Hasta La Ideas

I am a wine enthusiast (oh my, that sounds dorky). I subscribe to three wine magazines and listen to multiple wine podcasts per week (feel welcome to laugh). Some people like fixing up old cars or knitting or woodworking — I happen to like pairing the perfect bottle of wine with a well-crafted meal.

I’m not a wine collector, nor am I an alcoholic, I’m simply a wine consumer. I have never purchased a bottle of wine in a store that cost more than $50, and most of the wines I buy are under $20. I like to try new wines, and am interested in the background of a wine almost as much as the flavor.

A few years ago, my husband and I started keeping logs of the wines we tried. If we’re up for the task, we’ll steam the label off the bottle and rubber cement it to the page with our review. If we’re being lazy, we’ll just write the information down and sketch a picture of the label. Each wine gets its own page, and each page contains notes from both of us on flavor, vintage, and pairing. Our system is low-tech, but has been fun to put together. (We also have a separate notebook that I carry in my purse of wines we want to try and the notes we’ve collected about those wines.)

To make a low-tech wine notebook, I recommend hopping onto etsy and checking out their handmade notebooks. The one we are currently using is a laser etched notebook from Modofly (their store should be back up in the very near future).

Bay County Liquors in Maryland has an impressive roundup and review of online and computer software programs that are on the market for tracking the same information that we use in our low-tech notebooks. “Wine Log” and “Wine Snob” are two iPhone applications that track similar information. A benefit of using a digital program is that you can search the data much more easily than you can with a low-tech notebook.

If you’re also a wine enthusiast, check out the list of online and software programs that might suit your needs, download one of the iPhone applications, or consider starting a wine notebook. Any of the three systems will make sure that you never reorder a wine you dislike again!