If the winery name is displayed when you erase the last few digist of the barcode, this means that we list barcodes for other wines from this producer - but not this specific wine (or vintage if they are one of the few wineries who provide different barcodes for different vintages)

Unfortunately this means that you have enter that wine manually. You should also scan its barcode at this stage, then when you want to uncork this wine (or add another bottle of the same wine), the program will recognize it. The Uncorked Cellar has a means for everyone to help us increase the number of barcodes we list (Tools, Add to the Uncork Dayabase), so with your help we will significantly increase the number of wines with bar codes in the database.

Unfortunately, this is not the only problem with wine bar codes.

The second and more serious limitation is that the bar code on the bottle normally does not define the vintage - AND in some cases may be a different number depending on what country the wine is sold in. This means the bar code on the bottle cannot be used for inventory control. It also leads to situations where a bar code on the bottle may not match what we list in the database.

To use bar codes for inventory control, you should either print your own labels or tags, or use the pre-printed tags we provide. On the bright side, this means that you will have better inventory control because each bottle can have it's one unique number. This is what I do in my cellar and I cannot emphasize enough how much easier it makes the task of uncorking wines from my cellar. When I remove a bottle from my cellar, I simply take the tag off the neck and place it to one side, then scan all of those tags the next time I am at my computer to manage my cellar inventory.

Try going to the "Add wine to Cellar" page, and scanning the barcode there to see if that works.

Stephen reports....

"I have tried using a Symbol scanner with an XP machine and it works like a charm, provided the database has the wine/barcode listed"

We already had the scanner and do not consider a pricetag of over $500 to be a cheap model.  UPC codes are of a standard language, so expected this to work with the software.  The curvature of the bottle could be causing the problem, though.

Thanks for the reply.

Just purchased Uncorked Cellar software and getting to inventory our wine.  We already had a barcode scanner, however, we have been unable to get it to work with the software.  Anyone else have any success with using a barcode scanner that was not purchased with the software?