CellarTracker founder, Eric Levine: “it is our exact intent to provide an automatic appraisal”
CellarTracker is one of the most widely used wine resource and tool in the internet. What started out (in 2003) as a hobby and side project by a Microsoft employee ballooned into the leading cellar management system and the leading user tasting note database in the world. Millions of wine enthusiasts share read and share their experiences with wine. CellarTracker tracks over 60 million bottles and has over 5 million tasting notes.
CellarTracker has great tools to help you take stock and appraise your cellar before selling your wine. With so many obscure wines rated by CellarTracker it has become one of the only places that a person can get feedback on less well known and unrated wines. We interviewed Eric LeVine, founder of CellarTracker.
Sell Wine Guide: Cellar tracker is one of the most popular wine tools on the internet and the amazing collection of SKUs and information collected is unparalleled. It also serves as cellar management system, community tasting note creator and enthusiast platform. What are some of the resources that CellarTracker's users can use to help sell their wine?
Eric LeVine, Founder of Cellar Tracker: Currently we do not have any integrated selling resources nor plans to add them. You can however easily export data from your cellar to share with a potential consignor.
Sell Wine Guide: Cellar management that's combined with a peer to peer sales is starting to become a trend, are there any intentions to establish such a system on CellarTracker?
Eric LeVine: I don’t know that this is a new trend. When I started CellarTracker in 2003, Vinfolio and VinTrust both came along in 2004 with a heavy focus on sales, and WineCommune was in full swing at the time. That said, there are significant legal/compliance challenges to allowing peer to peer sales. As such, in 2009 when Vinfolio launched their Marketplace (which escrowed the transaction through Vinfolio as a legal reseller), I was a founding partner. It was actually going pretty well, but then when Vinfolio went through bankruptcy I decided it was not worth the risk to refer my customers refer to a partner.
Sell Wine Guide: The paid account tracks the value of the member's wine collection - how does that work? Does it pull information from Wine-searcher.com?
Eric Levine: We partner with Wine Market Journal in addition to aggregating extensive community data. Please see our site for more info.
Sell Wine Guide: Can these paid account value tracker work like an appraisal tool?
Eric LeVine: Yes, automatic valuation is a premium/paid feature of CellarTracker, and it is our exact intent to provide an automatic appraisal.
Sell Wine Guide: Does the discussion forum allow for people to offer their own wine to other users?
Eric LeVine: No, we do not allow peer to peer commerce on our forum.
Sell Wine Guide: While the secondary "sell us your wine" market focuses on the high end famous producers there are many great obscure wines out there. We're trying to encourage people to see the value of their less famous wines as well. CellarTracker is famous for covering practically any wine that's out there. What are some of best obscure wines that are really highly rated by CellarTracker’s users (or an obscure wine you like yourself).
Eric LeVine: There are tens of thousands of highly rated wines, too much to list. So I will focus on a couple of obscure items that I like myself:
Anything from Markus Ruch in Hallau, Switzerland of all places. He makes some truly amazing Pinot Noir.
I am going to get in trouble with wine geeks all over the world, but one of the truly great rosé wines is Ameztoi Rubentis, a Txakoli of all things.
Finally, anything from Tenuta delle Terre Nere in Etna, Nerello Mascalese is hauntingly good.
