Sommo vs CellarTracker: AI Wine Intelligence vs Cellar Management
Comparing Sommo's AI-powered wine analysis with CellarTracker's cellar management system. Learn which app is right for your wine journey.
Quick Verdict
CellarTracker is the gold standard for managing a wine collection with inventory tracking, drinking windows, and 10 million community tasting notes. Sommo is an AI-powered wine companion that scores wines across hundreds of parameters, learns your taste from your journal, and even recommends wines from your own collection based on what you're eating. Pick CellarTracker for deep cellar management. Pick Sommo for the smarter wine experience.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Sommo | CellarTracker |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Purpose | AI-powered wine understanding with collection tracking | Professional wine cellar inventory management |
| Wine Analysis | AI analyses hundreds of parameters per wine | Community tasting notes database |
| Dinner Pairing | Snap your meal, get the best bottle from your collection | Not available |
| Personalisation | AI learns your taste from journal entries | No personalised insights |
| Wine Scanning | AI label scanning with deep educational analysis | Barcode scanning for cellar tracking |
| Cellar Management | Personal wine journal with collection tracking | Full inventory with drinking windows and valuation |
| WSET Prep | Full exam prep with spaced repetition | Not available |
| Pricing | Free tier + Premium subscription | Free basic + voluntary contribution model |
Choose Sommo
Choose Sommo if you want AI that analyses every wine across hundreds of parameters and learns your personal palate over time. Track your wines, snap a photo of your dinner, and let the AI recommend the perfect bottle from your own collection. Add structured wine education and WSET prep, and you're building real expertise.
Choose CellarTracker
Choose CellarTracker if you have a large collection that needs professional-grade organisation. Detailed inventory management, drinking window tracking, community tasting notes, and valuation tools make it purpose-built for serious collectors with hundreds of bottles.
CellarTracker and Sommo approach wine from opposite directions. CellarTracker helps you manage your wine. Sommo helps you understand it, using AI that learns your personal taste with every bottle.
But here’s the interesting part: Sommo is closing the gap. With collection tracking, AI-powered dinner pairing from your own bottles, and personalised recommendations that improve over time, Sommo is becoming the smarter cellar companion.
What CellarTracker Does Best
CellarTracker has been the wine collector’s essential tool since 2003. It does cellar management better than anyone:
- Inventory tracking: know exactly what’s in your cellar, where each bottle is stored, and how many you have
- Drinking windows: get guidance on when to open each wine for optimal enjoyment
- Community tasting notes: access over 10 million tasting notes from knowledgeable collectors
- Valuation: track the estimated value of your collection over time
- Barcode scanning: quickly add wines to your inventory
- Professional-grade data: wine professionals and retailers rely on CellarTracker’s depth
If you have hundreds of bottles and need granular inventory control, CellarTracker is hard to beat.
What Sommo Does Differently
Sommo isn’t just an education app anymore. It’s an AI-powered wine companion that tracks your collection, understands your palate, and makes smart recommendations from the bottles you already own.
AI That Analyses Hundreds of Parameters
CellarTracker shows you other people’s tasting notes. Sommo’s AI analyses each wine across hundreds of parameters including grape typicity, vintage characteristics, regional indicators, and winemaking style, giving you a comprehensive, objective analysis rather than crowdsourced opinions.
Smart Dinner Pairing From Your Collection
This is where Sommo gets exciting for collectors. Snap a photo of your dinner or tell Sommo what you’re cooking, and the AI recommends the best wine from your own collection to pair with it. It considers the food chemistry, your palate preferences, and each wine’s profile to find the ideal match. No other app does this.
Your Palate, Decoded
Every wine you log teaches the AI more about what you enjoy. Over time, it identifies patterns in your preferences. Do you lean toward high-acid wines? Bold tannins? Certain grape varieties or regions? Sommo’s wine character analysis reveals your palate personality in ways that surprise even experienced tasters.
Learn to Taste Like a Professional
Sommo’s Systematic Approach to Tasting (SAT) method guides you through professional-grade tasting notes. The AI compares your observations against the wine’s known profile and flags what you caught and what you missed. It’s like having a sommelier review your homework, and it makes every tasting session a growth opportunity.
WSET Certification Support
If you’re pursuing WSET certification, Sommo provides exam prep with SM-2 spaced repetition flashcards, practice quizzes, and mock exams. CellarTracker has no educational features.
Restaurant Menu Scoring
Sommo Premium’s AI-powered menu scoring analyses restaurant wine lists for quality and value, a feature that CellarTracker doesn’t offer and one that turns dining out into a more confident experience.
Different Strengths, Different Moments
These apps aren’t really competitors. They’re complementary tools for different moments:
- Scanning a new bottle to understand it deeply → Sommo
- Managing a 500+ bottle inventory with storage locations → CellarTracker
- “What should I open with tonight’s dinner?” → Sommo
- Checking if a wine is ready to drink → CellarTracker
- Getting AI feedback on your tasting notes → Sommo
- Tracking collection value → CellarTracker
- Scoring a restaurant wine list → Sommo
- Reading community tasting notes → CellarTracker
The bottom line: CellarTracker manages your bottles with professional-grade precision. Sommo understands them, learns your palate, and tells you which one to open tonight. For smaller collections where intelligence matters more than inventory management, Sommo may be all you need.
Photo by Matt Twyman on Unsplash
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on your needs. CellarTracker excels at detailed cellar inventory for large collections. Sommo offers lighter collection tracking with a focus on AI intelligence: it analyses wines, learns your palate, and recommends bottles from your collection based on what you're eating. For smaller collections with smarter insights, Sommo may be all you need.
Yes. Sommo has a personal wine journal that records your collection and tasting history. You can scan bottles to add them, and the AI generates character analysis of your palate preferences. It's lighter than CellarTracker's full inventory system but smarter in how it uses your data.
Yes. Snap a photo of your meal or tell Sommo what you're cooking, and the AI will recommend the best wine from your stored collection. It considers the food pairing, your palate preferences, and the wine's profile to make a genuinely personalised suggestion.
