Customer Reviews

Wine Tasting Notebook

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Twelve years ago I started drinking wine seriously, at first on the advice of a doctor, but soon just for the joy of the endeavor. Several wine lovers taught me that keeping good tasting notes is a great way to learn about wine very quickly. Steve De Long has put together a very handy notebook that will teach you how to do just that.

The first section consists of 60 forms to help guide you in writing notes on your first 60 wines. I've posted a copy of the form in the first Comment, and De Long urges you "PLEASE SHARE: Download more forms as well as instructions from from the [De Long website], print out as many as you like, email to your friends or purchase De Long's Wine Tasting Notebook."

The second section shows you how to fill out the form for the wines you taste, and the third section teaches you the meanings of 216 commonly used wine tasting words and phrases. The notebook lies flat for easy use, the paper takes a great impression from either pen or pencil, the Notebook looks elegant, and it fits easily in your pocket or purse.

Robin Garr, web master of the fact filled "Wine Lovers Page" and author of The 30 Second Wine Advisor: Learn about wine in 30-second tastes -- quick, easy & fun wrote an excellent essay about the value of keeping wine tasting notes:

"But here's a serious point: Anyone who enjoys wine enough to take it up as a hobby - which in my mind is really what being a wine "geek" is all about - is well advised to adopt early the habit of keeping a TN notebook. Make it a practice to jot down some kind of a note - it doesn't have to be fancy, but put down at least the name of the wine and a comment ("Great juice!" may be sufficient). At the end of a year, you'll have a book full of notes, and it can be very helpful to go back and jog your memory - when you try a new wine from the same region, or of the same grape variety, or the next year's vintage - it helps you build a "palate memory" that will strengthen your tasting skills.

Over the years I've written over 50,000 wine tasting notes. My experience in writing them convince me that both the Tasting Notebook and the De Long's De Long's Wine Grape Varietal Table are great resources for learning more about wine.

Robert C. Ross 2008

I've taught wine appreciation for several years and have a reasonably successful wine education podcast. I've urged students to take notes about the wines they try because it helps the learning process. There are any number of ways to do this, but many students find it helpful to have a pre-printed form to guide them.

I discovered the DeLong Wine Tasting Note form some time ago and it immediately became my top choice. I've passed it out to students, used it in my own tasting group, and more. The form is just about perfect, and I'm a huge fan. Not only is it pre-printed, it offers you choices that you can circle (e.g. color: youthful, some age, aged). I use these forms all the time. I may not be a beginner, but I really like having a uniform way to write notes and descriptions for wines.

I didn't know it at the time I acquired this notebook, but the pages inside are the tasting note form I rave about. This alone makes the notebook a perfect tool for the wine student--whether beginner, advanced, or expert.

What makes this notebook a solid winner is its inserts. There are two copies (at least in mine) of a quarter-folded page with information on both sides. One side contains a version of a wine aroma wheel, broken down by category (e.g. tree fruits, citrus fruits) with examples (e.g. apple) and wines that commonly feature the aroma (e.g. Riesling). The other side features a detailed explanation of how to taste wine and use the tasting note form in a meaningful way. The fact that these pages are sort of laminated yet take up very little space is the icing on the cake.

Right now, I cannot imagine using any other tasting notebook, and I would call it a "required text" for any wine appreciation course.

This little book packs so much information in such a small space. And the tasting chart is very comprehensive, almost better then the wine wheel. Yes, you could do all that this book holds on your own, in your own notebook, but it's all here, EVERYTHING you need, in one spot. Love it. Got one as a gift for a wine lover too.

The first part of this little book is a discussion of wine tasting linked to the forms that make up the bulk of the book. While the discussion is intersting and may be useful to someone with very little knowledge of wine, there are other, better books for the purpose of helping a wine drinker learn to taste and appreciate.

The bulk of the book is made up of blank tasting forms. These forms are among the best that I've seen to help a wine drinker really reflect on and capture thoughts on a particular wine. In terms of the layout of the forms and the information presented (or requested), this book succeeds admirably. However, I have to question the practicaility of the book. While these forms may work for a wine tasting in the home, how many people are going to carry the form with them, let alone carry the whole book? As we've moved to more digital-based lives (hello, iPhone), I'm afraid that carrying a wine-tasting form or a book of forms may be a bit ... um ... 20th Century? That said, if these forms were offered in an iPhone application, I would probably be very quick to buy that app.

Finally, at the end of the book are a series of simple tasting terms broken down by large categories and with references to wine to which the terms might apply. At first, I sort of brushed these pages aside, but upon greater reflection, I realized that they are a very important part of the book and can be very useful to help a wine drinker begin to accumulate a vocabulary to use to describe wines. These pages are a sort of underappreciated gem hidden in the back of the book.

So, while I think highly of the forms and the tasting terms (less so the introduction), I'm just not sure that in the era of smartphones this book is terribly practical. I'd rate the forms themselves and the tasting terms with 5 stars, but the difficulty in actually "using" the book forces me to subtract from this rating. If you only want to taste wines at home or don't mind carrying this small book with you, then this book might be a good purchase. If you're new to wine and don't mind carrying the book, then this may be an absolute "must buy".

Five years ago, I knew very little about wine. Red or white, that is about the extent of what I knew. Today, I run a woman's wine and dine group based out of Baltimore. I don't have enough good things to say about the DeLong products, particularly this wine tasting notebook.

This tasting notebook does a great job of first explaining the components of the tasting. First the color hue, depth and clarity. Next, the aroma. Taste is broken down into dryness/sweetness, body, acidity, tannins, flavor intensity and finish. The notebook also provides space for info about food pairings. Not only can a wise wine lover appreciate the depth of this wine tasting notebook, but it gives wine novices a chance to learn why they really love or hate a wine.

I have taken this wine notebook with me on several wine tasting trips and every time, people ask me how they can buy one.

The real treat? A wonderful, color, pull-out of wine tasting terms. For example, what does it mean when someone describes a wine as floral? What does it mean if a wine is corked? I heard someone describe the terroir. What on "earth" is that? The bottom line: This wine tasting notebook is a wonderful steal and provides amazing insight into wine tasting terms that you hear being used every day.

You won't be disappointed by this wine tasting notebook. Buy one (or ten) for yourself or as gifts. Not only will it take your wine tasting to the next level, it will make everyone envious of you and everything you know about tastings.

Cheers,

Danielle R.

Background: I am a winemaker for a boutique winery and I sell wines for a small California wine & spirit distributor.

Overall:
The book is very well thoughtout, excellent layout and a solid binding. The book is an excellent way for a person to learn how to evaluate wine into many critical areas. The methodology is simpler than the WSET wine evaluation method but is quite servicable especially if you do not do tastings everyday.

The forward to the tasting note section is helpful and informatative.

Wine note section: Each page will hold one tasting notes. So, if you do a lot of tasting, you will need many of these books -- a drawback. I would like to see small binder format that I could add replacement pages as needed. I would like to see the food pairing section have a bit more space to take notes in.

Summary:
This is a very good book to keep tasting notes in as well as learn about critical components to think about when evaluating wine.

I've seen countless wine tasting journals and notebooks on the market over the years, but this one beats them all. I'm constantly taking notes about the wines I try and for lack of anything better, have always kept the notes in small spiral-bound books...small enough that they'd fit in my purse so they could come anywhere with me. What makes this notebook so different and so much better is that it simplifies the note taking process. I no longer have to start my notes with "brick red color, thin rim, tight nose, etc." because this has all the basic categories covered...you just need to circle the right one. For example, under "Color Hue" for white wines it has the following options: greenish, yellow, straw yellow, gold and amber. I can just mark one of those instead of having to write it all down. The same is true for the rest of these categories, which all come with options: Color Depth, Clarity, Aroma Intensity, Development, Dry/Sweet, Body, Acidity, Tannins, Flavor Intensity, Finish. In addition, it leaves room for you to take notes on specific aromas and flavors you detect. Not sure what it is you detect? The book has a big pull-out list of characteristics in the back, so you can figure out if that scent is perhaps vegetal (like asparagus) or maybe floral (like violets). And for the newbie wine enthusiasts, there's an entire introduction dedicated to explaining how best to take wine-tasting notes. This thing has it all! Period.

Excellent approach to taste notes in a simple and very comprehensive way, Plus the aroma guide that definitely is a must have.

This little book is perfect! Not only is it compact, but it gets through all the typical 'wine-rating-babble' that most guides fill up 200+ pages with. In a brief fold-out guide, it easily explains how you can rate wines in a way that will help you remember if you actually liked them or not. Terrific. I wish it was an iPhone app!

I bought this for a friend of mine and he loved it! Not only does it have great guidelines and charts wine varieties, but also about how to properly take notes about wines. The multitude of the book is just for note-taking. Also, the small size and simple cover(black with the words, "WINE NOTES") makes it easy to carry around without attracting too much attention.