What each part holds

Common questions

What needs doing in the cellar today, all of it based on your records.

Every alert comes from something recorded in your cellar. The app doesn't add generic reminders, so everything on the list is worth acting on.

The fourteen-day strip's scale never drops below a set minimum, so a quiet two weeks looks quiet instead of looking like a crisis.

Active fermentations shows the most urgent lots in primary, worst first. The whole table is on the Cellar page. Each ferment is judged against its own expected curve, based on the temperature the must was held at and the yeast pitched, rather than against a fixed pace. Each row shows this as the fermata crescent. It fills from the pitch toward dry, and turns red or amber if the wine is in trouble. The dot in it turns amber while a feed in the program is due, and the whole mark turns green once two readings show the ferment is complete. Open a flagged row to see the rule that flagged it and the readings it used. It's the same item that appears on the attention list. No AI model is involved.

What a wine is meant to be: its fruit, its ferment, its finishing and its packaging.

The Wine Program page draws your program as a map. Your winery is on the left, each house style in the middle, and each vintage and NV wine on the right, with a tag saying where its lots stand. Select a house style to see every vintage of it, or a vintage to see where its wine is. A dashed house style is named after its only vintage: Fermata made it from the vintage's name when the vintage was saved. Every box but your winery's names its grapes under its name: the fruit its plan names, or what its lots record where the plan names none.

Selecting a vintage, on the map or above it, opens a panel beside the page. It starts with where the vintage's wine is now: each lot, its stage and gallons, and the vessels holding it. Select a lot to open it. Under that is the vintage's plan, and Open the vintage takes you to its own page. That page starts with the same lots, and beside its name are the other vintages of its house style, so you can step from year to year.

Rename, beside a vintage's name in its panel and on its own page, gives it a new name and keeps its year. Its lots take the new name, and so does a ferment plan that carried the old one. Where its house style is named after it alone, you can rename the house style too. A wine in bottle keeps its own name on the Wines page.

A vintage's page opens on where it stands, in six stops: House style and Plan, then Fruit, then Ferment, Finish and Package. Each stop is worked out from your records, so nothing is ticked by hand. You are here marks the stop the vintage's wine has reached, and Next says the one thing to do there. Fruit covers a pick from your own block and fruit you buy, since both are weighed in. Under Plan is the protocol, one button for each ferment plan. Select a stop to go to it, and Finish and Package open their cards on the same page. Scroll down and the stops fold to a bar at the top of the window. The tag beside a vintage, here, on the map and in its panel, names the stop it's at.

Show archived, at the top of the map, draws archived house styles and vintages in place, faded. Restore a house style from its box, and a vintage from its own page. A vintage's page and a house style's page have the same switch over their vintages. Where nothing is archived, the switch reads Nothing is archived.

Above the map, the page says how many vintages are in the cellar now, and lays out the five stops a vintage stands at: Plan, Fruit, Ferment, Finish and Package, the same words a vintage's page uses. Each card is a different vintage, with its grapes, under the stage it's at now. Each stage lists its five newest vintages. Where a stage holds more, the link under it opens every vintage under every stage, and Show fewer folds them back. Select a vintage to see where its wine is. Beside the stages are how many house styles and vintages your program has.

Show ferment plans and lots, at the top of the map, adds two columns: each vintage's ferment plans, with the yeast each one pitches, and the lots on each plan, with where each lot stands and its gallons. Gallons still in a fermenter are an estimate and say about. Select a ferment plan to open it on its vintage's page, or a lot to open the lot. A ferment plan with no lots shows No lots yet, and lots on a vintage but on none of its ferment plans are listed under On the vintage.

+ New vintage opens a small panel: its house style, its year and its name. Making it saves a draft with its house style's target and opens its page, where the tracker says Plan is next. Plan this vintage opens the planner, with a bar at the top saying which vintage you're planning and Cancel to leave. Next vintage and + Add a ferment on a vintage's page open the planner too. A new house style can start its first vintage straight away.

+ New house style opens a panel over the map: the name, the kind of wine, the house target, residual sugar, malolactic and a note. Edit on a house style's box opens the same panel, where each vintage on it has a house style picker. Change the picker to move the vintage. A move changes which wine the vintage belongs to and nothing else: its target, lots, picks and bottlings stay as they are.

Archive a house style from its panel. It leaves the map with its vintages. Show archived draws it again, last, with Restore on its box, which brings it back with exactly the vintages archived with it. You can't archive one while a lot under it still holds wine in the cellar. A house style with no vintages can be deleted instead, because nothing else in your records uses it.

A plan records what you intend, and the lots follow it. One plan can hold several ferments. A free run and a press fraction are two ferments of one wine, not two wines.

The target profile is scored on eight sensory axes. A blend is judged on its worst axis, not an average, so four good scores can't hide one that rules the blend out.

Notes don't schedule anything. If something needs doing, add it as a step. Text in a note never becomes a task.

Each house style has its own page, which you can open from the map or from any of its vintages. It shows every vintage made under it, the lots each was made in, where the fruit came from, what was packaged from them, and the wines made from those lots. Each packaging is listed as the ledger records it, so a lot packaged on Move wine shows there before any wine is added on the Wines page. If no pick is tied to a lot, the page shows that instead of using the block name typed on the lot. Fruit that came in through a blend is shown on the lot it reached, but isn't added to the vintage's tons, because the records don't show how a blend divides a pick's tons.

Every lot, where it is, what's in it, and everything done to it.

Every lot in primary has a row under Active fermentations, at the top of the page. It shows the vessel, the days since the pitch, the latest sugar reading and when it was taken, the change per day, and how far the ferment has come toward dry, or toward the stop gravity set in its program. The dashboard shows the most urgent few of these rows.

A lot's volume is kept up to date from the ledger: every time a movement is recorded, the lot's volume is updated at the same moment. It isn't recalculated from the ledger each time you look. The note on the reconciliation under Reports explains why.

A move goes from one vessel to one vessel, and you repeat it as needed. A lot in four barrels is racked one barrel at a time, and each step is its own entry with its own loss.

Loss is worked out on the wine you drew off, never on the whole lot. Racking 200 gallons of 320 at three percent loses six gallons, not a hundred and twenty-six.

Wine that leaves in glass is recorded on the ledger in the return's own words. Wine carried to a tasting room on the bonded premises is “Used for tasting”, the form's own name for it. Record a row each time you take wine in, with the day, the gallons and the kind of wine. That's the record 27 CFR 24.97(b) describes, not a row for every pour. The form's own note on that line says it's for a tasting room on the bonded premises, and that a tasting room off the premises reports its wine as a taxable removal instead. Record that as “Removed taxpaid” with the Tasting room channel. Which of the two you record is your choice. Fermata doesn't decide either way. A tasting session on a wine's card takes nothing off the ledger. The card shows what was carried in beside what the sessions poured. A case that broke is “Breakage”, not “Destroyed”: one is an accident and the other a decision, and the form keeps them apart. A barrel that bursts is a “Casualty loss”, with a sentence or two about what happened. It goes on line 29 of the return for the period it happened in. 27 CFR 24.268 also has it reported to the TTB officer immediately, and that report is yours to make.

The lees left from a racking, the wine held up in a filter, the evaporation a top-up makes up for and the loss from disgorging all go on the ledger the day they happen, so the lot and the tank stay accurate. The return treats them differently. It holds them until you sign a physical inventory, then reports them on line 30 together with whatever the count found, as TTB's own guidance for that line asks. Between counts, the return's closing figure is higher than the ledger's by that amount, and the report shows the difference.

Each lot also carries what it cost, and the cost follows the wine. A blend takes its share of the cost in proportion. A racking loss leaves its cost with the wine that's left, so the cost per gallon rises. The figure shows how complete it is: a lot with no fruit cost recorded shows as uncosted, not as cheap. Costs, prices and tax in dollars are shown to owners, winemakers and accountants. When a cellar hand records a dose, its cost is still posted from the price on file, though they aren't shown it. Only someone who can see costs can enter a material's price.

The bench: sulfur, acid, alcohol and the blend arithmetic. It keeps no records of its own.

Free SO₂ is judged as molecular SO₂ at the wine's own pH, never against one fixed target. A fixed target under-protects the high-pH reds that need protection most.

The blend bench shows how reliable each figure is: alcohol and TA are calculated, and pH is only estimated. A pH averaged by volume can be off by more than the margin that decides an SO₂ addition, and that's the one decision pH is used for.

The bench's Labeling card checks a blend against the federal minimums in 27 CFR Part 4 for what a label could claim: the appellation, the vintage, and each grape grown in the labeled appellation. Each claim shows the blend's share beside its minimum. Meeting a minimum isn't a clearance. The minimums show their source and the date they were confirmed, a state may set higher minimums that the app doesn't hold, and the app doesn't record where the wine was finished. Any share of the wine that can't be traced counts against every claim. A lot made under an approved formula changes the card. It isn't a class 1, 2 or 3 grape wine, so the card offers no grape name and no vintage date for it (27 CFR 4.39(n), 4.34(a), 4.27(a)). Instead of reading a percentage, it lists the appellation as a question for TTB's labeling division, and it draws one wireframe whose designation is the statement of composition TTB approved. The search leaves such a lot out, because formula wine is blended only under its own formula (24.198).

Below the findings, the card draws the labels the blend's records support, as wireframes with your winery's name at the top. There's one for each appellation the grapes grew in, showing the most that appellation supports: the vintage, a grape's name, or every grape with its share, wherever each meets its minimum. There's always also the label that claims nothing: a class designation such as Red Wine, with Red Blend beside it. That label carries no percentage, and it's the only label a blend with no traceable origin supports. Each wireframe has the lines every label must carry: bottled by with the name and address, a blank for the alcohol content (measured on the bottled wine), the net contents, Contains sulfites, and the government warning. You choose the wine's color, and the grapes set the default. A wireframe shows what the records support. It's never a clearance.

Enter a range for TA, pH and alcohol, and the bench tries pairs and triples of the lots on hand to find the shares that land inside it. This is the app's own arithmetic, and it's free. Each candidate is graded the same way the bench grades a blend, and ranked on its worst measure, never an average. If a candidate crosses tax classes, it shows the form's own blending lines for it. The label claims it meets the minimums for are read from its composition. A lot with no figure for a measure you gave a range for is left out and listed, because a figure no one measured isn't zero. Loading a candidate puts it on the bench in place of the lots you picked by hand, and hides the other candidates until you clear the bench. After a search, each measure shows where it stands against the range you searched with. If moving a share takes a measure out of that range, a tag appears beside The blend's title. You still decide on the bench, and you still make the move on the move screen.

For one credit, an AI model will then read those candidates. Choose the kind of wine and enter what the blend is for, and it tells you which candidates are worth a bench trial and why, what to taste for in the trial, and what it wouldn't do with these lots. It's a suggestion, never a recommendation. It doesn't repeat any figures, and it never says how a blend will taste. If it writes a sentence that does, the app drops that sentence, because a blend doesn't taste like the average of its parts, and only tasting it tells you.

Gravity, pH and TA are each measured separately, so the bench uses the most recent value of each one, not just the values in the newest reading.

A chromatography plate shows whether malic is there or gone, but gives no figure. So the lab panel takes the plate's result beside the malic figure. The malolactic panel uses whichever of the two is more recent, and shows which one it used. A clear plate counts as finished, and a plate with a spot counts as not finished. A partial malolactic and a confirmed arrest still need figures.

Cold and heat stability are recorded on the lot as a trial and its result: the procedure, how the sample was held, the turbidity before and after with the rise worked out, what you saw after the wait, and what you did about it. The test is bench work, so it's recorded here. Chilling a tank or fining with bentonite is cellar work, recorded as a move or an addition. A lot that has never been tested shows as untested, not as stable.

Bench methods are next to the calculators: how to titrate total acidity and free SO₂, and where each one gives a wrong reading. Ripper reads too high on a red, and a wine still holding carbon dioxide reads too high on acid. Both give a figure that looks perfectly reasonable on screen, which is why the methods point them out.

Blocks, plantings, ripeness samples, sprays and their intervals.

Ripeness is judged against each variety's own target window. No single number means ripe for every grape: a Traminette at 20 °Bx is ready and a Syrah isn't. A block farmed for two wines is two picks, each with its own window and its own verdict.

Fruit can go past its window, not just fall short of it. Sugar climbs, pH drifts up and acid falls, so the app checks whether the fruit has gone past its window before it counts down to anything.

Sprays can't be edited, for the same reason movements can't: an application starts a pre-harvest interval, and an interval that could be changed afterward couldn't be relied on. A tank mix uses the longest interval of anything in it, never an average.

Each product's intervals record the label they were read from, when, and by whom. If any product in the tank hasn't been checked against a label within the past year, the spray form doesn't work out the clearing date from the shelf. Instead it asks for the intervals printed on the container you're spraying, and the record notes that's where they came from. Every countdown shows where its figure came from. Each night, every product that has its EPA registration number is checked against the EPA's label list, and the label the EPA lists as current is read for its intervals. If the reading agrees, the product's check stays current. If it disagrees, the form stops working out dates from that product until someone checks the label. Every application includes an attestation from the person who logged it that they checked the intervals against the container's label that day, with their name and the time. The record can't be edited afterward.

The spray form also asks how much of each product went in the tank, in the unit you measured it in. Under each box it shows the product's rate on the shelf times the block's acres, as a check only; what's recorded is what you type. Each amount comes off what's on hand of that product in Supplies. Leave a box blank if it wasn't measured: the spray is still recorded and takes nothing off the shelf. The record doesn't say whether a state's applicator rules ask for the amount applied; check them yourself.

A block's intervals are measured against the sprays recorded here. So its spray record starts the day the block was entered, or on the earliest spray logged on it if that's earlier. Until the longest interval on the shelf has passed from that day, the block's card, its spray status and the dashboard warn that anything applied before then isn't recorded here and could still be running. They ask you to check your own spray log before a pick. The warning ends on its own. You don't need to import or check off anything.

While that first window is open, you can enter a spray from your own log that was applied before the record began. Do this on Spray ops: copy it as your log has it, and give the log's name and where it's kept. Your log holds no intervals, so read both of them off the label in use that day for its registration number. Then check the box for your own statement that you copied it. This isn't the applicator's attestation, which only they could make on the day. The spray counts toward the pick like any other application. Every screen shows it was entered from the log, and it doesn't change the window. Once the window has passed, you can't enter sprays this way.

What could this be?, on a block's card and under a vineyard photo in the journal, uses an AI model to read a photo of a leaf, a cane or a cluster. It tells you the condition the photo most likely shows, in words, never as a percentage and never as a diagnosis. Or it asks for the photo that would decide it: the underside of the leaf, the base of the shoot, or the cluster. A follow-up photo is read together with the first and isn't counted again. Ten readings a month are free, and after that each uses an AI credit. A reading that doesn't name a condition isn't counted. Each condition opens Fermata's own note, written from the extension and IPM pages it cites. The note covers what the condition is, how and when growers protect against it, the block's own ratings, where the block's last recorded stage falls against the regional timing, how the condition is confirmed, and the active ingredients the guides list, with the products on your shelf that contain them. No note says a product will cure what a photo shows, because by the time a lesion is visible, the time to protect was usually weeks earlier. Every note says Fermata doesn't recommend these products outside a comprehensive spray program. A condition is recorded only when you press the button to record it, and that writes a journal entry. Every note is also on the Conditions page, with no photo needed and no credit used.

The three shelves: spray chemicals, yeast strains and additives. For every product on them, and the malolactic cultures, what's on hand, your minimums and the counts.

A shelf is the list of products your winery uses, picked from the shared catalog. Fermata records what you use and at what rate. For the additives, the yeast strains, the malolactic cultures and the spray products it also works out how much is on hand, from the record and never from a figure you type.

Deliveries are recorded on the additives shelf, with the date, the supplier and the invoice reference, alongside anything that left the premises or went into an allied product, and any loss you saw happen, with what happened. That's because the sugar and acid records keep track of what came in as well as what was used. The balance on hand at the close of each reporting period, the period you file on, is worked out from those entries, the additions logged on the lots and the counts you sign. You never type it in.

Yeast and malolactic cultures are received the same way, on the yeast shelf, and their on-hand figures come down with the pitches: the pitch card on a lot's page asks the weight of each strain in grams, and the malolactic card asks the amount of the culture, in grams or doses, whichever you buy it in. A pitch with no figure still stands and takes nothing off the shelf; the yeast page says how many pitches have none. The cultures are counted on the yeast page, under their own heading, because the winery keeps no culture shelf of its own.

Spray products are received on the chemicals shelf, in the unit on the invoice, and their on-hand figures come down with the sprays: the spray form asks how much of each product went in the tank. Under each box it shows the product's rate on the shelf times the block's acres, as a check; what's recorded is what you type. A product with no amount takes nothing off the shelf, and the chemicals page says how many sprays have none. A product is counted in pounds if it's measured by weight and in gallons if it's measured by volume, and other units of the same kind are converted: 16 oz to the pound, and 4 quarts, 8 pints or 128 fl oz to the gallon. Weight and volume are never added together.

What's on hand shows beside each additive, strain or spray product on the shelf and under On hand, with the last delivery and the minimum you set. A minimum is yours to state, in the item's own unit; Fermata compares it with what the record holds and says when an item drops under it, on the shelf and on the Supplies page. Nothing is ordered and nothing moves.

Every so often, count the storeroom. Under Counts, start a count for one shelf, the additives, the yeast, the cultures or the spray products: the sheet lists every item the record holds with the figure it expects, you write what you found against each line (enter 0 for an empty shelf), add anything the record didn't expect, and sign. Each difference is posted to the item's account as its own entry, found short or found over, dated the day of the walk and with no cause: a shortfall may be a spill, a bag that spoiled, or a dose, a pitch, a spray or a delivery that was never logged, and the record says what it compared rather than guessing which. The balance after it is what you found. A signed count can't be changed; count again instead.

For a juice or concentrate kept as a material, Part IV of the operations report stays on the figures the deliveries and uses compute, with a count's difference kept beside it, unless you record a standing decision on the Reports page placing a shortfall on line 8 and an overage on line 2. The working paper says which, and gives the sentence for Part X.

If you're moving from other records, enter how much of each sugar and acid was on the shelf the day your books opened here. Use the same card, under On hand when the books opened, and take the figure from your old records' closing balance, a count on the day, or a count with the old figure beside it. It's a balance carried in, not a delivery, so it has no supplier or invoice. The account starts from it, and Part IV opens with it instead of counting it as received. If you enter it a second time, the new figure replaces the first, and you're asked for a reason.

Stocking your shelves means the planner and the spray screen show you a short list, instead of every product a maker sells.

If the shared catalog has nothing that matches, you can add your own product: a house isolate, a local supplier's product, or one whose sheet hasn't been read here yet. Your own products sit beside the shared ones and go through the same checks. The grapes your own strain suits are matched to the varietal list the same way as on the shared shelf. So a grape spelled with an accent still finds its match, and a name that isn't a varietal is refused, because it would never match anything.

To add a whole list at once, for example when you're switching to Fermata or stocking up for a season, use the supplies sheet under Settings, Bring your records in.

A spray product you add yourself needs its pre-harvest and re-entry intervals, and there's no default for either. They decide when fruit can be picked and when people can go back into a block, so the app won't accept a blank or fill in a zero.

The cellar book: what happened, on which day, in the words of whoever wrote it.

Entries can't be edited or deleted, and the database enforces this, not just the screen. To correct something, add a new entry, the way you would in a paper cellar book.

When you record work elsewhere in the app, such as a reading, a sample or a spray, the app also writes a journal entry, marked with where it came from. So the journal is a complete account of the vintage, not just the parts someone remembered to write down.

You can attach photos to any entry. Location and camera details are removed before anything is stored, because a phone photo of a block would otherwise record where the block is. Removing a photo takes the image away, and the entry still shows that a photo was attached, since entries can't be edited. Photos are the one thing the full archive leaves out, and the archive tells you how many it left out.

What needs doing in the cellar, worked out from your records rather than from a list someone keeps.

Nothing here is a stored reminder. Each item comes from two records that don't agree yet, such as a racking interval against the last move, or a free SO₂ reading against the wine's own pH. So when you record the work, the item goes away on every screen at once. There's no checkbox, because a list you could check off without doing the work would stop describing your cellar.

Every task shows which record completes it and links to where you make that record, so each task takes you straight to the form for the work.

Work that repeats on a regular schedule rather than falling on a date, such as punching down twice a day for three weeks, has its own section above the dated items, marked as having no date. That keeps one routine from filling the list with forty separate items.

The ferment itself is watched the same way, from the gravity readings. Two different things can go wrong, and they're always reported separately. If no one has taken a reading for days, there's a gap in the record, and the fix is a hydrometer reading. If the last two readings agree while sugar remains, the ferment has stopped moving, and the fix is a feed and a few degrees of warmth. The app reports what it sees, which readings on which days, and doesn't call a wine stuck. A tank can sit for two days in a cold cellar and still finish perfectly well, so that judgment is up to the person standing in front of it.

The same cellar, built for a phone, one cold hand and one thumb.

It's built for entering readings, not reviewing them. It asks for the number you have in hand, such as a gravity as you walk past an open-top or a Brix in the rows, rather than showing everything the desktop version does. It uses steppers instead of a keyboard, and every button is at least 44 pixels.

Sampling happens standing in the rows, so the sample form is here. It asks which pick the reading is for, so on a block farmed for two wines, a second reading doesn't overwrite the morning's first one.

Two or more arms from one juice, with one thing changed and written down.

A trial is only useful if everything except one thing was the same. So it records the shared starting material and the one thing that differed. Without both, next year you won't be able to tell what the result meant.

Arms are scored on the same eight axes a wine program targets, and compared one axis at a time. There's no overall score, and there won't be one, because an average can hide one bad result behind four good ones.

The ferment curves come from each arm's own lot readings, not a copy, so a trial always matches the cellar records it came from.

What was bottled: the lots behind each wine, competitions entered, tasting-room pours.

A wine is the finished product, and it lists the lots that went into it, so you can trace a bottle back to the fruit. A vintage is optional. A house blend made from several vintages shows as NV, not as a missing year.

Rename, beside a wine's name, changes its name and its cuvée when the label changes. The year stays the same, and every page that shows the wine takes the new name. Its lots are named for their vintage, which you rename in the Wine program.

Every count on a wine is in nine-liter case equivalents, twelve 750 mL bottles to a case, whatever the containers were. That's true of the count you enter off the line as well as what's left, because the ledger holds gallons, and gallons can only be turned into case equivalents. Counted in bottles or cans? Enter how many and their size, and the form works out the case equivalents and shows the arithmetic. A count of boxes of 375s would disagree with the ledger just because of the bottle size.

Remaining stock is worked out from the cased ledger and never stored separately, so it always agrees with the book behind your return.

For a wine bottled before Fermata held your books, stock counts down from the glass its lots were carried in with, meaning what was on hand the day your books open. Any bottling the ledger has recorded since is added, and the card lists each. The wine's count off the line is shown beside them but never compared, because what left between the bottling day and the day your books open isn't recorded here. A wine with no glass carried in and no bottling on the ledger uses its line count as a carry-in, and the card shows that, instead of showing zero and reporting the wine sold out. The wines sheet, under Settings, Bring your records in, brings in many wines at once. If a wine lists a lot that hasn't been brought in yet, the sheet carries that lot in at Packaged.

Each wine's card draws where it came from, left to right: the fruit, every lot it passed through with its vintage and house style, each bottling of those lots with its day, count and run, and then the label. Below that is what the bottle holds: each grape, year and place with its share. The shares are weighted by the bottlings on the ledger, using each lot as it stood the day it was bottled. A lot with no bottling on the ledger gets a pale box that shows this. When a lot is also part of another wine, the ledger doesn't show which bottling filled which label, so shares are only worked out where that couldn't change the answer.

Wine that comes back to bond after a taxpaid removal is counted as on hand again, and the card shows how many cases came back. It's never counted as bottled again, since those cases only went through the line once. So a return doesn't affect the check of your line count against the ledger's bottling.

A tasting session records pours, bottles sold and what the room thought. It's feedback only, and takes nothing off the ledger. If wine was carried to a tasting room on the bonded premises as “Used for tasting”, the card's Cellar door panel shows what was carried in beside what the sessions poured. It shows bottles too, if every bottling of the wine was one size. Neither one posts anything to the ledger.

The ledger, the reconciliation, and TTB F 5120.17.

The reconciliation subtracts the total of your lots from the ledger's closing balance. This works because lot volumes are kept up to date as you record, not worked out from the ledger. If they were worked out from the ledger, the two figures would always agree and the check could never tell you anything.

So expect a gap, and treat it as information. Wine evaporates, gets spilled and gets mis-measured. The figure is there for you to explain, not to be zero.

If you brought your records over from paper or another system, there's one more card at the top: Does it add up? It sets your records side by side as of the day the books open. It shows the return you entered, as filed, beside every lot as the records have it that day, column by column, in bulk and in glass, with the glass in case equivalents and the arithmetic shown. Where no return is entered, it uses the carry-in typed on Settings. It also shows each lot's vessels beside its gallons, the ledger entries since, and what wasn't brought in and why. Every gap is shown in gallons, and the card doesn't close any of them. The card folds away once the first physical inventory is signed, since that count is what resolves a measurement.

A filed return is kept exactly as filed. A closed period is always shown from the saved copy, never recalculated. An amendment takes the original's place without overwriting it.

Enter a return you filed before Fermata, on paper or from another system, exactly as filed, under Reports → Enter a return filed outside Fermata. You fill in the form's own grid cell by cell, with its heading and signer as the paper shows them. Or press Read the return and give it the PDF saved from the smart form, a print or a photo. An AI model reads it twice, and neither reading sees the other. Only what both readings agree on is filled in, each figure beside the line it was read from, for you to check against the paper before you enter it. Reading it is free. The figures are the paper's own. Where they don't add up, the difference is shown and nothing is corrected. The return's closing balance opens the first report you file here. The days it covered are closed to late entries, and your books here begin the day after the last of them. It's never recalculated from this ledger or amended from it. If you amended it on paper, enter the amendment too, and it replaces the first. A monthly return can't be entered, because Fermata's report has no monthly period yet. Until it does, use the opening balance on Settings instead.

Every entry keeps the time it was written beside the day it records. 27 CFR 24.300(b) lets an entry posted from a record made at the time be deferred to the close of the third business day after the day it records. So a form warns you as soon as its date is earlier than that, the report lists the period's entries written later, and a filed return's working paper counts them. Each one is still recorded. The app doesn't know about holidays, so it counts them as business days. That can only make an entry look late when it wasn't, never the other way around.

Each day's taxpaid removals are summarized by tax class to the tenth of a gallon, as 27 CFR 24.310 asks. A day's removals of each class are added up and rounded, with five hundredths rounding up. Section B line 8 is the sum of those daily figures, rather than the period's removals added up once. The small difference between the two is accounted for in the same period, in each tax class's own column, on a Section B write-in line captioned OTHER (line 5 or line 17). So the closing figure is what the ledger's entries leave, and nothing carries into the next period. The working paper gives the sentence the form asks for in Part X. The report prints the summary under the two books, and the cased goods card shows the line. A return filed before line 8 was worked out this way keeps the figure it was filed with.

The audit binder, on the same page, gathers what an examiner asks for into one folder, for a span of dates you choose. It has a report with your name on it, each filed form filled in, the history of each wine whose lots have records in the span, the Auditor Reference at its version, and every table. Its README lists what isn't in it.

Bottles can go back into a tank, for example after a cork batch fails, or when you'd rather re-blend a wine than sell it. That's “Dumped to bulk”. Like bottling, it's two entries on one day: the wine leaves cased goods and arrives in a tank, and the return counts it in both places. It's the opposite of “Destroyed”: one recovers the wine and the other ends it.

Wine that was removed taxpaid can come back, for example when a wholesaler returns a pallet or you buy back your own wine. That's “Taxpaid wine returned to bond”. It goes on the cased goods book, because wine becomes taxpaid when it leaves, and it leaves in bottles. You're asked whose tax was paid. A credit may be available when it's your own wine coming back. Wine bought taxpaid from someone else never carried your tax at all. Both go on the same line of the return. The app records which it was but doesn't work out a credit from it. What you can reclaim depends on rules the app doesn't model, and any figure it guessed would be one you'd file.

Cost of goods is reconciled here too, with three figures: what the lots carry, the cost entries that are on a lot, and, separately, money spent that isn't on any wine yet. That third figure isn't an error. Dry goods bought ahead of packaging are real money that isn't on any lot yet. Keeping it separate means the comparison doesn't show a permanent gap when nothing is wrong.

The excise return has a working paper here too, under Reports → Excise return. It shows what left bond taxpaid in each return period, by tax class, from the cased book. That's the sum of each class's daily figures, the same ones line 8 adds up, and it's the figure a return is worked from. It's priced against a rate table that shows its source and who checked it and when. Once that check is a year old, the paper won't price anything. Fermata's staff keep the rate table, which every winery uses. They check it against TTB's published figures each year, and add a new table from the day a figure changes. The paper shows which table priced it. The CBMA credit is applied only against the share of the ladder you enter for the year, because the app can't know how much of the ladder is yours or which wine qualifies. Those depend on your controlled group and your production. Beside your share, enter the gallons a bonded house removed taxpaid on your behalf that year. Where the conditions in 26 U.S.C. 5041(c)(5) are met, the house takes the credit on those gallons on its own return. They count against your tiers, and the paper counts them before your own removals. If your books here began after January 1, also enter the taxpaid gallons your old books removed that year. They're filled in from the returns you entered, and counted first. Until you enter them, the paper applies no credit. An excise return filed outside Fermata, from your old books, is recorded on the same page without a working paper, so the schedule stops asking for it. The working paper isn't a return. You file on Pay.gov or on paper, then record here that you did, with the figure as the return stated it. The paper is saved, unchanged, with that record. Enter how often you file in Settings, and each return's due date stays on the schedule until you record it.

You take a physical inventory here too, under Reports → Physical inventory. The sheet lists every container the ledger says holds wine, with the book figure beside each. Must and juice still fermenting are left off and listed separately, because they're the in-fermenters estimate, not wine on the ledger. Walk the cellar, write down what you find, and sign the count under the statement 27 CFR 24.313 asks for. Signing posts the difference for each lot to the ledger, dated the count day: an inventory gain or loss on bulk wine, or a shortage or an overage in glass. The return for that period reports the difference on the form's own lines. A blank line means a container that hasn't been counted yet. If a container is empty, enter 0. A signed count can't be changed, so to fix a mistake, count again. A signed count prints as the record that section describes, with the pages numbered in order and the statement and signature on the last page, and it's kept with the return for the period. An open count prints as a working copy to walk the cellar with. It has no statement and says it isn't the record. The record also includes the figures 27 CFR 24.65(b) lists for a claim for allowance of loss, worked out over your inventory year. The app never makes that claim. The count page tells you if a later entry has changed the ledger's figure for the count day. Once Settings shows how often you file, the schedule shows the day the count is due. If your account has no return filed yet, you can sign the first count as the opening balance, so the year opens from a signed record rather than a typed figure.

Every role can read this report in gallons, including a cellar hand, since the ledger is mostly the cellar's own work. The dollar figures are kept separate. The cost of goods, the overhead, the tax paid on wine returned to bond and the excise paper's dollars are the winery's to keep from its staff, and costs, prices and tax in dollars are shown to owners, winemakers and accountants. Someone who can't see costs reads the excise paper in gallons, and can't log an entry that takes a dollar figure. The archive and the audit binder include all the dollar figures, so only someone who can see costs can take them. Each table downloaded on its own leaves out its money columns.

A paid add-on: where your taxpaid wine went after it left bond, what's left at each place, and the connection to the shop that sells it. Every account sees it in the rail, and subscribing opens it.

Fermata tracks every gallon in bond and stops counting at the taxpaid removal, which is all the TTB report needs. But wine in a taxpaid tasting room, a storeroom, a festival stand or a fulfillment warehouse is still stock you own and can lose. This add-on keeps the record of it: your locations, moving cases out of bond into one, transfers between them, sales, pours and breakage, returning unsold wine to bond, counts with the difference kept as shrinkage, and DTC Sales, the shop connection.

The overview opens on where each wine is. Each wine has a row: what the cased book has left in bond, then a circle at each of your locations, sized by how much is there, in case equivalents of nine liters. The first two locations you added each have their own color, and any others share the card's color. A ring marks a line under the minimum you set, or below zero. The headline above it says what needs you first: a line below zero, a line under its minimum, or a place of yours that doesn't say how it became taxpaid premises. Beside the circles, each location's total says when it was last counted. Under them come what's in bond, what's at each location, and taxpaid removals that aren't at any location.

Moving cases out of bond is the taxpaid removal on your ledger. It's recorded once, and the stock arrives at the location at the same moment. So Section B line 8 and the excise working paper see exactly the gallons they'd have seen from the ledger panel, and nothing else. The stock record is kept beside the ledger, never inside it, and no part of the report reads it.

For each place of your own, choose how it became taxpaid wine premises: named in your approved application, added by a notice of a change in use, or alternated under an alternation TTB approved. Or choose that it's a place you run at another address, which isn't taxpaid wine premises at all. Fermata can't see your application, so it keeps your answer with your name. A place saved before this question was added shows as not stated until you answer. For your own taxpaid premises, the location's page sets out the record 27 CFR 24.311 has you keep: each receipt, from whom and under which registry number, and each removal, to whom where the regulation asks for it, with the kind of wine and the volume in liters and gallons. The export includes it.

Enter any cases that were already at such a place the day your books opened, moved out of bond under your old books on earlier returns, on its page under On hand when the books opened. Add a line for each wine and size, with where the count came from, and the kind of wine and tax class as read off the cases. The record treats it as a balance carried from your old records, from your own bond. Nothing on the report or the excise return changes. If your count is higher than the old records' figure, the app points it out as a possible removal from bond that was never reported. That's a correction on the bonded side, and it's yours to make. Cases no one can identify are counted instead. A place someone else runs can't take this entry.

DTC Sales has its own row beside Inventory Management under Sales. The same subscription covers both, and an account without it lands on DTC Sales' own page of the offer. The DTC Sales page is where you connect Commerce7. Connecting records your Commerce7 account (its tenant ID, who connected it and when) and checks it with Commerce7 using Fermata's own app credential, keeping what the shop replied. Map each SKU to a wine and a container size. The size starts on the one every bottling of that wine used, where the ledger shows one. For each SKU, choose where the shop sells it from: in bond, a taxpaid location, or a fulfillment house that holds it in bond, chosen from your other bonded premises with its registry number. The page shows the count the shop is told for each SKU, worked out from the record. Press Read from Commerce7 to see what Commerce7 holds beside it, then Send. A send sets Commerce7's available count to the record, less what Commerce7 already holds for orders it hasn't fulfilled and in reserve. A SKU whose inventory Commerce7 doesn't track, or whose size Commerce7 states differently, is held with the reason. Fermata sends a count only when you press Send, because an order waiting for you isn't on the record yet. A fulfillment house keeps its own count, so nothing is sent for it.

DTC Sales opens on your sales for the last 12 months, in gallons: a bar for each month, each channel's total, and this month and the year as figures. A removal entered by hand on the ledger as an event pour, a lab sample or a trade sample isn't counted as a sale. The headline above the bars says what needs you first: a Commerce7 connection that stopped working, no standing statement, orders waiting, a club release short of wine, or a count that differs from the shop. Under it come Orders from Commerce7, Record a sale, Recent sales, Club releases and The count the shop is told. Record a sale stays folded while Commerce7 sends in your sales under a standing statement. The connection, the standing statement, the SKU map and Which lot a sale comes from are at the bottom, under How Fermata reads your shop. Each one stays folded until it needs you.

You set the rules orders will be read under on the same page. The standing statement says your staff mark a fulfillment in Commerce7 on the day the wine leaves or is handed over. It also says which ways your orders leave bond (shipped from bond, from a taxpaid location, or through a fulfillment house) and which of your sales channels Commerce7 carries. It's kept with your name and the date, belongs to the connection, and you can withdraw it at any time. For each wine on the SKU map that's sold from bond, choose which lot a sale comes from: the oldest bottling first, in proportion to what each lot holds in glass, or one lot you choose. Each lot's glass is shown as the ledger reads it. A wine made from one lot needs no rule.

Under Orders from Commerce7, each fulfillment your shop records comes in. Fermata reads Commerce7 every 15 minutes and checks every order again once a day, or press Read orders now. A fulfillment that passes every check under your standing statement is posted as a taxpaid removal, dated the day the wine left or was handed over, and listed under Recent sales, where Undo and Take back work as they do for a sale you typed. Anything else waits for you with its reasons: a SKU that isn't mapped, a wine with no rule for which lot, a day inside a filed return, a fulfillment that would be written more than three business days late, a cancelled or refunded order, a fulfillment Commerce7 changed after it was posted, or a sale that may already be logged by hand. Fix the reason and it posts on the next read, or press Post it. Set aside, with a note, settles one you dealt with another way. To approve each fulfillment yourself, press Ask me before posting each one. Fermata writes nothing to Commerce7 when it reads an order.

A refund made in Commerce7 comes in as its own item, beside the sale it refunds. A refund of money changes nothing on the ledger. If the bottles came back, take them back under Recent sales, and the refund closes by itself once every refunded bottle is taken back. If none came back, press No bottles came back. The item also shows whether Commerce7 put the bottles back into its own stock, which only tells you what the person who made the refund chose. If you undo a take-back, the refund it closed opens again.

Commerce7 has no way to cancel an order. You refund it and mark it No Fulfillment Required. An order marked that way comes in as one item. If no wine left, press No wine left, and nothing is recorded. The same press closes the order's refund, and No bottles came back on the refund closes the order. If some wine did leave, record the sale under Record a sale, then set the item aside.

On Reports, Commerce7 against the ledger sets each period's fulfillments beside what's on the record from them, by wine, size and channel: what's posted, what waits, what you set aside and what was undone. Anything else is named, with where to answer it: a count the record doesn't match, an order Commerce7 changed, cancelled, deleted or refunded after its sale was posted, and a sale logged by hand on a channel Commerce7 carries. It never changes the record. It compares what Fermata has read from Commerce7, so it says how far back the reading goes and whether anything is still to be read.

Set a minimum for a wine at a location, size by size, and a low-stock line appears on the overview, the location's page and the phone whenever the record expects fewer than that. It's checked against the record, never against a count, and it doesn't order anything. A line with a minimum and no stock counts as under the minimum.

Every account sees the Sales group in the rail. Until you subscribe, its heading shows Click to subscribe, which opens Stripe Checkout for the add-on, and each row opens the offer with the price and the Subscribe button. One subscription for Inventory Management and DTC Sales, billed as a second line beside your main Fermata subscription and canceled on its own line in the billing portal. If it lapses, you can still read every page here and it stays in your export, but you can't record anything new until you subscribe again. Every subscription keeps the taxpaid removal itself on the ledger, with its channel, on Section B line 8 and the excise working paper, and the export of all of it. This add-on records what happens to the wine after that.

Ask questions about your own records and get answers from the records themselves, beside whatever page you're on.

Press Ask at the top of any page and type a question the way you'd ask someone in the cellar: where's the Syrah, what went into CHA-26-01, what did Block B read on Tuesday, what needs doing today, how many cases of the 2024 are left, what sold in the tasting room last month. The panel opens beside the page and stays open while you follow its answers.

Two AI models answer it, and neither one searches your records itself. A smaller AI model chooses which of the app's record readers to run and what to look up: a lot, a vessel, a block, a material, or a span of days. The app runs those readers under your own account and role, so you only ever see rows your own screens would show you. The current AI model then writes a short answer of one to three sentences based on those rows. The app holds back any sentence that gives a figure no row shows, refers to a row no reader returned, states a rule of law or gives advice, and tells you what it held back.

Under every answer are the rows themselves, in the words their pages use, each linked to its page and numbered the way the answer refers to them. There's also one line per reader saying what it looked at, so you can see at a glance if your question was read the wrong way. If your words could mean more than one record, such as "the Syrah" when there are two Syrah lots, it asks which one you mean. Press one to get the answer for that record.

Thirty questions a month are free. After that each costs one AI credit, and anyone on the team can ask. A question only counts if you get an answer based on rows. If it asks you a question back, refuses, or finds nothing on record, it costs nothing. Nothing is saved: your questions stay in the panel until you reload the page.

In the iPhone and iPad app, the same box is at the top of today's work, with a microphone beside it. Tap it and say your question. What you say is turned into text on the device, and it listens for your winery's own names: its grapes, wines, products, blocks and lots. The sound isn't sent anywhere, and nothing is asked until you've read what it heard and pressed Ask. If a device can't turn speech into text itself, the keyboard's own microphone still works. Press the button under an answer to have it read aloud. The answer opens over the list on a phone and beside it on an iPad. A row opens the app's own screen where there is one, such as a vessel, today's work or the journal, and the web page otherwise. Your questions stay until you close the app.

You can also ask through Siri, once the phone is unlocked. Say "Hey Siri, ask Fermata", and when Siri asks what you'd like to ask your cellar book, say your question. Siri reads the answer aloud and shows the question and what was looked at, so you can spot a misheard name. Open in Fermata, on Siri's card, opens the full answer with every row, and the question waits at the top of the app's cellar book. If your words could mean more than one record, Siri asks which. Once you've used the month's thirty free questions, Siri reads you the price and sends the question only if you say yes. Siri hears what you say to it under the device's own Siri settings, and Siri isn't given your winery's names, so it can mishear a grape, a wine or a block. For those questions, say "Hey Siri, speak a question to Fermata" instead, or set an iPhone's Action button to Fermata's Speak a question. Either one opens the box with the app's own microphone listening on the device, and it knows your winery's names. When you stop talking, the words stay in the box for 3 seconds with a Stop button. Then Fermata asks the question and reads the answer aloud. A question that would use an AI credit waits until you press Ask.

Fermata counts the questions the cellar book couldn't answer, grouped by the readers that ran for them, so it knows which records to teach it to read next. It keeps none of the words with that count. An owner can choose to let Fermata keep the words of those questions too, on Settings under Ask your cellar book. That's an agreement of its own, separate from the subscription terms. The text beside the switch says what's kept, for how long and who reads it. Turning it off deletes every question kept, and you don't lose any feature. While it's on, your winery's month includes one extra AI credit. The Notice of Financial Incentive above the switch lists what's collected and why, and shows how the credit compares with the value of the data.

How many AI credits you have left, and where to buy more.

Everything the app works out for itself is included. The buttons that ask an AI model for advice cost a credit each, because each one is a real request to another company's service. They include yeast suggestions, a plan assessment, generating the fermentation protocol, a reading of the blends the bench found, and Ask why on a flagged ferment, and this page lists every one. The flag itself comes from the app's own rule and costs nothing. Reading your own paperwork into a form, such as a spray label or a bench sheet, also uses an AI model but doesn't use a credit: Fermata pays for it.

Credits come from two places, and they work differently. The credits your subscription includes refresh at the start of each month and don't roll over. Credits you buy never expire, even if your band changes or your account is suspended. Included credits are always used first, so you never spend a credit you paid for while a free one sits unused.

You aren't charged for an answer the app couldn't use. Every claim in a reply is checked against the catalog and your records. If nothing usable is left after that, you didn't get an answer, so no credit is used.

Your winery's details and time zone, the lettering for its name, your bonded premises and the formulas TTB approved, your team, display units, your own passkeys and appearance (light, dark, or the device's), privacy, records brought in from a sheet, and the export.

You sign in with a passkey, not a password. Your phone or computer keeps it and unlocks it with your face, fingerprint or PIN, and it only works on Fermata's own site. Add one on each phone and computer you sign in with, under Settings, Passkeys. Your first passkey comes with ten recovery codes, shown once. Keep them somewhere other than your phone. Adding or removing a passkey, or making new codes, asks you to confirm with a passkey first. The Fermata app signs in the same way, through a sign-in page it opens.

If you can't sign in, choose Can't sign in? on the sign-in page. A recovery code gets you back in at once. Without one, an account that has no passkey yet is emailed a link to add one. An account that has passkeys is never sent a link on the strength of its email alone: the owners of your winery are asked to approve, on Settings, and every owner is told who did. If no owner can approve, Fermata's staff reach you on a number your winery already gave us before they send a link.

Approved formulas are the TTB F 5120.29 approvals that a special natural wine or an other wine is made under, such as a grape wine with another fruit's juice in it, or a vermouth. Record each one as the approval reads: its number, the class it gives, the statement of composition, the day it was approved, and the materials and essences it lists. Fermata records what TTB approved and doesn't decide anything itself. Whether a wine needs a formula, and which class it is, come from the approval. A formula is ended as superseded, revoked or surrendered, and never deleted. You make a batch under a formula on the move screen, with Make formula wine, measuring before and after. The two entries it writes go on the report's write-in lines, and Part IX and Part IV are filled in from the records. The formula lot's own page has the formula wine record 27 CFR 24.303 asks for, put together from its batches: the wine used and produced as measured, the gain and its explanation, the essences the formula lists and the flavoring materials' accounts. A lot that a juice or concentrate from the shelf went into has the 24.315 record of its deliveries and uses, and each concentrate delivery asks for its Brix before and after concentration. Both records print in the wine's history and are included in the export.

The time zone belongs to the winery and is set beside its state on the profile. The date a record opens on, the time a step is stamped with, and the worklist's today all use it, for everyone on the team, wherever their own device is. It starts as the time zone of the device the account was opened on. Changing it doesn't move anything already recorded: a date stays the date it was written, and a time stays the time it was written. It only changes when today turns over from then on.

Lettering is the typeface for your winery's name at the top of every page and on the letterhead of everything you print. There are eight typefaces, each shown in your own name, with the page header and a printed page beside them. Only the name changes. Everything else keeps Fermata's own type.

Bring your records in brings your records in one sheet at a time. Download a sheet. It's filled in with what's already here, and every column that takes Fermata's own words has a dropdown of them. Fill it in and upload it as the workbook or as CSV, or type a few rows into the grid on the page. Before anything is saved, you see every row as it would be written. Rows that pass are written. Rows that are refused show the message the form would give. A row for a record that's already here is left alone if it matches, and refused if it doesn't, because a sheet never changes an existing record. Each import is a batch, listed with who brought it in and from which file. Remove this batch takes out exactly what the batch wrote, as long as nothing recorded since refers to one of its rows. Here are the sheets, in the order they go in. The vessels. The supplies: the yeast, additives and spray products your winery uses, listed by name. A name on the shared shelves is stocked. If a name only looks like a shared product's, you're asked about it instead of it being matched. A product of your own is added only where its row says Your own, and it goes through the same checks Supplies runs. The blocks, one row per grape and clone. Each block comes in whole or not at all, its county is read in your winery's own state, and its area is checked against TTB's list. The growers, one row per grower and vineyard. The other bonded premises, by their registry numbers. This season's picks, each through the weigh-in's own checks and not tied to any lot. A grower's price posts the fruit's cost, and the preview shows this. The lots in vessels, one row per vessel. Wine past its ferment is carried in as it stood the day the books open, and posts nothing. The origin your records state is counted on the labeling card as stated when it was brought in. Must still fermenting goes through the same path as the new-lot form: its block's or grower's untied picks are tied to it, and its estimate is worked out from their tons. The wines in bottle, one row per wine, with the lots it was bottled from. If a wine is wholly in bottle and lists one lot that hasn't been brought in, that lot is carried in at Packaged with what was on hand, and posts nothing. Its count off the line is kept beside it but never compared. And the people: each row is an invitation, emailed when the sheet comes in, and each person accepts it themselves. If an email doesn't go out, the page gives you the link to send yourself, once.

The switching workbook, at the top of Bring your records in, has every sheet in one file. It has a Start here tab with the whole switching order and where each step is done, a tab for each sheet filled in with what's already here (headings marked * are needed on every row), and a Guide to every column. Fill in the tabs you have records for, then choose the workbook once at the top of the page, and every sheet below reads its own tab from it. Bring them in from the top down. Each one shows you its rows first.

To bring in a file from another system, or a spreadsheet of your own, use Match your own columns on any sheet. Fermata reads the file's headings, picking the tab and the row they're on, which you can change. It matches each of your columns to one of the sheet's: directly where your heading is the same as the sheet's, as a guess where your heading is a word it knows for that column, and not at all otherwise. For every column that takes a choice of words, each word in your cells is matched to one of Fermata's the same way, and a column none of yours fills can take one word for every row. Guesses are marked, and each one waits for you to check its box. Nothing is shown as written until every guess in use is checked or changed. Rows with a word left unmatched are refused, and the message says which word. The rows then go through the sheet's own checks exactly as a filled-in sheet does, each under its own row number, and the batch records which of your headings and words were read as what. A date in a spreadsheet is read as the date it shows. Save a CSV as CSV UTF-8, so accented letters in names are read correctly.

Display units only change what you see. Whatever a screen shows, volume is stored in gallons, temperature in Fahrenheit, sugar as specific gravity and weight in US tons. So two people can read the same cellar in different units without changing any record.

You can always export, whatever you pay. Everything you record belongs to you. "Everything, in one file" gives you every record as plain CSV in an uncompressed zip that opens without any of our software. Photos attached to journal entries are the one thing not included. The entries themselves are, and the archive tells you how many photos it left out.

If you leave, closing your account doesn't erase your records. Every sign-in and everything that identifies a person is removed, and the winery's books stay where they are, where no one can reach them. Each record is kept for at least three years from its own date or its last entry, whichever is later (27 CFR 24.300(d)). A TTB officer may require up to three years more. That duty belongs to the record and to the winery, and it outlives the account. Nothing counts down from the day an account closes, and nothing is scheduled to remove the books.

A winery of your own at try.fermata.wine, five seasons into Fermata with invented records, to try anything on for 14 days.

Choose Try a sample winery on Fermata's front page. You sign up with your name, your email address and a passkey, the way a customer does, and Fermata fills the winery with sample records in about a minute. Nothing is paid for, and no card is asked for. It's a separate site from www.fermata.wine, with a separate sign-in.

To try it in the Fermata app, make the sample winery first. Then type https://try.fermata.wine under Server on the app's sign-in screen, and sign in with the passkey you made.

The sample winery is five seasons into Fermata: vineyard blocks and growers, every vintage's lots from the pick to the bottle, a ledger with sales and transfers, the TTB report and the excise return filed for each quarter, a physical inventory signed each June, and this season's ferments in progress. It keeps its own calendar, which opens on September 14, in the middle of harvest, whatever day you start it, so there are picks still to come and ferments running. Its date moves ahead one day for each day that passes.

Try anything, including what can't be taken back in a real winery: file a quarter, sign a count, undo a sale, destroy a lot's wine. To begin again, choose Start over on the Sample winery card at the top of Settings. It deletes every record and fills the winery again, its calendar back at September 14. Your sign-in, the people you invited, the questions you've used and the end date stay as they are.

Every page has a banner saying the date in the sample winery, that you're its owner, and how many days it has left. Every PDF it prints, the filled TTB form included, is stamped "Sample records. Not for filing.", and every file it downloads has a name starting with "sample-".

A sample winery can ask an AI model 10 questions in all, across the cellar book and the readers, and can invite up to 3 people. The readers don't take your own files. Each one offers a sample sheet or photograph instead, and an AI model really reads it.

It lasts 14 days. If you confirmed your email address, Fermata writes to you two days before it ends and again on the day. Then the winery is deleted with everything in it, and so is your sign-in there.

Who can do what

This table comes straight from the app's own permission list, so it always matches what the app enforces. Anyone can record what they did. Fewer people can change the numbers records are judged against, or sign a return.

The subscription

There's one tier, for a bonded winery that files, and every account gets all of it: the cellar, the lab, the vineyard and the journal, the ledger and the return built from it, the tax classes, the cased-goods book and cost of goods. The account opens when the subscription starts. There's no free period before it. If the subscription ever ends, the account stops at the billing page until you subscribe again. Nothing is deleted, and export keeps working. The subscription is what lets you file, and it never stops you from leaving with your records.

Bonded is priced by the cases you make in a year: Cellar to 1,000 cases at $149/mo, or $1,520/yr (15% off), Boutique to 2,500 cases at $249/mo, or $2,540/yr (15% off), Winery to 5,000 cases at $349/mo, or $3,560/yr (15% off), Regional to 20,000 cases at $8,988/yr, billed annually ($749/mo), Estate I to 50,000 cases at $15,588/yr, billed annually ($1,299/mo), Estate II above every other band at $15,500/yr, billed annually (about $1,292/mo). Every band gets the same software and the same number of AI asks. The band only sets the price. The three smaller bands can be paid monthly or yearly. The larger ones are billed annually, and the largest has no upper limit, so every size has a published price.

What costs a credit

Everything the app works out itself is included: the protocol, the schedule, the lab calculations, and every conversion and check. Asking an AI model is what costs credits, because each question is a real request to another company's service, and you only ask by pressing a button. The readers that copy your own paperwork into a form also ask an AI model, and Fermata pays for those.

A credit is one ask, not a word count or a token. Every ask you're charged for costs the same single credit, even though the protocol ask is the largest, so you never have to guess a price before you press a button.

Each one is a button you press on purpose. Nothing runs when a page loads or in the background, and no other part of the app uses a credit. The protocol itself, the schedule, the lab arithmetic, ripeness, the return and every reconciliation are the app's own work and are never charged for. The readers that cost nothing only copy a document you already have into a form you'd otherwise type. That's data entry, not advice, so Fermata pays for them.

Two kinds of credit, and which is used first

Included asks come with your subscription, refresh at the start of each month and don't roll over. Bought credits never expire. A pack lasts through the change of month, a change of tier in either direction, and a suspended account. Included asks are always used first, so you never spend a credit you paid for while a free one sits unused.

A pack is a one-time payment, not a subscription. Buying one doesn't give us permission to charge you again.

The ledger's vocabulary

Every kind of entry, which book it goes on, and whether it puts wine on the premises or takes it off. A blend and a reclassification are net: they change which lot holds the wine, or what class it is, without changing how much there is.