For wine enthusiasts with large cellars, keeping track of wine has always been a challenge. AccuBar has a combination of features that are of benefit to anyone handling large quantities of wine.

Restaurant owners and bartenders have been using AccuBar to keep track of their liquor inventories. Many sommeliers and wine collectors are now seeing how useful having a hand-held computer system like AccuBar can be.

For the past decade, G4 Technologies Corp. has been working on this system and their new AccuBeer system, which tracks keg inventory. AccuBar has streamlined taking inventory, making it much more accurate and less time-consuming.

Wine Enthusiast has a tremendous offering of wine related products.

Below are links to their current sale items:

- Refrigerated Wine Cabinets

- Stemware

- Wine Service & Preservation

- Wine Racks

- Decanters & Aerators

- Corkscrews

- Wine Furniture (Cellars, Racks, etc)

- Wine Collecting Accessories

AccuBeer, which was launched in beta tests at the end of 2006, can determine how much is remaining in each keg to within a pint. This has been a boon for bars because it can tell how much has been consumed not only at the end of the night but during a shift changes. This has improved employee accountability but also allowed workers to prepare for an evening rush and know they have enough product on hand. Other industries have adapted AccuBar to track other inventories, including china, textiles, and even food.

So, how can AccuBar help wine collectors? First, AccuBar reads any barcode found on any commercially purchased wine and the user enters the number of bottles. If the wine doesn’t have a barcode, AccuBar will assign it one, which can be printed to neck hangers or other labels to attach to bins or shelves. Once these are in the system, the user just scans and enters the number of new bottles.

You can also categorize your wines by bin number or shelf number. Just assign wines to specific bins, recording everything in the handheld. Then, you can call them up by bin number.

One advantage of the neck hangers is the wine consumer can take a bottle from the cellar, remove the neckhanger, and put it aside for scanning in latter. This is especially helpful when someone is entertaining and an extra bottle is required. The host can select the wine and then come back after the event and scan in the neckhanger to remove that wine from the inventory.

In addition to having the barcode printed on the neckhanger, the full wine name is listed, including the winery. For example, underneath the barcode, the neckhanger may read: Krug Grande Cuvee Brut. Therefore, you can select a wine quickly by reading the neckhanger when you enter your cellar. This is critical, too, if a winery assigns the same barcode to multiple vintages.

AccuBar also allows the users to save specific locations in your cellar as templates. You can open that template on the handheld and compare it to a visual inventory of what is present. You can therefore inventory a specific location quickly, or even your whole cellar.

The handheld can even count what is left in open bottles. This could be helpful if a wine collector hosts a large event or keeps vintage port or sherry that isn’t consumed at a sitting.

AccuBar has two ways of dealing with all of this data. You, the customer, can opt to buy the handheld and the software needed to complete reports on your personal computer. Or, you can buy the handheld and pay a monthly fee for an online service that processes the information for you and provides you with email reports. All of the reports come as Excel spreadsheets.

For more information, call the AccuBar offices in Colorado at: 800-806-3922.