Import File Format

While WineTracker provides flexibility in how you organize your wine inventory spreadsheet, it will go much more smoothly if you follow these rules:

  1. If the first non-space character is a #, then the line is treated as a comment.  Blank rows are ignored.
  2. The first non-comment or non-blank row must specify the column names. Use your own names for each column or match the ones used by Wine Tracker to simplify the import process (see Tip #1 below).  Winery is the only mandatory field.  If Country or Region is blank, it will be set to “Other”. All others are optional, and extraneous columns in your spreadsheet will be ignored.
  3. Each row specifies a wine from your inventory, a wine order, or an item from your wishlist.
  4. A variety of date formats are supported.  Examples include:  12/30/95, 12-30-1995, Dec 30 1995 or 30 Dec 1995.  Both US and metric date formats are supported. If the results are not as you expect, you can override the data format setting by going to Settings.
  5. The export file must be saved as a CSV file. You should remove extra rows denoting totals, etc.  While the import tool may exclude those, it may get confused.

Tips to improve importing:

  1. To specify region names, use the Country, Region and Subregion fields. We strongly suggest you view the Regions database (selectable from the main screen) to see how regions are named.  Countries are listed at the top, selecting one displays the regions, and then for many regions, you can expand an entry to view subregion names. Country and Region fields will be set to “Other” if unspecified. Subregion is optional.
  2. For varietal names, enter the main grape varietal, or for blends, enter the main varietal followed by “Blend” eg. “Shiraz Blend”. For wines where the varietals are uncertain, go with the wine color/style (see Type below) followed by “Blend”. For example, “Red Blend” or “Sparkling Blend”.
  3. Try to use the region and varietal names from the Regions database.  This best ensures automatic linking of your wines with other information contained in Wine Tracker.
  4. Use the column names that WineTracker uses.  Each type of list (wines, orders, wishlist, gone) uses a subset of these fields as indicated in the table below.
Field Name Description Wine List Order List Wish List Gone List
RecordType Set to W for Wine Inventory item, O for Order, C for Wishlist (aka shopping cart), G for “Gone”, or X to ignore this line.
BarCode UPC Code or any other inventory tracking scheme you want to use.
Winery The winery name.
Name The name of the wine.
Country The country name.  eg. USA or France.
Region The region name.  eg. California or Bordeaux.
Subregion The subregion identifier. eg. Napa Valley or Pomerol.
Varietal Specifies the grape varietal for this wine. To simplify things, instead of listing all the varietals in a wine blend, just use, for example, “Shiraz Blend”, “Red Blend“, or similar. You can include a more detailed breakdown in the Notes field.
Type Specifies the type of wine.  Valid types are:

  • Red, White, Rose, Sparkling, Dessert, Other.
Vintage The vintage of the wine.  A 0 (zero) or NV denotes a non-vintage wine.
Rating Your rating of the wine (0-100).
Size The bottle size in mL. eg. 750, 1500, etc. If nothing is specified, 750 mL is assumed.
Cost What you paid for the wine. This may optionally include the currency symbol (such as $) supported by the locale on your mobile device.
Quantity The number of bottles you have. Note that wines with zero quantity will have their RecordType set to “Gone”.
PurchPlace Where you obtained (or will obtain) the wine.
PurchDate When you purchased the wine.
PONum Purchase Order #.
DrinkFrom and DrinkTo Specify the drinking window. If you set these to 2012 and 2015 respectively, you are indicating that the wine isn’t ready until 2012 but should be drunk by (and including) 2015. Icons in the winelist will denote if the wine is too young or old.
Notes Any comments or tasting notes you might have.
AlertDate For orders, use this field to remind you when your futures arrive or when to expect shipments. For wines in your cellar, specify when you want a reminder to drink this wine. An icon in the winelist will denote this wine needs your attention.
Bin The location of your wine so you can find it in your vast cellar.
Image or ImageId When importing/exporting on the device, use Image which denotes the URI of the image file that already exists on the phone.  When importing/exporting on your PC, use ImageId which denotes the internal server ID of the image.
Flags Internal flags for Wine Tracker (image rotation, bookmark, subratings, etc.).

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