Does the Cellar work with any wine?

Red, white, rosé, sparkling, dessert wine, and fortified wine all rest in the Cellar. Port and sherry live there too, because they are wine, while vermouth stays on the Shelf where the cocktail recipes need it. The one thing the Cellar needs from you is a name. A bottle filed as plain red wine, with no producer on it, is the only thing that cannot be looked up, so name the label and the back label follows. Wine with no vintage is fine: bottles with no year on them are treated as non vintage, and sparkling wine without a year simply reads as ready any time.

Is the back label real?

It is researched, not invented. The first time anybody adds a given wine and vintage, the app looks that bottle up against real sources on the web and writes down what it finds: a tasting note, three to five things to eat with it, a serving temperature, whether to decant, and the years it drinks best. That result is stored once and shared: the first scan of a bottle triggers the lookup at no cost to anyone, and everybody who owns the same bottle afterward gets it instantly. When the research comes back thin, the app says so rather than guessing. A bottle with no window found reads "It is still perfectly drinkable, nobody is guessing the year for you," which is more useful than a confident number somebody made up.

What does the Cellar cost?

Nothing extra. The Cellar, the back labels, the drink windows, and the what to open next list are part of the app, and scanning a wine bottle works exactly like scanning a spirit, on the same daily allowance. The one difference is the art. Free cellars paint six bottles, favorites first, then the oldest, and the rest are drawn. Top Shelf paints every bottle in the Cellar, paints your whole shelf too, and comes with a bigger daily AI allowance and a stool in the Open Bar. It is $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year, and there is a $69.99 lifetime, which is an early supporter offer: the window on it is limited, and a lifetime bought inside that window never expires.

The Cellar: A Place for Your Wine

You have a bottle of wine somewhere in the house right now that you cannot answer two questions about. What is it, exactly? And is it ready?

Maybe it was a gift. Maybe somebody at the shop talked you into it and you nodded along. Either way it has been lying in the pantry for three years, and every time you notice it you think "I should really drink that," and then you open something you already know.

The Cellar is where that stops. Home Bar Hero is Spirits and Wine now: the same one bar, with a second room in it. Scan a wine bottle and it does not stand on the Shelf between the gin and the Campari. It rests in the Cellar, on its side, with its vintage, its back label, and its place in the line of what to open next.

Scan your first bottle →

Wine does not stand on the shelf

This is one bar, not two. Your bottles stay in one place, your recipes still match against everything you own, and your bar page is still one page. The Cellar is a room in that bar, not a second app hiding inside the first one.

It looks like a cellar because wine keeps like wine: bottles lying across the rails, plum light instead of amber, stone behind them. Under the bottle count in your bar there is a switcher that reads Shelf, Cellar, Kitchen, and the Cellar is one tap away from the rest of your collection.

The scan reads the whole label

Point the camera at a wine bottle the way you already point it at a bottle of bourbon. What comes back is not one long name mashed together. The scan reads:

the producer, the name on the front
the varietal, the grape it is made from
the region, where it came from
the vintage, the year on the label

The year matters more than any other field, so it is part of what the bottle is. A 2019 and a 2021 of the same wine are two different bottles, because they taste different and they are ready at different times, and the app treats them that way. Two bottles of the same wine from the same year stack into one entry with a count, exactly like two bottles of the same rum.

Anything the scan misses you can type in yourself. Change the vintage later and the bottle re-reads its own label, because a corrected year is a different wine.

The back label you never got

Front labels are marketing. Back labels are the useful part, and half the time they are a paragraph of poetry about the valley.

Tap a bottle in the Cellar and it flips over. On the back, in plain language:

a tasting note, one honest sentence about what is in the glass
what to eat with it, three to five things, food first
serve it at, a temperature, because most people drink white too cold and red too warm
decant, and for how long, when it is worth doing
the window, the years this bottle is at its best

That research happens once for each wine and vintage, then it is kept and shared. The first person to add a bottle triggers the lookup, and it costs them nothing; everybody who owns the same bottle afterward gets the finished back label instantly. Fortified bottles skip the window entirely and get the note that actually matters for port and sherry: how long it keeps once you have opened it.

When the research comes back thin, the app tells you. No invented vintage, no confident guess. A bottle it could not find reads as still perfectly drinkable, and leaves it there.

The list is the answer to "what should I open?"

Every bottle with a window has a state, and the state is the whole point:

Open next. It is in its window now. Start here.
Hold. It is not ready. Leave it alone and be glad you asked.
Past its best. The window closed. Still yours, still drinkable, just do not save it for a birthday.
Fortified. No calendar, just a note about how long it lasts once opened.

Flip the Cellar from the rails into the list view and those states become the order of the list, top to bottom, starting with what to open next. That list is the answer. You do not read a chart and work it out. You open the room, and the bottle you should be drinking tonight is at the top.

Shelf, Cellar, Kitchen

Three rooms, one bar.

The Shelf is your spirits, liqueurs, and everything that stands up: the painted cabinet you already know.

The Cellar is the wine, lying down.

The Kitchen is the juice, syrups, mixers, bitters, and garnishes that never belonged on a shelf in the first place, and it finally gets the whole screen instead of a strip at the bottom.

Press and hold a room for about half a second and it becomes the room your bar opens to, on this phone and on your laptop. If you are mostly a wine person, the bar can open on the Cellar and stay that way. Hold a bottle on the Shelf instead and you are in arrange mode, where you can drag bottles into the order you like and pinch, or tap minus and plus, to size them. The order and the size save together. The list toggle in the header applies to whichever room you are in: the Shelf becomes an A to Z list, the Cellar becomes what to open next.

Ask the Barkeep what to open tonight

The Barkeep, our AI bartender, can see your cellar the same way it can see your shelf: producer, vintage, region, and where each bottle sits in its window.

So you can ask it the question you would ask a person. "I am making short ribs, what should I open?" It comes back with a bottle you actually own, by name and year, and tells you why that one. When you pour it, the Barkeep can mark that bottle opened for you, or send you straight into the Cellar to look for yourself.

It also knows the difference between a bottle you should drink this month and one that wants another two years, which is the difference between a real recommendation and a shrug.

What is free, and what Top Shelf adds

The Cellar is part of the app. Scanning wine, the back labels, the windows, the list, and the Barkeep's opinion all work on a free account, and scanning a wine bottle draws on the same daily allowance as scanning anything else.

Wine counts like everything else, too. A scanned bottle unlocks cocktails the same way a bottle on the Shelf does, bubbly included, and every wine you add earns points, levels, and badges exactly like a spirit.

The one line is the art. Free cellars paint six bottles, favorites first, then the oldest. The rest are drawn, which still looks like a cellar and costs nothing. Top Shelf paints every bottle in the Cellar, paints your whole shelf too, and comes with a bigger daily AI allowance and a stool in the Open Bar. Supporters are the reason the lights stay on, and we would rather say that plainly than put a meter on the useful part.

Your cellar travels with your bar

When somebody browses your bar, they see the Cellar too. Same rooms, same rails, same back labels, read only: they can flip a bottle and read the note, and they cannot open anything or change anything that is yours.

It turns out to be the best part of showing somebody your bar. The spirits say what you make. The wine says what you are saving.

Spirits and Wine

If you already keep a home bar, you already keep wine. It just never had anywhere to go: too nice for the recipe list, too vague for a spreadsheet, too easy to forget behind the pasta.

Now it has a room, a back label, and a place in line. Scan the bottle that has been sitting there since Christmas and find out whether tonight is the night. If it turns out to be sparkling, the champagne cocktails page has a few ideas about what else you can do with it.

Open the Cellar →