Before harvest you have to walk the cellar and check that everything is there: yeast, nutrient, sulphite, sugar or concentrate, deacidifier, and measuring kit that still works. The Harvest checklist counts it for you: it takes the dose rates from your own cellar catalogue, scales them to the must volume you plan for this vintage, and shows in one table how much you need and how much you have. You tick the result off on your phone, or print it and walk the cellar with a pen.
Beta: the Harvest checklist is still in beta and is being rolled out, so some details may change. If you cannot see it in the menu yet, it will appear shortly.
Path: menu WineryElf > Harvest checklist. The screen header reads “Harvest checklist”; you switch brand at the top of the menu.
The cellar catalogue is yours
The checklist ships with no ready-made list of products. At the start the catalogue is empty and the screen shows “No items in the cellar catalogue.” together with an Add item button. You enter the items once and they come back every vintage.
In the New item form you fill in: Name, Section, Category, Unit, Pack size, Dose with its Dose unit, Note, and the Perishable flag. Category matters most, because it decides how the “Needed” column is calculated.
Two sections are shown: Fermentation supplies and Measurements. The first covers yeast, nutrients, sulphite, sugar and concentrate, deacidifiers, inert gas and dry ice. The second covers the refractometer, the hydrometer, the pH meter with its buffers, the acidity titration kit and the thermometer.
Generating the list
- Check the Vintage - the current one by default. It decides which year the usage is read from (vintage minus one).
- Enter the Planned must volume in hectolitres. Below the field you can see the volume of the previous vintage, and Elf suggests that figure plus 30 per cent. If you already know what you are planning, overwrite it.
- Set the Review date. Stock entries you make during the walk-through are stamped with it.
- Click Generate from 2025 (the button carries the previous vintage). Elf pulls the additions from the previous vintage’s batch logs (menu Batches), matches them to catalogue items by name, and recalculates the columns.
Every row has a tick box and four columns: Item, In 2025 (the item’s dose rate and the estimated usage in the previous vintage), Needed 2026 and Have. Sections collapse when you click the heading, and on a phone the column labels sit next to the values.
Where the “Needed” column comes from
Elf works out each category differently, because they are used differently:
- Yeast - one sachet per item, because yeast is picked per cuvée, not in proportion to litres.
- Nutrient and deacidifier - the item’s dose rate times the planned volume, rounded up to a full 10 g.
- SO₂ (sulphite) - the same, plus 50 per cent for sulphiting after racking.
- Sugar and concentrate - last year’s usage scaled by the ratio of the plan to the previous vintage’s volume, rounded up to a full litre.
- Instruments, reagents, inert gas and dry ice - instead of a number you get the hint from the item’s note, for example “check the pressure” or “buffers fresh?”.
You can overwrite the calculated figure: expand the row and type your own number into Needed (manual). From then on that item is no longer recalculated, even if you change the planned volume. Instruments, reagents and gas have no such field, because they carry a hint rather than a number.
Ticking off stock in the cellar
In the Have column you enter what is really on the shelf. Below the row you can expand extra fields: opened, Expiry date and Note. Changes are saved straight away, with no separate button.
An opened pack counts differently from a full one:
- an item flagged as perishable, typically yeast, nutrient, pH buffers and the titration reagent, counts as used up once opened and does not go into stock,
- opened sulphite counts as half,
- everything else counts in full.
A row that is short, or that holds an opened perishable pack, is highlighted and gets a label: Short, Opened - treat as used up or Expiring soon (the last one when the expiry date is less than 60 days away).
Shopping list and printing
- The Shortages only toggle leaves only the items you are short of on screen, with their count next to it. That is your shopping list. When nothing is missing you will see “No shortages - everything in stock.”
- Add item adds a product or a piece of kit that is not in the catalogue yet.
- Print / PDF opens a separate print screen in A4 format: tables with tick boxes and an empty Have column to fill in by hand. The header carries the vintage and the assumed must volume, below it a line for the review date and a signature, and at the bottom a footnote about opened packs. Ticking Print with stock fills the column with whatever you have already entered in the app. Print sends the sheet to the printer, Back returns you to the checklist.
There is one checklist per vintage and it saves itself as you go, so you can start it one day and finish it a week later.
The most common mistake
The In 2025 column is empty and Needed shows nothing for sugar and concentrate. That means the previous vintage’s batch logs have no oenological additives recorded. Elf matches an addition to a catalogue item by name, so without those entries there is nothing to count from. The dose rates in the catalogue are enough to work out nutrient or sulphite, but sugar and concentrate are worked out from usage alone. The more carefully you fill in the Oenological additives section in the batch log, the more accurate the checklist is next season.
An example: you plan 12 hl of must, the nutrient dose rate is 20 g/hl and sulphite is 10 g/hl. Elf will work out 240 g of nutrient and 180 g of sulphite (120 g plus half again for racking). If there is an opened pack of nutrient in the cellar from last year, it counts as used up and the whole item goes onto the shortages list.