Wine Bottle Cellar Labeling

When I try to find a certain bottle in my cellar, I have to pull each bottle out to read the label. I have seen wine label tags which wrap around the neck but these work poorly if the wines are two deep plus the tags are not printable. I came across a French design which is called the Cellar Label in Wines & Vines (May, 2007). These are two peel-off, self-adhesive round stickers affixed to the back label, which consumers can remove and apply to the bottle top and bottom. The idea is to allow one to choose a wine without having to pull each bottle out.

I thought that one could buy circular printable labels by the sheet and print out all of the essential information on the label (wine name, year, price etc.). 1” labels fit the top of the capsule perfectly and are available from www.cellar-label.com. Of course, if your wines are two deep or three deep, you will still need to pull out the closest bottle, but you can then easily observe the bottle(s) behind. If your wines are stored with the neck inward, the 1” labels will not be of use because of the punt on the bottom of most bottles of Pinot Noir. You could acquire larger labels to match the bottom diameter of the bottle.

You might want to add a spot of glue to insure that the label does not fall off over time.

This is a simple idea that never really occurred to me previously. Many of you probably already employ the same or similar method to identify your cellared bottles.