Excel wine list template: how to keep your cellar book

What an Excel wine list is good for

A wine list answers three questions: what's there, where is it, and what should be drunk soon? As long as you have a dozen bottles on the shelf, you know all this by heart. As your collection grows, you lose track faster than you'd think. Suddenly two bottles of the same wine end up in different spots, and one of them has passed its prime.

A spreadsheet has a clear advantage over a notebook: you can sort, filter, and count. With just a few clicks, you can see all the red wines from a particular region or every bottle on a specific shelf. The steps below refer to Excel. They work similarly in other spreadsheet programs, though some menus may be named differently there.

• How to store wine properly, even without a cellar

Wine list template: the columns you need

The following template covers what most private collections require. Copy the column names into the first row of your spreadsheet and enter one row per wine below. The example row shows the best format for each entry. You can add a column for purchase price if you'd like to track later what you spent and on what.

One row per wine, one column per detail

The most important rule for a wine list sounds obvious: each cell should contain exactly one piece of information. So don't write "Riesling 2023, 6 bottles" in a single field—split it into wine, vintage, and quantity. Only then can Excel sort by vintage or add up the bottles. Merged cells, blank rows as separators, and headings in the middle of the table get in the way when filtering and later when exporting.

The same wine in different vintages gets its own row. A 2021 and a 2023 mature differently and have different drinking windows. For sparkling wine without a vintage, just leave the vintage field empty. A word like "none" would turn the column from a number field into a text field, and then sorting won't work properly anymore.

Standardizing spellings

Many wine lists fail not because of missing entries but because of inconsistent ones. If the same grape appears once as Pinot Gris, once as Grauer Burgunder, and once as Pinot Gris in the list, the filter only finds a third of the entries. The same applies to wineries listed with and without the word "Weingut" in the name. Settle on one spelling for each entry and stick with it.

The most reliable way to do this is with a dropdown list. Create a column on a second sheet with your grape varieties, regions, and storage locations. Then go to the ribbon, select Data, Data Validation, and choose "List" under "Allow." Select your column as the source. From now on, you pick the value with a click, and typos have no chance.

• Grauburgunder, Pinot Gris, Pinot Grigio

Drinking window column: When each wine is ready

A drinking window is the period during which a wine tastes best. Enter it as two years so Excel can calculate with it. The German Wine Institute gives a rough guideline that simple dry wines should be drunk within three years. Dry premium wines can handle five to ten years. The producer's specification for the particular bottle is more precise—when in doubt, ask them.

A small formula lets the list show you what's coming up on its own. If the drinking window is in columns K and L as in the template above, write this in row 2 of a new column: =IF(YEAR(TODAY())<K2,"wait",IF(YEAR(TODAY())<=L2,"now","past")). Drag the formula down and filter for "now." Open the entries marked "past" first.

• The right serving temperature

Entering storage location: precise enough to find the bottle

A storage location is only useful if it leads you to the bottle without searching. "Cellar" is enough for ten bottles, but not for a hundred. So split the location into two columns: the room or cabinet, and below that the slot. Label the shelves in the cellar exactly as they're named in the list. Then the table and reality match up, even if someone else grabs a bottle.

Many lists go out of date when things get rearranged. Log every relocation right away, most easily with your phone right in front of the shelf. Don't delete bottles you've drunk—set the quantity to zero instead. That way the row with your note is preserved, and you'll know how the wine tasted the next time you buy it.

Formulas and filters for your wine cellar list

Select the table and format it as a table via Home. Excel then adds a filter button to every column header, letting you filter by type, region, or storage location. New rows added at the end are automatically included. For the total number of bottles, a simple SUM over the Quantity column will do. SUMIF tells you how many bottles are in a particular room.

If the storage locations are in column H and the quantities in column G, as in the template, the formula is =SUMIF(H:H,"Cellar",G:G). In the US/UK version, you separate the parts of a formula with commas. Conditional formatting can also highlight in red any rows whose drinking window has expired. A private wine list rarely needs more formulas than that.

Exporting and importing your wine list as CSV

CSV is the lowest common denominator format for spreadsheets. Wine cellar apps and common spreadsheet programs can read it. However, when saving as CSV, Excel only saves the currently open sheet. Formulas, colors, and dropdown lists are lost—only the raw values remain. So always save your regular Excel file first, and only then create a CSV copy.

Two settings determine whether the file arrives correctly for the recipient. The delimiter depends on your regional settings: if the comma is your decimal separator, Excel separates columns with a semicolon. For special characters, choose the "CSV UTF-8" option when saving. When importing, go to Data, From Text/CSV, set the file origin to UTF-8, and check in the preview that the delimiter is correct.

When an app makes more sense than a spreadsheet

An Excel list reaches its limits as soon as you want to make an entry on the go or down in the cellar. A wide table is cumbersome on a phone. Photos of labels are hard to embed, and if several people work on the same file, they quickly overwrite each other. Tasting notes also don't fit well into a single cell.

Gustofolio can take over an existing list via CSV import. In the cellar section, you set up storage locations down to the slot—cellar, shelf, row, and slot—and see the current stock and the history of relocations. For every wine, the app shows the drinking window and serving temperature. New bottles are added by simply photographing the label. You can export your collection at any time as CSV, Excel, or PDF, so you always keep your spreadsheet.

• Wine app: manage your cellar and scan labels

Frequently asked questions about wine lists in Excel

When setting up a wine list, the same practical questions tend to come up again and again. They're about ready-made templates, drunk bottles, multiple sheets, and moving to an app. You'll find short answers here, with the detailed steps in the sections above.