Public and Private Note Types

CellarTracker provides a number of ways for users to store and share both public and private notes about wines, their consumption and tasting. This document is a guide to help users determine which type of note to use and when.

Tasting Notes

Tasting notes are always public.

These are public and are seen by all users. They can be created on any wine in the database, regardless of whether that wine is in your cellar. For more information on tasting notes, including the wine rating scale, please see the Tasting Notes and Ratings help topic.

Articles/Integrated Wiki

Articles are always public.

On every wine page, you can add/edit/view articles on specific wines, producers, varieties, appellations and more. As with the personal tasting notes, these articles are public and should not contain copyrighted professional scores. That said, this is the ideal place to store data from producers about their wines, fact sheets, varietal breakdowns, alcohol percentages, etc.

Consumption Notes

Consumption notes are always private.

When consuming a bottle, you can store a short (512 character) note. This is the ideal place to record who you might have consumed a bottle with, given a gift to, the name of a restaurant, etc.

Per-wine Private Notes

Private notes (per-wine) are always private.

For each wine, you can store one long (6144 character) private note. This is a good place to keep track of information about gifts or other stuff that might better be kept private.

Professional Reviews

Manually-entered professional reviews are always private.

For each wine, you can enter as many of these as you want. You can record the publication, date, score, drinking window and review text. For copyright reasons, these are private to each user. This is the ideal way to store copyrighted write-ups from critics for your own personal use.

Purchase Notes

Purchase notes are visible to those who can view your cellar. See the  Privacy Settings help topic to learn more.

For each purchase you create, you can store a short (255 character) purchase note. This is a great place to keep track of order numbers and other purchase-specific details.

Bottle Notes

Bottle notes are visible to those who can view your cellar. See the  Privacy Settings help topic to learn more.

For each bottle in your cellar, you can shore a short (255 character) bottle note. This is a great place to keep track of bottle-specific conditions such as "signed by winemaker" or "torn label" or "scratched capsule", etc. This is also a perfect place to  track Coravin status if you have tapped a specific bottle.