THE PERSON AT THE TABLE
Why I built CellarMemo
My own bottles, tasting evenings and the wish to make keeping track of them easier.
It started with tasting together
In 2018 I took the SDEN3 wine course. Wine became more than something nice to have with dinner. I became interested in grapes, places, aromas and why two glasses could taste so different. One of the best parts was much simpler: sitting around a table with other enthusiasts, bottles in front of us, trying to find the words for what we could smell and taste.
A friendship that lasted beyond the course
That was where I met my wine friend Dennis. We still keep in touch. A shared interest can turn a conversation about one bottle into an entire evening. Dennis shares his own wine world through The Famous Dutch Wine Guy.
Then the collection grew
You buy a few bottles to open later, discover a producer and perhaps come across an interesting collection. Before long, there is more wine than you can remember. I kept my stock in Excel: name, vintage, quantity and comments. It worked, but every purchase, bottle opened and change of location needed another update. When I wanted a particular bottle, I sometimes had to reconstruct my own administration first.
The pen that gives up halfway through
Tasting evenings brought a different sort of mess. A pen that would not write properly. A form with too little space for notes. The moment when an aroma seemed familiar, but an aroma wheel was nowhere to be found. Small frustrations, perhaps, but they kept coming back. I wanted to concentrate on the wine and the company, and leave myself notes that would still make sense later.
Why I built CellarMemo
I tried other wine apps first. Some felt awkward to use, and I could not always save the details I wanted. I wanted both the information from the label and my own tasting experience. I already had programming experience and a clear idea of the tasks I wanted to make easier, so I started building. Which wines do I own? Where are the bottles? What did I think of that wine? Which one did I want to try again? Those questions became CellarMemo.
The first version went live on 6 October 2026
There were plenty of hours of coding, testing and rethinking, often late at night because one more screen could be improved. On 6 October 2026 the first version went live. My own collection and tasting notes were in it, and I could finally find a bottle without digging through my spreadsheet. It was a satisfying moment: it worked.
A wine collection rarely lives on one shelf
Some bottles are in the fridge, some in a cellar rack and others on a particular shelf of a wine cabinet. CellarMemo lets you name those locations as you use them at home. The app cannot see that you have moved a bottle; you still need to record that yourself. Once you do, the information is together in one place.
From the glass back to the grape
I am interested in making wine as well as tasting it, and I have helped with that side of things too. Hof van Seghwaert has a community vineyard in Zoetermeer. Working among the vines and tasting together makes the work behind a bottle much more tangible. It is a community vineyard in Zoetermeer.
Not every old collection is a treasure chest
Buying wine collections has brought some lovely surprises and some useful lessons in expectations. Brown wine, crumbling corks, tired fruit and bottles where oxidation has taken over: an old label does not tell you how the wine has been stored. Equally, a brown tint is not always a fault, and a piece of cork does not automatically mean cork taint. You still need to look, smell and think.
A tasting with your own words
That is the approach I bring to wine tastings: curiosity, comparison and room for your own preferences. We can start with the basics or look more closely at a grape, place or style. Your favourite may be different from mine. That is often where the most interesting conversation begins.
Help shape what comes next
CellarMemo continues to grow from practical experience and feedback. If something would make your wine evening or collection easier to manage, tell me what you want to do and why it would help. We cannot build in a corkscrew. We are happy to hear about the rest.
Getting home after a tasting
Walk, use public transport or arrange a taxi or sober driver if you plan to drink. Keep cycling sober too. Then the only question left at the end of the evening is which wine was your favourite.