Wine Tasting Journal

What each entry holds

Six identifying fields at the top — wine name, producer, vintage, region, grape, price — a star rating, and four ruled note sections: appearance, nose, palate, finish.

One entry a page if you want room. Two, if you are working through a flight.

The four sections are the order you taste in

Not arbitrary headings. They follow the sequence a taster actually uses, and following that sequence slows you down enough to notice things you would otherwise walk straight past.

Appearance — colour and depth, which say something about age and grape before you have smelled anything. Nose — the largest part of what people call taste, and the section worth the most time. Palate — fruit, acidity, tannin, body, sweetness. Finish — how long it lasts after swallowing, which is one of the more reliable markers of quality.

Write before you discuss

The single most useful discipline at a tasting.

Opinions in a group converge within about thirty seconds of somebody saying "blackcurrant", and after that nobody is describing the wine any more — they are agreeing. Writing your own note first gives you something that is actually yours, and comparing afterwards is more interesting for it.

Producer and vintage, not just the name

The commonest failure of a wine note is that you cannot buy the wine again.

A grape and a region are not enough — two producers in the same appellation make quite different wine, and the same producer's 2019 and 2021 can be a long way apart. Copy the label properly, including the vintage, and the note stays useful for years rather than for the evening.

The price field earns its place

Not for accounting. For calibrating yourself.

Over a year of notes, the price column tells you something genuinely useful about your own palate: which regions and styles give you the most for your money, and where you are paying for a name. Most people find the answer surprising and slightly cheaper than expected.

Your own words

Do not reach for the professional vocabulary if it does not come naturally. "Tastes like the smell of a garden centre" is a better note for you than "notes of wet earth and geranium", because you will recognise it when you read it back.

The stars matter more than the adjectives anyway. A year of rated, dated notes is a buying guide nobody else could write for you.