eSommelier Wine Management System: Product Spotlight

Joseph Hageman and his partners at the New Jersey-based eSommelier company have dreamed up an elegant solution to managing your wine collection. Designed and engineered by Media Access Solutions, eSommelier Wine Management System is an all-in-one hardware and software system that offers more than just counting inventory and locating bottles.

Previously, some collectors chose to move their wines to large warehouses because of the ease with which those institutions seemed to be able to manage their collections. However, for the wine enthusiast who wanted to keep the wine closer to his or her hearth and have 24-hour access to it, putting that inventory in a residential wine cellar was crucial and computer spreadsheet software was a necessary evil. For many who had large collections of antique, rare, or unusual vintages, keeping detailed records was a must, especially if you wanted to know when to drink a wine at its peak. Therefore, many collectors spent untold hours on a computer entering critical data about their collections instead of enjoying their wines as they became drinkable.

Enter Hageman’s company. In late 2004, their technicians introduced a system that has much of the necessary information about vintages already installed into the system, keeps it on site, and offers an easy way to get to it, even for the computer-challenged. “Collectors wanted an elegant solution that was easier to use and maintain than anything else currently available,” Hageman says. “They don’t want to boot up their computers or log onto a website to update their spreadsheets or accounts when simply removing a bottle of wine to drink with dinner.”

The eSommelier Wine Management System has a computer interface with a 15-inch touch screen. The internal hard drive stores a database of 139,000 wines from around the world. All the user has to do is find tap through a series of prompts for Country, Region, Variety, Winery, and Vintage. A new bottle of wine can entered in two minutes, much less than the ten it would take to enter it into a spreadsheet by hand.