I love wine tastings, particularly because I'm not an expert and comparing wines side-by-side gives me a better understanding of the different tastes, scents and nuances of each wine. Sometimes I jot down the flavors (green apple, blackberry, pepper) and smells (floral like a perfume, funky like the smell of sewage), and sometimes I just note whether I liked the wine (loved, ok, yuck). My notes are never meant for publication, they're just my own observations for future reference. I keep my tasting notes in a spiral-bound notebook, where I often tape smaller pieces of paper to the pages. Names of wines on restaurant stationary from when my husband and I loved a wine that we ordered with dinner, tasting notes from a vineyard we stopped at for a guided tasting, and menus from wine tasting classes that I've taken over the years. Sometimes I look back at my notebook for reference when trying to think of a great pairing for a dish I'm serving. But for me, looking through my wine notebook is more like looking through a photo album or scrapbook - I remember where I was for the tasting, who I was with, and how much fun we had (or didn't have - stuffy wine tastings make for good comedic memories).
When I host a wine tasting, I like to give everyone a printout to keep track of the tastings and pairings. Sometimes we fill them out, sometimes we don't. It often depends on how much we drink; we usually have comprehensive notes from the beginning of the tasting, and none from the wines we drank later on. Whether we use them extensively or not, wine tasting notes are fun to have on hand, and give everyone a chance to keep track of a favorite for future reference, or for their own scrapbook of wine tasting memories.
I hosted a wine and cheese tasting for my book club. We read a book called
Love by the Glass, which is the love story of the famed wine couple behind the
Wall Street Journal's weekly "Tastings
" column, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher. Inspired by the wine pairings in the book, I served 6 wines and paired them each with a cheese. I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to keep track of the flavors they tasted and which combinations they loved, so I made a printable tasting notes sheets for everyone at the party. I styled the party around simple green wine bottles with the labels removed, and mimicked the wine bottle theme on the top of the print-outs. For the tasting notes, I included columns for the name of the wine, the appearance, the nose (wine-speak for smell), the taste and a column for giving the wine a rating (i.e. loved, ok, yuck, or whatever scale anyone else chose to use). On the bottom of the sheet, I listed some wine tasting terminology suggestions, since the consumption of large quantities of wine is known to lead to diminished vocabulary. The free printable
Wine Tasting Notes Template is available as a PDF by clicking on the link, or click here for a customizable
word document. Be sure to provide plenty of pens, or buy a pack of
pre-sharpened half pencils (also called golf or pew pencils), and wrap them with washi tape if you really want to go crazy. Use this Wine Tasting Notes template for your next wine tasting party or as an activity for a Girl's night.
Check out the rest of the details from Stylish Spoon's
Wine & Cheese Tasting party, including the full menu, recipes and DIY decor details.
The free Wine Tasting Notes printable template was created by the Stylish Spoon is for personal use only; it cannot be reproduced for profit without permission. All rights reserved.
