between devices. Inventory allows more than 1 bottle to be placed in each space without warning which causes confusion. Bottom line, 3 starts on iPad, 0 stars on iPhone

The waste of $8.99 is the least of my worries. I lost a couple of hours trying to import my data from Cellar tracker using their useless import link. There’s nowhere for me to put in your score in the import CSV file (so I have to give up on all my wine scores?). And after a couple of hours transferring the database from Cellar tracker to them, I keep getting the error message “Wines can’t be imported. The CSV file structure contains an error, please verify it” without any other explanation, Argh!

I like being able to place bottles in the virtual wine cellar shelves, and there’s the ability to add a lot of details about each wine, but this is WAY too time consuming. With almost every other app I can scan the bar code or label to import the wine. I have over 200 bottles and this app will take days to input them all. I think it’s a MAJOR drawback with this app and because of it I really don’t understand all the 5 star reviews. Am I missing something here or do you all have way too much free time? I don’t get it.

I spent a good three hours just trying to enter 10 bottles of wine and assign them to slots in my cellar. 2 out of 10 came up in the database—I had to type in a ton of details manually for the others.

Assigning bottles to shelves and slots is an exercise in futility. Even trying to increase the quantity to multiple bottles is way more work than it should be. This app feels very outdated and clunky.

I found that Vivino has a cellar function so went to that instead and just put the rack number in the notes. Much easier.

This app is very difficult to use. The initial configuration is complicated, and it does not support advanced configurations of the shape of wine fridges and other oddly shaped cellar designs.

Adding bottles is nowhere near as intuitive as they say in the self-written description. The auto search is not easy to use, and the data presented in the search results is unmoderated, confusing, and in many cases, duplicated.

After spending 2 hours trying to set up and add the 1st bottle, I am dumping this app to find a better one.

Well, that was a waste of $14.99 and an afternoon. Like another reviewer, I purchased this based on a website review claiming this is the best wine cellar management app. Not so. It isn't intuitive and the database is very limited. Of the first five or so wines I entered, it only came up with one. If it isn't in the database, you have to manually enter all the information - who wants to do that for lots of bottles? Save yourself the money and get Cellar Tracker and Corkz, like I did. Not ideal apps, but certainly a lot easier to use.

I don’t know what the other reviewers are talking about, but this app accomplishes so little and makes it so difficult that I wish I hadn’t wasted my ten bucks.

It suffers from a terrible user interface and misses on the basics, for instance, it can’t scan barcodes to search for a wine so you have to type everything!

The database appears to be quite international, but the majority of my cellar’s contents are California wines and half of what I searched for wasn’t found.

My suggestion is just make a spreadsheet with the info you care about and save yourself some money and frustration trying to make this app useful.

Not an app for the weekend wine enthusiast, it’s more geared towards the massive collections. I have an 80 bottle wine fridge and there are no settings in the app for a shelf, only stacks or bins. FYI, some of us don’t buy wine by the case… A single row option would be nice. No auto fill, I have to enter every detail over and over. Every change requires going in, clicking edit, going into that menu, clicking edit then doing it all in reverse. I’ve been trying so many of these apps and have yet to find one that’s intuitive and simple. Spent an hour trying to figure out how to enter 3 bottles of St Emilion and ready to eat my $8 and move on

This app portends to be so powerful that I was sold by the description. And maybe it is great once all the data is I input into the database. I tried to start the process of entering the bottles from my wine cellar into the data base and found that every detail of every wine has to be entered manually (winery, region, subregion, varietal, photo of label, etc..)
With a cheaper app, cellar tracker, I simply start entering the wine name and the app finds the wine and fills in all the information including photos of the label. I was amazed at how many bottles it can find.
I wish I could get my money back for this Vinocellar app. After trying to enter my first bottle, I gave up and I'll never use it!