FOR COLLECTORS WHO HATE SURPRISES
Peak is a window, not a date you'll remember to check. Here's the system collectors use to catch every bottle at its best — systems beat memory.
Know what to open tonight — and never miss a wine at its peak.
Add your bottles once and Saignée calculates the window, flags what's ready, and alerts you before anything fades. Try Saignée free →
Free Taster: up to 100 bottles · 20 AI scans · 10 pairings / monthFree forever · No credit card
Anyone with more than a handful of bottles that could actually age — a mixed case from a wine club, a rack in the closet, a proper cellar. If you've ever found a bottle years past where you meant to drink it, this checklist is the fix: a short, repeatable review instead of trying to remember 40 windows at once.
Build one inventory list
Put every bottle you own in a single list — a notebook, a spreadsheet, or an app. Memory and scattered notes are where bottles quietly get forgotten.
Note a drinking window per bottle
For each wine, write down a rough window (a range of years, not a single date) using the producer, vintage, and region as your clues.
Sort into open-soon vs. hold
Split the list into bottles already mid-window (open soon) and bottles with years of aging left (hold). Your review only needs to touch the first group.
Get storage basics right
Keep bottles cool, dark, and undisturbed. Heat and light shrink a drinking window faster than the estimate assumes, so storage conditions change how urgently a bottle needs attention.
Run a monthly review
Once a month, scan just the open-soon list and reorder it — anything about to slip past peak moves to the top of what you drink next.
Rate after you open
After opening, log a rating and a note on whether it was before, at, or past peak. That feedback is what makes your next window estimate sharper.
Already tracking bottles in a spreadsheet? Our free inventory template gives you the columns worth keeping (window included — it's the field people forget), and if your list is already in Excel or Numbers, it imports directly rather than making you start over.
Steps 2 and 5 — estimating each window and re-checking it every month — are exactly what Saignée automates. Add a bottle once and it calculates the window, sorts open-soon from hold, and sends a free push alert before anything fades, so the checklist runs itself instead of living on your calendar.
To start, yes — the checklist above works with a notebook or spreadsheet and nothing else. It gets tedious once a cellar passes a few dozen bottles, which is the point where most collectors automate it instead of dropping it.
Free. Saignée's push alerts for a bottle entering or leaving its window work on every plan, including the free Taster tier — there's no alerts paywall. What's plan-gated is scale and extras: Taster caps out at 100 bottles and a limited number of AI scans and pairings per month; paid tiers raise those caps and add features like CSV export and cellar valuation.
Start with what's on the label. Our free checker estimates a window from producer, region, and vintage even for wines you don't recognize, and most everyday (non-vintage) bottles are made to drink now rather than age, so a window mostly doesn't apply to them.
It isn't, for step one — a spreadsheet is a perfectly good inventory list. The gap a spreadsheet doesn't close is steps 2 and 5: estimating each window and remembering to re-check it every month. That's the part software can quietly run for you.
Run the checklist on your cellar
Check one bottle free, or browse drinking windows for wines people actually look up.
Know what to open tonight — and never miss a wine at its peak.
Add your bottles once and Saignée calculates the window, flags what's ready, and alerts you before anything fades.
Free Taster: up to 100 bottles · 20 AI scans · 10 pairings / month
Free forever · No credit card