How to Start a Wine Journal: Write Your First Useful Note

You remember liking a wine, but not which bottle it was or what you liked about it. A wine journal gives you a place to leave those details for a later occasion.

Start with one bottle you have already tried. You can write from memory; mark anything you cannot remember as unknown. You do not need to buy another bottle, arrange a tasting or learn a long list of technical terms to make your first entry.

What to put in your first wine note

Use these four prompts:

• Which wine was it? Copy the name from the label if you have it. Add the date or occasion. Include the vintage only if you know it.
• What did you notice? Write one aroma in your own words. “Apple,” “berries” or “I could not identify an aroma” are all possible observations.
• How did it feel? Pick one sensation you actually noticed, such as mouth-watering, drying or smooth. You can leave this blank.
• Did you enjoy it? Say what you liked or disliked and whether you would choose it again. A rating is optional; a reason is more useful than a number alone.

Your preference is not a quality grade. “I did not enjoy this” describes your response; it does not establish that the wine was poorly made. Keep what you noticed separate from what you expected to notice.

If you are tasting rather than writing from memory, WSET's introduction to tasting describes smelling before and after a gentle swirl. Its guide to building tasting skills explains that acidity makes the mouth water and tannin can feel drying. You do not have to identify either in every note.

A first entry, with an example

This is a fictional example, not a real bottle review or a customer's experience:

Wine: Example Vineyard Riesling, vintage unknown
Date and occasion: 6 October, dinner at home
Aroma: Reminded me of green apple
Feeling: Made my mouth water
Preference: I enjoyed the fresh feeling. I would choose it again with dinner.

That is enough to start. If you have a label photo, keep it with the note. If you do not, the name and occasion are still a useful place to begin. Avoid filling in grape, region or vintage from a guess.

The prompts and example above are our simple personal-note exercise, rather than a formal WSET assessment template. WSET's guidance describes notes as a way to remember differences between wines; it does not validate this particular exercise or endorse Vinoh.

Find the note when you have a reason to use it

On a later occasion, start with a question: “What was the wine I liked at dinner?” Open your saved entries and look for the name, date, occasion or photo you remember. Read your own preference before choosing again.

For the fictional entry, “dinner at home” could help you find the note, while “I enjoyed the fresh feeling” tells you why you kept it. You can do this without tasting anything new.

If the note does not answer your question, add one missing detail next time. If a paper notebook already works for you, keep using it. The point is having a record you can find and understand, not completing a daily streak.

Try a first note in Vinoh

We build Vinoh to help people remember wines and learn about them. Its core wine journal is free. When you have the bottle details requested by the form, you can add a wine manually and save your rating and tasting note; a paid learning subscription is not required for the journal.

Explore Vinoh's free wine journal. For manual entry, choose a bottle with the details requested in the form and add your observation in your own words. If details are missing, keep the first note on paper rather than inventing them. Reopen it when you next need to remember that wine.