Importing your data from a spreadsheet
Already keeping records in a spreadsheet or another app? You don't have to retype them. MakeWine imports wines from a CSV file in one step, and it's safe to run the same file more than once — duplicates are skipped, not recreated.
Open the import page
- Sign in, then open the account menu at the top right of the page.
- Choose Import data. You'll land on the Import your data page.
Prepare your CSV
Your file needs a header row. Only name is required — every other column is optional:
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
name | Wine name (required) |
category | Accepts grape, country, mead or cider; anything else becomes Other |
variety | Style, e.g. Red, White |
grape | Grape variety or primary ingredient |
country | Country of origin |
region | Region of origin |
year | Vintage year |
startGravity | Original gravity (also accepts a column named og) |
endGravity | Final gravity (also accepts fg) |
notes | Free-text winemaker notes |
Column order doesn't matter, and category matching is forgiving — "fruit" or "flower" map to Country Wine, "melomel" to Mead, "perry" to Cider. Click Download a template CSV on the page to get a ready-made example with the header and two sample rows.
Run the import
- Under "2. Upload or paste", either choose your
.csvfile with the file picker or paste the CSV text straight into the text box. - Click Import wines.
How results and errors are reported
When the import finishes you'll see an Import complete panel with three parts:
- Created — a green line confirming how many wines were created.
- Skipped — a collapsible list of rows that matched a wine already in your cellar. A wine counts as a duplicate when its name and year match an existing one, which is what makes re-importing the same file harmless.
- Rows skipped with errors — an expanded list showing the row number and the reason, e.g. "Row 4: missing required column 'name'". Only the faulty rows are skipped; every valid row still imports.
Click View my wines → to jump straight to your cellar and check the results.
Notes
- Importing is available on every plan, including the free Cellar Hand plan — wine records are unlimited on all tiers.
- The import creates wine records. Fermentation batches, additions and lab readings are added afterwards on each wine's detail page — see the "Tracking a fermentation" tutorial.
- If a row imports with the wrong category, open the wine and its details from My Wines, or delete it and re-import the corrected row.