Scanning a Wine Menu [BETA]
Scanning a Wine Menu with Your Camera
CellarTracker lets you snap a photo of a restaurant's wine list and instantly see ratings, average value, food pairing, and wines recommended for you. The quality of your results often depends on the quality of the photo you take. This guide covers how to get the best scans, the most common problems we see, and a few tricks for tougher menus.
How do I get the best results?
A few simple habits make scans far more accurate:
- Use good lighting. Bright, even light helps us read every wine clearly. If the table is dim, turn on the phone flashlight or angle the menu toward the nearest light.
- Keep the image sharp. Hold your phone steady and let it focus before you tap. Clear, centered images provide the best chance at reading each wine and price correctly.
- Fit everything in frame. Make sure the full wine name, producer, vintage, and region are all inside the photo.
- Submit fewer pages at a time. The more wines submitted at once, the longer it will take to process. You can always add wines after the fact, once the first pages have processed.
- Screenshots can work. If you're looking at a digital menu, a screenshot is fine as long as the text is crisp and fully in view.
Why did my scan miss some wines or come back wrong?
If a scan looks incomplete or inaccurate, it's almost always one of these:
The photo was blurry
Movement or a missed focus leaves the text fuzzy. Rest your elbows on the table, wait for the camera to focus, and take the shot again.
Wine names were cut off
If names, vintages, or regions run off the edge of the photo, we can only read part of each entry. Back up slightly so the whole line fits, and watch the left and right edges.
The lighting was too dark
Dim restaurant lighting makes text hard to read. Move the menu toward a light source or use your phone's flashlight, then try again.
We didn't have the wine in our database
There are millions of wines in the CellarTracker database, but sometimes one slips through the cracks. You can always ask us to add new wines by emailing add@cellartracker.com.
You photographed a computer screen
Taking a picture of a menu on a screen often causes glare, reflections, and a moiré (screen-door) pattern that's hard to read. If the menu is digital, take a screenshot on that device instead of photographing the screen.
How do I scan a large or crowded menu?
Long wine lists with dense or small print are the toughest case. The trick is simple: don't try to capture the whole thing at once. Cover the part of the menu you're not interested in, then photograph just the section you want. You'll get cleaner, more accurate results, and you can always scan another section afterward.
Quick checklist before you scan
- Is the image sharp and in focus?
- Are all the wine names, vintages, and regions fully inside the frame?
- Is the lighting bright enough to read every word?
- Is it a direct photo (or a clean screenshot) rather than a picture of a screen?
- For a long list, are you scanning one section at a time? For multiple pages, don't submit all pages at once.
Why don't CellarTracker Community Values match the menu currency?
The community values match the currency set in your app. If your menu is in a currency different from the one set in your app (especially if you're traveling internationally), simply go to Profile -> Settings -> Display and update the currency to the one on the menu. Simply change it back when you're done.
What is Value Rating and how is it calculated?
Value ratings help you spot the wines on a list that give you the most for your money. Instead of guessing from the price alone, we combine two things: how a wine is priced compared to similar wines, and how good it actually is according to CellarTracker community ratings. Here are the most common questions about how it works.
What do the badges mean?
- Great Value: Priced below average for wines in its price range and rated above average for quality.
- Good Value: Wins on one of the two counts: either priced well or rated well, but not both.
- Fair Value: Doesn't win on either count, but it's close enough to be worth considering.
- Poor Value: Substantially overpriced for the quality you're getting.
How is the value rating calculated?
Every wine goes through four steps:
- Markup: We compare the menu price to the CellarTracker Average Value. If the CellarTracker Average value is $50 and the menu lists it at $120, that's a 2.4× markup.
- Price position: A markup number on its own doesn't mean much, because restaurants naturally mark up cheaper wines more than expensive ones. So we group wines into price tiers based on their retail value and compare each wine's markup to the median for its tier.
- Adjusted quality: We look at community tasting scores, but we weigh how many reviews a wine has. A 93 from 2 reviewers is far less certain than a 91 from 48 reviewers, so scores backed by only a few reviews get pulled toward the list average until they've earned trust. This gives each wine a reliability-adjusted quality score.
- The badge: We ask two yes-or-no questions: Is it priced below its tier median? and Is its adjusted quality above the list median? The combination of answers determines the badge.
What are price tiers, and why do you use them?
Restaurants mark up inexpensive wines more aggressively than expensive ones. Comparing a $28 bottle's markup directly to a $95 bottle's markup would be unfair. To account for this, we sort wines into tiers by their retail value and compare each wine only against others in the same tier. That way, "well priced" always means well priced for wines like this one.
Why did a highly rated wine not get a top value badge?
Usually one of two reasons. Either its impressive raw score came from very few reviews, so its reliability-adjusted quality is more modest than the headline number suggests or the wine is genuinely good but priced high for its tier, which pulls down its value even when the quality is real. A great value has to clear both bars.
If you have additional questions reach out to our support team at support@cellartracker.com.