VinLocate is a 3D model of your own cellar or wine fridge that you build inside InVintory — rack by rack, shelf by shelf — so the app can point you at the exact slot a bottle is sitting in.
⭐ Requires a paid plan. Free collections get no VinLocate at all — no 3D view, and the sections list on a storage is replaced by an upgrade card. How much of your cellar you see at once then depends on your plan, so it's worth reading the table before you start.
How much of the cellar you see at once
Any paid plan | Elite and above | |
The 3D view | One section at a time. You open a rack or shelf and look at that | The whole cellar stitched into a single room you can move around in |
Wine cases | Standalone cases you can fill and search | Place, stack and re-position cases inside the cellar itself |
The first row is the one that surprises people. The single stitched cellar you may have seen in marketing is the wider of the two views — but a section-at-a-time VinLocate is still exact and still finds your bottles. You just look at your storage one rack at a time rather than as one room.
Having us model a cellar for you is something to talk to us about rather than something that happens when you subscribe, and it comes with one trade-off worth knowing up front: on a storage we've modelled, the Create, Modify, Duplicate and Delete options disappear from its sections. You can't reshape that cellar or extend it with new sections yourself — come back to us for changes. Wine cases stay editable.
VinLocate knows where a bottle is only because you put it there. Nothing is detected or guessed. You build the layout first, then place each bottle into a slot. Bottles you haven't placed still sit in your collection exactly as normal — they simply have no position, and you can list them any time with the Without a 3D position filter.
The three levels
Level | What it is | Example |
Storage | The cellar or fridge itself | "Basement Cellar" |
Section | One physical unit inside it — a rack, a bin, or a wine case | "Left Wall Rack" |
Slot | A single position where one bottle sits | Row 3, column 5 |
On a fridge the middle level is called a shelf rather than a section — the same thing, named to match the hardware.
What building one involves
Create the storage — the cellar or fridge.
Choose Rack or Bin.
Choose the shape — racks offer trellis, wall-mounted, shelving and rotating-display layouts; bins offer rectangles, triangles and diamonds. Pick whichever looks like the real thing.
Set the dimensions — rows, columns and depth, matched to the real slot count.
Place bottles — tap a slot in the 3D view, then add bottles to it.
Sections are named for you as you go — Rack 1, Bin 2, Shelf 3. To give one a name that means something when you're standing in the cellar, tap the three-dot menu beside it and choose Rename. On the web you get a name field up front instead, already filled in with the same default.
The builder loops, so you repeat steps 2 to 4 for every rack and shelf you own, tapping Add another each time. A large cellar is a sit-down job rather than a two-minute one. You don't have to finish in one go — one section is enough to start, and a storage shows no 3D view until it has at least one.
Open a storage → Sections → Create
Racks, bins and cases
Type | Holds | When you locate a bottle |
Rack | One bottle per fixed position | We point you to the exact slot |
Bin | Unlimited bottles, stacked together | We point you to the bin, not one slot |
Wine case | A case kept intact as one unit | We point you to the case |
Bins are the honest choice when bottles are piled on each other and shift as you pull them out. Racks are the choice when you want an exact answer.
Finding a bottle
You rarely need to open the 3D view yourself. Any wine you have placed shows a Locate button — on its card in your collection, on the bottle detail screen, and as a swipe action. Tap it and the 3D view opens with that bottle highlighted.
Every position also reads as a coordinate like R3, C5, D1 — row, column, depth. It shows on the bottle in the app and can be printed onto shelf labels, so you can find a wine standing in the cellar without unlocking your phone.
Where the 3D view opens from
iPhone & iPad: Home → open a storage → tap a section
Whole cellar: Home → storage card → View 3D
Android: Cellars → open a cellar → tap a section
Web: app.invintory.com → Storage → open a storage → tap a section
Android and the web run the same 3D engine as iPhone and iPad, and can build sections and place bottles just the same.
If the 3D view won't open
VinLocate needs a real iPhone or iPad. If you run InVintory on a Mac you'll see 3D view not supported. Please use an iPhone, iPad, or your web browser. That is expected rather than a fault — open the web app instead.
One more thing worth knowing: the VinLocate Notification toggle in Settings has nothing to do with drink windows. It controls whether the app offers to place bottles in 3D straight after you add them to your collection.
Next steps
How to create a cellar or fridge — the prerequisite, before any of this works
How to create sections in a storage — the step-by-step build, with every shape explained
Common VinLocate terms — sections, slots, bins and coordinates in one place