Getting started: your first wine
MakeWine is your digital cellar book. This tutorial takes you from registering an account to a fully recorded first wine with a photo.
Create your account
- Go to the registration page and you'll see the Create your cellar form.
- Fill in Name, Email address, Password (minimum 8 characters) and Confirm password.
- Click Create account. The free Cellar Hand plan is enough for everything in this tutorial — wines are unlimited on every plan.
Add your first wine
- From the top navigation, open Winery and choose My Wines. This is your My Cellar page.
- Click Add wine. The New wine form appears.
- Pick a Category — the form adapts to your choice:
| Category | Extra fields shown |
|---|---|
| 🍇 Grape Wine | Style (Red, White, Rosé, Sparkling, Dessert, Fortified, Orange) and Grape variety |
| 🌸 Country Wine | Primary ingredient (e.g. elderflower, blackberry) |
| 🍯 Mead | Primary ingredient (e.g. wildflower honey) |
| 🍎 Cider | Primary ingredient (e.g. Bramley, mixed apple) |
| 🧪 Other | Primary ingredient (e.g. rice, agave) |
- Enter a Name (required), for example "2026 Cabernet Franc" or "2026 Elderflower Wine".
- Optionally complete the remaining fields: the ingredients field (labelled Full blend / additives for grape wine, Ingredients list otherwise), Country of origin, Region and Vintage year.
- Click Save wine. Your wine appears at the top of the cellar list, where you can later Rename or Delete it, and filter or search as your cellar grows.
Upload a photo
- Click View on your wine card to open its detail page.
- Click the Wine Showcase link near the top right of the wine header.
- On the Showcase page, click the photo square beside the heading (it says "click to change" underneath) and choose an image file. The photo uploads immediately and appears on your wine.
Find your way around the wine detail tabs
Back on the wine detail page (use Back to wine, then Back to cellar to return to the list), a row of tabs organises everything about this wine:
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Batches | Fermentation batches — start and track each ferment |
| Additions log | SO₂, nutrients, fining agents and other additions |
| Lots | Vessel-level lot tracking with racking and blend history |
| 📡 Hardware | Readings from connected sensors such as Tilt or iSpindel |
| 🔬 Lab | pH, SO₂, TA and other lab readings over time |
| 💰 Cost | Batch costs and a running summary |
The wine header also offers Share as recipe, Leave a tasting note and Invite to taste for when you're ready to show your wine off.
Next step: start a fermentation batch — see the "Tracking a fermentation" tutorial.