A photo of a cellar book
A long-standing customer is downsizing and wants to sell part of his cellar. He sends photos of a handwritten cellar book, three pages long, with abbreviations only he understands. Another customer's executor sends a spreadsheet from years ago that does not say what has been drunk since. A third emails 'I have some old claret, would you be interested?'.
Each request is a real opportunity for your fine wine side, and each one starts with hours of tidying before the buyer can even look.
Why cellar lists are slow to assess
The judgement about whether to buy, sell on the customer's behalf or decline belongs to your buyer. The slow part is everything before that: turning an unstructured list into lines with producer, wine, vintage, format and quantity, and then chasing the details that matter, such as where the wine has been stored and whether the bottles are in original cases.
- Lists arrive as photos, handwriting, PDFs and old spreadsheets.
- Abbreviations and misspellings make matching difficult.
- Storage history and condition are rarely included.
- Requests arrive to different staff and are not tracked.
- Customers are left waiting without knowing where things stand.
What slow intake costs
Customers who wait weeks for a reply often go to someone else who answered quicker. Buyer time is spent on tidying, not judging. Requests that sit in one person's inbox get forgotten. And for the customer, often at an emotional moment such as a bereavement or a move, silence is a poor experience.
The cellar intake we build
- Customers submit their list through a simple form: upload a photo, spreadsheet or PDF, or type lines directly. Emailed lists are added to the same queue by staff.
- An extraction step turns the list into lines: producer, wine, vintage, format and quantity, with uncertain readings flagged and the original line shown alongside.
- Each line is matched to your wine records where possible, so the buyer sees what you know about that wine.
- The customer is asked, in the same flow, for the details you need: where the wine has been stored, whether in original cases, any known condition issues, photos of labels and fill levels if requested.
- The buyer reviews the structured list, marks lines of interest and records a decision and notes. Any figures offered are entered by the buyer, not produced by the system.
- The customer is kept informed at each step, and every request has an owner and a status.
| Stage | Who does it | What the customer sees |
|---|---|---|
| List submitted | Customer | Confirmation with a reference |
| Lines extracted and matched | System, checked by staff | Nothing yet |
| Condition details requested | System, sent to customer | Short questions to answer |
| Buyer review | Buyer | Status update |
| Decision | Buyer | Reply from the buyer |
The system never values wine or makes an offer. Those are your buyer's judgements, made on the information the intake gathers.
Cellar requests that get answered
The downsizing customer's handwritten pages become forty tidy lines within a day, with six flagged for him to clarify. He answers the storage questions from a link. The buyer spends her time deciding, not typing. Requests no longer sit in one person's inbox, and customers know where they stand.
The record is useful afterwards as well. If the buyer takes some of the wine, the lines she chose flow into your stock or your broking records with the provenance details already attached, so the next customer who asks about that bottle can be told where it came from and how it was kept. If she declines, the customer gets a courteous answer and the request is closed rather than left hanging.
Does this sound like your fine wine inbox?
- Customers send cellar lists as photos and old spreadsheets.
- Tidying a list takes longer than assessing it.
- Storage and condition details are chased one by one.
- Requests are not tracked and sometimes forgotten.
- Customers wait weeks without an update.