Wine tasting notes with Evernote

In 2013 – Resolve to take wine tasting notes

Here we are in 2013, the start of a new wine year. If you did not make a New Year’s wine resolution I have one to propose: Start taking wine tasting notes. I believe it is one of the best ways to improve your wine knowledge and wine tasting skills.

I may have just discovered the ideal tool for keeping all your wine tasting notes within easy reach. It is called Evernote. I got a new iPad Mini for Christmas and I downloaded the Evernote App and started to test it for taking my wine notes. I think for me it just might be the perfect method for keeping track of the wines I buy, taste, and recommend on GoodCheapVino. It enables one to store notes from all your tech devices in what I am now officially calling the “Wine Cloud.”

Here is how Evernote works.
First, go to the Evernote Website or your App store and download the free Evernote app to your desktop computer, smartphone, and/or tablet. Once you open Evernote, you must register for a free account. Once done, all your devices with Evernote are synchronized. Evernote enables you to have several different “notebooks.” I started one strictly for wine tasting and I also have “notebooks” for tracking expenses, for logging my exercise and running, and for storing recipes.

If you add a note with your smartphone while at a wine shop, it will be there when you get home on your desktop computer. All your notes are saved in the “Wine Cloud” and you can retrieve your notes wherever you are.

My Wine Tasting Notes
The first thing I do with Evernote is take a photo of the wine I am tasting. Using my smartphone or my iPad Mini, I click on the camera icon on Evernote and shoot the photo. It puts the photo on my note page for that particular wine. Next I click on the microphone icon and begin my description of the wine. I can enter text, of course, but right now recording my notes seems like the way to go. I can also go to the winery’s Website and clip the spec sheet from their Web page on how that particular wine was made and then save it to my note page. You can also share your notes with your friends if you wish. Perhaps somewhere down the road, we can share notes among readers of GoodCheapVino. We shall see. I’m still learning all that Evernote can do, but so far I find it quite handy, very easy to use and a lot of fun.

I pulled down this one-minute video from the Evernote Website so you can see it how it works in one easy introductory lesson. If you don’t see the video, click on the title to view.

Intro to Evernote

Next week I will post an article on the characteristics of a wine that you should be analyzing and writing down when tasting wine.