Reply to Organizing Email contacts via a large database.

Interested to hears some feedback on what you guys use, or what you know is out there. Or any advice you can give on how to go about this, my head aches believeing about this but i know there are options out there.

Basically i have built up an email contact list over the years with around 1000 contacts. What i am after is an easy way to sort this out. I have imported this all from old hotmail and facebook.

Now ideally i want to be able to search through the contacts using tags. so if i type in DJ i get all the djs if i type in school i get all my school friends or maybe i type in Dubstep and get all the dubstep fans. Now i had used the contacts thing you get on apple, but however this option although will bring up the people if i write the tags in notes theres no quick option, to select all that pop up i would have to individually copy and paste the emails.

Anyone know any more / have any ideas about this ? I am sure there are a large number of software apps available but i am after perhaps the most professional as i want to use this database for future releases, events and competitions.