How to use
Setting Up Your Book
When you launch the book for the first time, there are two questions to help setup how your book will look. Everything you answer can be changed later through the book’s settings.
Naming Your Collection
A collection is one inventory: its own wines, its own storage spaces, and its own house rules. Most people start with a name like “My Cellar” or maybe your street name. Leaving it blank defaults to “My Cellar”
“When you’re picking a bottle, what do you ask for?”
Your answer decides what each wine card should lead with and which filters are most important. For example, someone who typically asks for “a Cabernet” prefers to see the grape first; whereas someone who typically asks for “a Bordeaux” prefers to see the appellation and region. Check as many answers that fit your style.
On the preview that follows, the Show first switch sets the order the fields are displayed.
“Anything else you’d like to keep track of?”
Some enjoy tracking every detail, while others prefer to track just the basics. Your answer to this question decides which fields are visible when adding, editing, and viewing wines. You can always change your mind later through the book’s settings.
Nothing is lost if you hide fields. When scanning a wine, the data fills in every field it can read whether you've chosen to display the field or not, so turning something on later reveals the details that were already recorded.
Changing Your Mind
To adjust any of your preferences, go to Settings > (Your Collection) > Customize Display.
The Cards tab arranges what each card shows and the order in which the fields are displayed. The Fields tab chooses what a wine’s page shows and what’s visible when editing a wine’s details. The Filters tab picks the groups you will see on the filter sheet. This is also where you can set your price groups for filtering by price.
Start from a suggestion down at the bottom asks you a few questions and rebuilds your preferences based on your answers.
Scanning a label
Tap the + button, take a photo of the front label, and the book reads the producer, the wine, the vintage, and the appellation, writes a one-line tasting note, and estimates when the drinking window.
What is sent, and what isn’t
The photo alone is sent to Anthropic’s Claude to be read, and nothing else about you or your cellar. The book asks your permission the first and never sends anything before consent is provided. You can withdraw consent in Settings > Scanning. When adding a wine by hand, or importing by list, nothing is sent.
What happens during a reading
Once the scan’s results are returned, your house rules are applied first, on device. The book then looks for the wine in your collection:
No existing matches: if the book finds no existing matches already in your collection, it opens the add wine form with everything pre-filled for you. Simply review the details and save.
One match: if a wine already exists in your collection, the wine’s page is opened so you can add a bottle to your existing inventory.
Several possible matches: if your collection contains several potential matches, the book will ask “Which Wine?”, along with a list of possible matches, or the option to add as a new wine.
If a label can’t be read
Some labels are more art than informational. If a scan can’t be read, the book will say it couldn’t read the label and offer to Try Again or Enter It by Hand which keeps the photo you took. A failed reading is never counted against your scans.
Your first ten scans are free. After that, scanning is included with Full Service, at 150 scans available per month. Everything else in the book remains free to use: adding wines manually, importing a list, and all the wines you already have.
House Rules
Everyone has their own preferences for how they want to catalog their collection. A house rule is your own correction or rule that the book remembers for future scanning.
How a rule gets made
If you correct a scanned wine in the form, when saving, the book offers to Remember this? with the rule displayed. For example, “When the producer reads Hedges Family Wines, log the producer as Hedges Family Estate.” Once enabled, any later scans of that wine is automatically filed your way. Choose Not Now and the wine is still saved, but the rule is declined.
Editing a wine at a later date offers the same thing.
You can also create your own house rules under Settings > Your Collection > House Rules
What house rules can do
A rule consists of a set of conditions, all of which must be met, and the desired outcome. A field can also be left blank on purpose so that certain fields are no longer entered on subsequent scans of that wine.
Here are some examples of how house rules can be used:
If a certain appellation is not familiar to you but the region is, you may prefer to catalog just the region. For example: “When the appellation reads Horse Heaven Hills, log the region as Columbia Valley.”
If you have a preferred drinking window for certain vintages within a region. For example: “When the region is Bordeaux and the vintage is 2019, set the drinking window 2021 to 2037.”
Managing house rules
Add, modify, or delete house rules under Settings > Your Collection > House Rules. When adding a new rule that matches wine already in your collection, the book offers to update them, showing you exactly how many wines will be updated. When you delete a rule, existing wines remain as they are.
Rules belong to the collection. If you have multiple collections, each collection has its own set of house rules. Additionally, if you are sharing a collection with someone, everyone sees the same rules, because they decide how wines are recorded. Display customizations are unique to each user.
Storage Spaces & Shelves
A space is somewhere bottles are kept (a cellar, a wine fridge, a bar, etc). A section is a location within a storage space (Shelf 4, Bin 12, Bottom Pullout, etc). Together, they establish the wine’s storage location.
Starting out
When you add your first wine and you have not yet setup any storage spaces, the book offers a few location suggestions to get you started quickly (e.g. Cellar, Wine Fridge, Kitchen, Bar, etc). Tapping one of the suggestions creates that space and files the bottle in it. Leaving it blank is fine too. You can edit the name later under Settings > Your Collection > Storage Spaces
Shelves, bins, and large cellars
Each storage space can hold optional sections within it so you can pinpoint exactly where your bottles are stored. When adding a new storage location, tick “Has shelves or sections?” to reveal options for adding sections.
For a larger cellar that may have dozens of numbered bins, Add Numbered Sections makes it simple. Just name it (e.g. “Bin”) and how many there are (e.g. “60”) and the book auto populates Bin 1 to Bin 60 in one tap.
One wine with bottles in multiple locations
You can split bottles of a wine across multiple locations. For example, if you have six bottles of a wine, but you keep three in the cellar and three in the bar. Tap Move Bottles when editing a wine to place bottles across multiple locations. The wine’s card and detail page will show you how many bottles are in each location. Uncorking a wine kept in more than one place asks which place it came from before removing it from your inventory.
Deleting a storage space never deletes wine. Bottles kept there simply stop having a location, and any sections inside it go with it. The book says exactly what will happen before it does anything.
Sharing with others
A shared collection is one cellar that two people keep together. Add a bottle, uncork one, or correct a name, and it updates the other person’s view of the collection in seconds.
Inviting someone
To share your collection with someone, go to Settings › Your Collection › Sharing & Data › Share with Your Household, then send the invitation using the available options. Tapping the invitation adds the collection to the recipient’s book alongside any of their own existing collections. Sharing is only available with Full Service.
Permissions for shared users
Can Edit: allows the shared user to add wine, uncork bottles, change house rules. The usual choice for a household.
Can View: allows the shared user to read the collection and nothing more.
Co-Owner: allows the shared user the same privileges as Edit, plus inviting other people.
How scanning works with shared users
Scanning into a collection someone shared with you counts against the owner’s 150 a month. Nobody else in the household needs Full Service, and scanning into your own collections uses your own allowance.
How customizations work with shred users
All display customizations for Cards, Fields, Filters, and Price bands are per person. For example, your cards may display the varietal and region while the person you share with displays with the grape and label, both from the same cellar.
House rules are the exception. Since house rules determine how wines are entered into a collection, they are stored per-collection, not per user. So any changes a shared user makes to a house rule, also updates on your devices.
Only the owner can stop sharing or delete the collection. Anyone else can leave it, which removes their copy and nothing else.
Sharing a single wine
Sharing a collection gives someone the whole book. To show a friend one bottle, open the wine and tap the Share button from the toolbar. The book creates a shareable card with the label photograph, the vintage, the wine’s name, its appellation and region, and the tasting note.
Anything you have hidden in Customize Display, along with a wine’s price, what it’s worth, where the bottle is kept, your own notes, and your score are not included in a share card. The recipient receives the card as an ordinary picture, so whoever you send it to needs nothing at all to view.
On Apple TV
The same collection on the big screen, for browsing rather than bookkeeping. Install the app on your Apple TV and your book arrives through iCloud.
What it does
The Apple TV displays a wall of cards you move through with the remote, the cellar’s figures across the top, your own filters and sorting, search, and a wine’s full page with its label photograph. On Hand, Finished, and Staples are the same three views as on the phone.
Nothing can be added, edited, or uncorked on the TV.
Prices are hidden on the television by default. It is the one screen everyone can see. To view prices, turn them on in Settings.
Importing from Vivino, CellarTracker and others
Importing a list
If you already keep track of your wine somewhere else, you can bring the whole list into the book rather than starting again. The book reads exports from CellarTracker and Vivino, its own spreadsheet export, and any spreadsheet you’ve kept yourself. Importing is free, with no limit on how many wines or how often.
Where to find it
Tap + and choose Import a List, or go to Settings › Your Collection › Sharing & Data › Import a List. When a collection is empty, Import a List also appears under Add the First Bottle.
File requirements
A CSV file with one wine per row and headings along the top. Most apps can export one, and any spreadsheet app can save or export a file as a CSV. Every wine needs a producer; rows without one are left out, and the book tells you how many.
Matching columns
The book looks at each column’s heading in the CSV file and guesses which field in The Butler’s Book it corresponds to. On the Match the Columns screen, check each field to ensure they mapped properly, making any changes necessary. Choose "Leave Out to skip a column entirely.
Wines already in your collection
The book compares each row with the wines already in your collection, the same way a label scan does, so wine you already have isn’t added twice. If a row nearly matches a wine but some of the fields don’t quite agree, Close Matches will ask whether a wine is the same as one already in your cellar or if you’d like to add it as a new wine.
On the Ready to Import screen, choose what happens to wines already in your collection:
Reset bottle quantities: this option makes your book’s count match the list you’re importing. Use this to restore a collection or bring it up to date with a list you’ve kept elsewhere.
Increase bottle quantities: this option adds the bottle quantities from your list to your existing bottle quantities. Use this for a new delivery or restocking.
Keep them separate: this option brings in every row of the list you’re importing as a wine of its own.
Either way, a wine already in your collection gains any details it’s missing, but nothing else changes. Your house rules will be applied as wines are imported.
Photographs don’t come with a list. A CSV holds text only, so imported wines arrive without label photos. Add one any time by editing the wine, or scan the bottle and the book will add the photo to the wine it finds.
Importing from CellarTracker
Follow the steps to export your data from CellarTracker.
In The Butler’s Book, Tap + and choose Import a List, or go to Settings › Your Collection › Sharing & Data › Import a List. Choose the CSV file exported from CellarTracker. The book recognizes CellarTracker’s columns: the producer, the wine’s own name, vintage, appellation, country, color, bottle size, quantity, price, and drinking window. Critics’ scores are not included. Any columns the book doesn’t recognize go into Your Notes as “Heading: value”, so nothing is lost.
Importing from Vivino
Vivino only provides exporting from the desktop browser. Login to your account and go to Settings > Account Management > Export Your Data. Once the export completes, Vivino will email you .zip file, which the book can’t open directly. In the Files app on your Apple device, tap the downloaded zip file to unzip it, then choose the appropriate CSV file inside:
cellar.csv is what’s in your Vivino cellar, with bottle counts.
full_wine_list.csv is every wine you’ve scanned or rated. It has no bottle counts, so these wines come in as Finished in the book, keeping your rating (as a score out of 100) and any review or note you wrote.
To bring in both, import cellar.csv first, then full_wine_list.csv. A list without bottle counts never changes the counts already in your book.
Your Data
There is no account, so there is no copy of your cellar belonging to anybody but you.
Where the data is stored
The book’s data is stored on iCloud in your Apple Account, the same way your photos are. It reaches your other devices because Apple syncs it for you, not because it passes through a company in the middle.
What leaves your device
A label photograph: when scanning a wine, your photo read by Anthropic’s Claude AI.
A wine’s details: with Full Service, when you import an existing list, the book will send a wine’s producer, appellation, region, and vintage to to be processed by Anthropic’s Claude AI and fills in the region, style, and tasting note for you.
Exporting your collection
To export your collection, go to Settings › Your Collection › Sharing & Data › Export as Spreadsheet. The book writes one row per wine, with all available details, in a CSV format. There is no limit, no subscription needed, and no reason to ask us.
Deleting your collection
To delete your collection, go to Settings › Your Collection › Sharing & Data › Delete <Collection Name>. Tapping this will delete the whole collection, including wines, spaces, and house rules. Deleting the app removes its copy from that device; but the collection stays in your iCloud until you delete it or remove the app’s data in your iCloud settings.