I’m just wondering what everyone thinks about taking tasting notes.
Do you take them? Always?
Why do you take them?
Do you think taking notes adds or detracts (or both) from the enjoyment you get from wine?
Personally, I love reading tasting notes (I read most of the notes posted here for a number of reasons). I am not good at taking notes, though. One of the reasons I don’t take notes often is because it detracts from the experience for me (most of the time). I really like enjoying wine with friends, my wife, a meal, etc. and just drinking it without thinking about it, anaylzing it, or making judgments. Taking notes, or notes that are worth anything at all, takes some level of effort beyond just pure enjoyment.
If I am sent a bottle to review, I obviously take notes and do so as well and as carefully as I can. However, I also drink the wine differently in this type of situation.
I write to help remind me of how much I enjoyed a wine, how it was developing, and to ensure I remove it from CT!
I share in case it’s also of use/interest to others, and might provoke discussion.
That is a great point about setting. If drinking or eating with friends, there is no way I would get pen and paper out to write notes, unless it was organised as a wine tasting. Even offlines can be difficult, as conversation, food, and a steady flow of wines can make it awkward.
I have also got out of the habit of taking notes, partly down to starting a weekly tn thread elsewhere, which I found myself feeling I always had to write tns for as I was asking others to do so as well. In the end I recognised I needed a break from it, as it had become a bit of a chore.
Which brings me neatly back to the original comment, that it is mostly about writing for yourself.
Regards
Ian
Also discussion about a wine is notorious for influencing what you write, such that pros and people taking it seriously will take notes in silence before discussing the wines.
I take them for a number of reasons, the most basic being that its fun and to document a wine at a given point in time for my information and others’. I find them useful to compare with others’ notes on a particular wine to help tune my own palate and think its interesting to look back at my notes over time and see how my observations and preferences have changed.
I agree with you though, I take formal notes when appropriate. If I’m at dinner with my wife and the focus is on enjoyment I’ll hold off until when I get home or the following day. I find the voice memo or notes features on my phone very useful for this situation. I do get strange looks from her if I’m recording tasting notes into my phone though.
Very rarely. I used to write them much more often, though never for every bottle opened.
I came to realize that I wasn’t very good at writing them and that I really had to concentrate way too hard in order to compose decent notes. The concentration required detracted from my enjoyment to the point that I stopped the note-writing process.
I’ve never looked back although I do sometimes regret that I’m not contributing more to this board as a result.
I started writing TN because I got involved with Brian Grafstom and a few others that wrote notes at events. I wanted to learn how to do it so Brian said “take that pen and start writing.” That group, the OC Poker 4 Wine gang, were firm believers in tasting blind and that had a big influence. No label hunters in this crowd, they’d call a wine out even if it was the bottle they brought. I thought that was great.
Literally, I would copy from Brian to practice and always looking for help on descriptors from anyone willing to assist. One of my favorite people to write TN with was Cris Wetstone, maybe 3 or 4 times. His palate was totally different than mine but he made me stretch and like Brian has a vast knowledge of wine.
I only write notes because I enjoy doing it, if it wasn’t fun I wouldn’t do it. If other people get value out of it then a bonus.
I rarely write tasting notes. Analyzing sense impressions doesn’t come naturally to me, so it feels forced. On the other hand, I do wish I had a better record of what I’ve enjoyed and disliked over time. I think my cellar, such as it is, would look different if I was more rigorous about identifying and pursuing the wines I’ve enjoyed the most.
Don’t do many any more. Good reason … I am mostly drinking the same wines from the same 20 wineries year after year.
wines are not always the same but after 40 years of wine, I’ve settled on those wines that we always like and we have no desire to expand our universe beyond those producers.
Don’t need a tasting note to tell me about Scherrer Zin OMV 2006 verses 2007. I"ve got 'em and I’ll drink 'em.
Don’t think this puts us in a rut. Bedrock, R-M, Scherrer and Carlisle probably make 60+ wines of all stripes in a year. And, the iterations of each wine vary year after year.
Now, if I was 35 and just starting out, I’d be sampling a multitude of wines to gauge my likes and dislikes before arriving at a program. And, tasting notes would help me to hone my likes and remind me why I didn’t like others.
I’ve tried and I just can’t do it. Like others have said, it detracts from my enjoyment of the wine. I may make short private notes on CT to remind me to buy more of something or avoid it, but that’s about as far as I go.
I take them on every wine. I really enjoy looking at wines I had five years ago and said what five years and see the improvement of the experience. I think it helps me make better buying decisions vintage to vintage so thank you Eric for Cellar Tracker.
I’m hit or miss, probably take notes less than half the time. I’ll rarely note a bottle a second time, unless the observations of the second bottle were markedly different than the first.
For me, I “take notes” rarely. I’ll “write notes” on CT often. If it’s a wine that was consumed sometime earlier, the note will start with “no detailed notes taken - but here’s my thumbnail impressions”. If I have a glass left over, and have the time, I’ll type up something more detailed while I’m drinking it.
For the most part, I write these notes for myself. I used to try to write notes with a general audience in mind, but found it to be a lot of effort trying to parse individual components of nose and palate. My evolution on writing CT notes has gone from general to specific and landing now somewhere in between. I’ve found there’s consistently a handful of variables I care about in a wine and generally stick to summarizing against those with a finite list of descriptors. That’s about all I need to remember the wine and slot any bottles for future consumption.
Occasionally I’ll get more verbose and detailed if a) it’s a new wine / release that few have yet commented on, b) a wine that strikes me as special or unique, or c) a really crappy wine that gets my dander up.
For some wines, where a number of bottles are consumed over a short period of time (e.g this season’s roses) with similar results, I’ll generally only document the first one and any outliers.
I rarely publish CT notes to WB, because for most stuff, it seems redundant to me. The major exception is for new releases where I might be the first idiot to “Pobega” a bottle.
Nope. When I first got into wine, if I encountered something I really liked I would soak the label off the bottle and stick it in a notebook along with a few impressions; that was always at least a day or two later. Labels are such a pain to remove these days that I haven’t bothered in years.
I use CellerTracker to monitor my cellar and write notes to myself regarding wine quality/aging. About 20% of the time this will lead to a significant note.
I write them if I’m on some kind of business trip to look for wine. Tasting a hundred or so at a time, it’s hard to remember which ones I liked. Also at huge tastings sponsored by some trade group and for the same reason. Short impressions only to remind me what to look for later.
At my tasting group, always, because that’s the point of the group. It’s always blind and the idea is to see if I actually know anything about what I’m drinking.
The point in both cases isn’t to consume but just to evaluate. So those are cases when the entire point is to record some impressions. But they’re quick and I would neither post them anywhere or want to read the TNs of others at those events. I may write about overall impressions but I’m not interested in posting thousands of quick sip and spit TNs anywhere.
At home I write them about wines I’m drinking over an evening if I’m alone. Again, for myself.
At dinner I rarely if ever do it.
I don’t write notes about the food we’re having either, which frankly, would make more sense because you can act on those. You can actually do something - recreate it or tweak it.
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