The wine cellar, turned into a database. Real-photo mapping, NFC SmartStickers, and computer vision - so you can find any bottle in seconds.
CellarEye's mark - the eye that keeps watch over the bottles.
A Silicon Valley cellar, kept honest.
Here is a fact about serious wine collectors that they would prefer you not dwell on: many of them do not actually know what is in their cellar. Not precisely. They know it roughly - a few cases of Burgundy over there, some Napa Cabernet aging in the back, a magnum somebody gave them that is either worth a fortune or worth nothing, they have been meaning to check. The collection grows one enthusiastic purchase at a time until one day it is 1,200 bottles and the mental map has quietly stopped working.
The traditional fix is a spreadsheet, which is to say the traditional fix does not work. Auditing a 1,000-bottle cellar by hand can take up to 25 hours. That is not a typo. You pull each bottle, read the label, cross-reference the row you may or may not have entered correctly the last time, note the location using whatever coding scheme you invented and then forgot, and by the time you are done the collection has changed because you drank three bottles and bought five more. The spreadsheet is out of date before you close the laptop.
CellarEye is the company that decided this was unacceptable, and - this is the important part - was founded by exactly the people who suffered from it. Around 2017, a group of Silicon Valley collectors including CEO Kyle Luke and VP of Software Cyril Bouteille (whose surname, delightfully, means "bottle" in French) set out to solve what they called a centuries-old problem with a decidedly modern tool. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, has raised a reported ~$3 million, and runs lean at around seven employees. Small team, narrow problem, obsessive users. It is a familiar Silicon Valley shape, just pointed at Bordeaux instead of, say, expense reports.
The insight underneath CellarEye is almost anti-technological: the enemy is data entry. Every wine app before it asked you to type - the producer, the vintage, the varietal, the location, the price - and every collector eventually stopped, because typing is a chore and chores get abandoned. CellarEye's bet was that if you removed the typing, you would remove the reason people quit. So instead of a form, you get a photo map of your actual cellar, and instead of a location code, you get a physical sticker you tap with your phone. The bottle you are holding tells the app where it lives. You mostly just confirm.
CellarEye maps your storage with real photos, then lets you add, move, or find bottles by tapping - no barcodes, no diagrams, no invented coding system you will forget by spring.
Digital maps of racks, fridges, shelves, cases, and offsite lockers. Search by name, tag, or location and the app shows you the exact spot - a real photo, not a grid.
NFC-enabled stickers sit in your wine bins. Bump your iPhone against one and it opens a digital door to that precise location. No scanning, no typing.
Market valuations, critic scores, and drinking windows for every bottle. Your collection has a value that moves; CellarEye treats it a little like an asset class.
Notifications for optimal consumption based on winemaker recommendations - so the great bottle does not quietly slip past its peak in the dark.
Manage several cellars at once, filter by bottle size - magnums, half-bottles - and keep offsite storage in the same view as the basement.
Log tasting notes, scan labels, and get food-pairing recommendations. Image analysis runs locally on-device, so your cellar photos stay private.
CellarEye builds a visual map of your cellar from real photographs, dividing it into digital zones that mirror your physical racks and bins.
NFC SmartStickers go into designated bin areas, creating an interactive link between the physical shelf and its digital twin in the app.
Bump your iPhone on a sticker to unlock that exact spot - add, move, or remove a bottle in a tap, and the inventory updates itself.
SmartStickers are offered within CellarEye's premium / Collector's Club tier. A separate smart-camera computer-vision system has been described in company announcements; details and availability are approximate.
Freemium, tiered by how deep your collecting goes - from a free tier most people would call very serious, up to a custom plan with your own sommelier.
Pricing and tier names evolve as the app updates (recent versions reference Free, +, Pro and Pro+). Figures shown are approximate, drawn from public listings.
Silicon Valley collectors, frustrated by manual cellar inventory, incorporate CellarEye.
CellarEye ships its wine tracker with real-photo mapping and NFC tap-to-access.
The company reports a ~$955K round to expand the product and team.
CellarEye announces smart-camera AI for automated, privacy-first inventory.
CEO Kyle Luke discusses private cellar management on The Vint Podcast.
New tiers and AI features - label scanning, food pairing, bottle-size filtering - keep shipping.
Auditing a 1,000-bottle cellar by hand can take up to 25 hours. CellarEye exists to erase that chore.
Co-founder Cyril Bouteille's surname literally means "bottle" in French. Some people are simply born to it.
You unlock a bottle's exact spot by physically bumping your iPhone against a sticker in the bin.
The free tier tracks up to 600 bottles - a cellar most people would already consider very serious.
Image analysis runs locally on-device, so your cellar photos never have to leave your phone.
The app holds a 4.9-star rating - rare loyalty for a niche tool people could easily abandon.
CellarEye is an iOS app and technology platform that maps a private wine cellar with real photos and lets collectors locate, track, and value every bottle - without spreadsheets or barcodes.
NFC-enabled stickers placed in wine bins. Tapping your iPhone on a sticker opens that exact location in the app, linking physical storage to the digital cellar.
It uses a freemium model: a free tier for up to ~600 bottles, paid annual tiers that add valuations, critic scores, and reports, and a custom Collector's Club with SmartStickers and a dedicated sommelier.
It was founded around 2017 by Silicon Valley collectors including CEO Kyle Luke and VP of Software Cyril Bouteille, with co-founders Nader Sadrzadeh, Mostafa Ronaghi, and Mehdi Mohseni.
Public sources report a ~$955K round in 2021 and roughly $3 million raised to date, per PitchBook.