Build the structure before you enter a single bottle: create your cellars and fridges first, get every bottle in second, add tags third, and place bottles into 3D sections last. Each step depends on the one before it, and doing them out of order is what forces people to start over.
⭐ Storages, bottles and tags work on every plan, free included, and there is no cap on how many bottles you can hold. Custom fields and VinLocate sections need Premium or higher. Premium builds and views a cellar one section at a time; a single stitched 3D model of a whole cellar, and having our team build it for you, is Elite. On the free plan, read Finding bottles without VinLocate at the end instead.
Why this order
Storages → bottles → tags → 3D positions
Three things about how the app works decide the sequence:
An import creates a cellar for every name it doesn't recognise. A spreadsheet import has a Cellar or fridge name column, matched against the storages you already have. Anything unmatched becomes a new cellar; anything blank lands in one called My Cellar. Name your storages first and the import files itself correctly.
No import can place bottles into 3D positions. Not spreadsheets, not CellarTracker, not Vivino. Slot-level placement is always a job you do afterwards, so there is no reason to build sections early.
Moving bottles between storages later wipes their 3D positions. Change the storage on more than ten bottles at once and the app makes you type
CONFIRM, because the slots go with them. Place bottles last and you only place them once.
1. Decide the structure away from the app
You are not deciding how to categorise your wine here — you are deciding how to describe your room.
Create one storage per physical unit, named for where it is. "Basement north wall", "Kitchen fridge", "Garage rack". Not "Bordeaux", not "Drink soon", not "Investment". Every other way of slicing a collection is already free and instant — filter by region, grape, vintage, price, drink window or tag whenever you like. Physical location is the one thing the app can't work out on its own, so it's the only thing your storage names should carry. A cellar called "Bordeaux" stops being true the first time you run out of room in it.
Arranging the actual bottles by old world and new world, or country by country, is a fine idea — just make the storages match the racks rather than the theme. And leave physical space where you expect to grow: sections can be resized later, the room can't.
2. Create your cellars and fridges
Home → Cellars & fridges → Create new cellar or fridge → Create Cellar
On the home screen, find the Cellars & fridges section and tap the Create new cellar or fridge card.
Choose Create Cellar or Create Fridge. Those are the only two kinds, and the difference is just a label — pick whichever describes the thing.
Enter a name and tap Create. Name is the only field that matters; colour and cover photo just help you tell storages apart at a glance.
If it's a branded wine fridge, choose Create Fridge and look for your model. You'll land on Select your fridge model — a list of brands and models with the shelf count already filled in. Picking yours builds every shelf for you and skips the whole of step 5. If your model isn't there, tap Custom.
Do this when you create the fridge. A template only applies to a fridge that has no sections yet, so once you've built shelves by hand you'd have to delete them first.
3. Get the bottles in, by the fastest route for your volume
While your collection is empty the home screen shows a Get started card with the main routes on it. Which one to use depends almost entirely on volume.
Your situation | Use this | Why |
Already tracked somewhere else | Import from CellarTracker, Import from Vivino or Upload a spreadsheet | Brings purchase prices, notes and tags with it. |
A large cellar, no existing list | Upload a spreadsheet | One pass along the racks with a laptop beats bottle-by-bottle, and it sets the cellar name per row. |
A modest cellar, no list | Label scanning, or Search | No spreadsheet to build. Scanning reads the label; searching is quicker for wines you know by name. |
Several wines at once | Search, not Add | Search lets you tick several wines into a queue and fill in shared details once. Add takes one wine at a time. |
Running an import
Home → your collection name → Collection settings → Import data
CellarTracker runs inside the app: enter your CellarTracker username and password, choose which lists to bring across — Inventory, Community Reviews, Deliveries, Wishlist, History — and tap Import. Vivino and Spreadsheet email you a link instead, because the upload itself happens in a browser. You can also start any of the three at app.invintory.com/setup. Only a collection's owner or an admin can start an import.
Expect a review step. An import doesn't land straight in your collection. You get a Review Import screen listing any bottles we couldn't match to a wine in our database, and nothing is added until you tap Start Reviewing and work through them. On any paid plan the same screen offers to have our sommeliers review the unmatched bottles for you instead.
Use the Storage fields as you go
However you add bottles, the form's Storage info section has two fields worth filling from the start:
Storage — which cellar or fridge the bottles go into. The app remembers your last choice, so you set it once per session, not per bottle.
Bottle location text — free text for the exact spot, like "Left wall R1, C3". On every plan, and filterable later. If you already have your own coordinate system, this is where it goes.
4. Add tags now, sections later
Tags carry everything your storage names deliberately don't — Gifted, Special occasion, Investment, For the restaurant. They work on every plan and appear as a filter chip on your collection screen. A spreadsheet import can bring them in through a tags column, which saves tagging hundreds of bottles by hand. Manage them at Collection settings → Customization → Tags, or from the Tags row on any bottle.
You also get custom fields, split into Label custom fields (one value shared by every bottle of that wine and vintage) and Bottle custom fields (a value per individual bottle). Each is text, a number or a date. The allowance is small and fixed, so spend it deliberately — a critic score, a personal rating, a drink-by date.
5. Build sections and VinLocate last
Sections are the racks, bins, shelves and cases inside a storage — what VinLocate turns into a 3D model.
Open a cellar or fridge → Sections → Create
Choose a type. A Rack gives every bottle its own numbered slot. A Bin holds a pile of bottles and points you at the bin rather than the bottle. Use racks where bottles stay put, bins where they shift when you pull one out.
Name it for where it is — "Left wall, bottom" beats "Section 1" when you're standing in the cellar with a torch.
Set Row, Column and Depth to match the real rack. Count carefully; this is what makes bottles findable.
Tap + Add another and repeat, or Done. If several racks are identical, build one and use Duplicate from its menu.
Then place bottles. After adding new bottles the app offers Add to 3D positions; you can also open the 3D view and drop bottles into slots. Do one section at a time rather than the whole cellar in a sitting — and don't fear getting a section wrong: deleting one leaves the bottles in your collection and only clears their positions.
Finding bottles without VinLocate
You don't need 3D to find a bottle. Put your own coordinates in Bottle location text as you add bottles, then tap Filter on your collection screen and filter on Bottle location text, alongside Cellars and Tags. It's a text field rather than a model, but it answers the same question — and everything you type there stays useful if you upgrade later.
The one mistake to avoid
Deleting a storage after you've filled it. If it still holds bottles you get two buttons: Transfer N Bottles and Delete Storage & N Bottles. The second does exactly what it says. Always transfer. That risk is the whole argument for step 1 — everything downstream of your storage structure is cheap to change, and the structure itself isn't.
Next steps
How to create a cellar or fridge — the full walkthrough for step 2
How to add bottles to your collection — step 3, screen by screen
How to manage tags and How to manage custom fields — step 4