Guide

How VINTORY works

There is very little to learn. The whole thing is built to be walked through rather than operated — but here is the shape of it, so nothing comes as a surprise.

1. Walking the world

   VINTORY opens on the countries you collect from. Choosing one puts you in its landscape, with its wineries standing along the road; choosing a winery brings you to its bottles, close enough to turn one in your hand and read the label.

   Countries, wineries, bottles — three depths, and you can leave at any of them. The trail across the top always shows where you are, and the way back is the way you came.

2. Adding a bottle from its label

   The fastest way into the cellar is a photograph. Point a camera at the label, or drop in a picture you already have, and VINTORY reads it — producer, wine, vintage, region — and offers what it found, along with how confident it is.

   High confidence usually means the label was clear and the wine is known. Low confidence is worth a second look; a dim restaurant and a hand-lettered label are honest reasons for a guess. Nothing is saved until you confirm it, and every field stays yours to correct.

3. Asking the sommelier

   The bar at the bottom takes plain questions. What should I open tonight? Which of these will still be good in five years? What is actually different about this slope?

   The sommelier answers from your collection and from where you are standing, briefly, in language a person would use. It recommends with care rather than certainty — when a wine is a gamble, it says so.

4. The living timeline

   Every bottle keeps a timeline: the harvest it came from, the day it entered your cellar, the evenings it was poured, the window when it is expected to be at its best. Add a moment and it takes its place on the line — who was there, what the night was.

   This is the part that grows more valuable the longer you use it. A timeline read five years later is the closest thing a cellar has to a diary.

5. The portfolio view

   For anyone who wants the numbers, they are here: what the cellar holds, what it is worth, how that has moved, and which bottles are carrying the change. It is a view, not the point — one panel away when you want it, out of sight when you do not.

A few small things