Tasting and collecting

Tracking a whiskey collection: what is worth recording

2 minute read · The Blending School

Most collection trackers ask for everything and get abandoned in a month. The useful set of things to record is small, and it is different from what the apps assume.

Record what you cannot look up later

Name, distillery, and proof are on the label and on the internet forever. You do not need a database for them. What disappears if you do not write it down: when you opened it, what it cost, how much is left, and what you thought of it on a given day. Those are the four things worth the effort.

The minimal record

• Open date. Whiskey in an open bottle changes slowly with air; knowing a bottle has been open two years explains why it tastes softer.
• Fill level, updated occasionally. Tells you what to finish, what to save, and what to decant before the air gets it.
• Price paid. For your own sanity and for the eventual conversation about whether the hobby has gotten out of hand.
• A score and a line, each time you drink it. Not once at opening.

What to skip

Batch numbers, bottle codes, secondary market value, and elaborate tasting wheels, unless you specifically enjoy them. They are the fields that make tracking feel like data entry, and data entry is why trackers die.

Where collection meets blending

An infinity bottle is a collection tracker for whiskeys you no longer own. Every pour into it records a bottle that passed through your shelf, at what proof, on what date, and the bottle carries a little of each forever. Many blenders find the infinity ledger becomes their real collection history, because it records the bottles that were good enough to add. The shelf tracker records what you bought; the ledger records what you loved.