When you start to get serious about drinking wine, you should create a record of your experiences to help refine your palette. In this article, we take a look at the finer points of keeping a wine journal.
What is a wine journal? It is a booklet that is made specifically for wine drinking. It typically comes with a flip up page format. The top page provides you with a space to paste the label from the bottle you’ve tried. The bottom page provides you with space to keep notes regarding the flavors of the wine and your impressions. This bottom page usually provides reminder questions to help you keep accurate and comparable notes from one bottle to another.
The first step in keeping a wine journal is to note the circumstances of your experience. Are you at a winery, a wine tasting party or just relaxing at home? Keep notes on who is with you, the reason for the event and the reasons you’ve chosen the specific wine or wines for the event. Obviously, you’ll also need to write down the name of the wine, the year and any particulars regarding the vintage.
Now we get into the narrative. Your wine journal should contain a space for you to record your impressions. This is where you savor the wine. You should be able to note the strengths and weaknesses of the wine. Perhaps the tannins are too much or perhaps they are not enough. There isn’t any absolute that must be recorded, just your impressions. You want to keep enough detail that you’ll be able to understand what you meant when you look back, but you don’t really need to write a novel!
The last step in keeping a wine journal is dealing with the label on the bottle. The names of wines can be surprisingly similar to one another, so it is always best to simply remove the label and post it in your journal with the notes. This is done by soaking the empty bottle in warm water. The label is glued to the bottle and the glue liquefies in the warm water. Give it five to ten minutes and it should slide off the bottle. Next, just position and press the label in your journal. The original glue should solidify and stick as it cools down.
There isn’t really a right or wrong way to keep a wine journal. The purpose is to create a record of your impressions that you can use as a reference. As long as your entries meet that requirement, you’ve fulfilled the purpose of the wine journal.
Thomas Ajava is with NomadJournals.com - find a leather wine journal to keep a record of you wine tasting experiences. Perfect for wine tasting parties.
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