I think it’s a great idea to track all the wine you taste. Keeping ratings or notes isn’t a bad idea too. It not only allows you to keep a record of what you’re drinking, but also your likes and dislikes. You can use a wine app on your phone. You can also write in a journal, like this one that you can purchase from Wine Folly. The tasting journal from Wine Folly has one page per wine and is quite detailed. It's a good way for you to practice making detailed notes about the wines you taste.
While I’m pretty disciplined at tracking the wines I drink at home and in restaurants, I’ll admit that I haven’t been great at tracking the wines I’ve tasted during visits to wineries and tastings rooms. I know everywhere I’ve been, but can’t go in to details about the vintages and wines I’ve tried. On our last trip, in 2018, I planned to take notes. Epic fail. We were with friends, and we were having so much fun that I just didn’t think to stop everything to take notes. Let’s face it – I was on vacation – not traveling for a school or work assignment!
I downloaded several free apps to track wine: Cellar Tracker, Delectable, Hello Vino, and Vivino. I did not look at any paid apps so there may be other apps out there that are great. Out of these four, I selected Vivino as my favorite. Once installed, you sign up for a free account so you can store wines in the cloud database. To use the app, you take a photo of a wine label, and the available information about the wine loads including Winery, Wine Name, and Vintage. The listing also includes the star rating out of five as rated by Vivino users. In addition to rating the wine out of five stars, all users can write comments/reviews for other users to see. You can also access the wines you log by logging in to your account at www.vivino.com.
I now use Vivino to track every bottle we drink at home, as well as bottles we order in restaurants.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to use Vivino to track all the wines we try when visiting tasting rooms and wineries. I find it's often hard to take a clear photo of bottles during a tasting without being totally disruptive. I may stick to taking photos of the tasting menu as well as keeping notes in the QuickMemo+ app on my phone.
