Ok, at the risk of sounding dorky, I keep track of all wines we taste on my PDA. Well, correction, I USED to keep track. At first it was great, but then it got a bit old. (Probably about the time we did all the wedding wine tastings) Originally, in the pre-PDA days we kept a notebook. But when we got to around 100w wines, we realized did we really want to flip through tons of pages in a store to find if we liked a wine? So, it was enough to push me over to into the PDA world. Which, I do love it and I love the fact I have scores on all my wines.
Software-After much searching, I realized I didn’t care for really anything out there- not even the popular wine magazines had exactly what I wanted and it was $50+. So, we downloaded WineMate for free. It lets you enter scores as well as keep tabs on your cellar (using the term “Cellar” loosely-we have maybe 15 bottles we’re keeping for 2+ more years) Its not perfect, but it was free. It’s easily searchable by varietal, winery, region, etc and lets you sort those results by score as well. So if I want to know what my favorite Chardonnays I’ve ever had are, I can find out in a few strokes.
I have found its fairly easy to keep track of wines we have that we like (minus of course parties or tasting events) but its not so easy to remember if we didn't like something. I have found myself looking at a bottle, swearing we’ve had it, but not remembering if it was just “ok” or if we didn’t like it. So, I have renewed interesst in keeping mine up to date-we’re at about 400 tasting records and once I add in wine club shipments and the wedding wine tastings, we’ll probably be at around 450.
However, even my most planning and organized friend, Lucy, doesn’t keep hers up to date and most people I know still use notebooks if anything at all. So my question is this- do we really drink that much more wine than everyone or does everyone keep their detailed notekeeping a secret?? (or do people really keep all that information in their heads??)
4 comments:
While I don't update it daily, I do tend to go in and all at once update a month's worth of what we drank. And, of course, I keep mental note of what we liked and didn't. Let's just hope I keep my mental acuity into old age. If I start to slip, this method will never work.
Oh, that makes me feel better. In a given month, Terry and I probably drink 20+ wines, (in truth probably closer to 30). I guess I don't have quite the mental acuity you do, so I just can't keep track of it all, particularly if it was just "ok". I suppose the "ok" wines get lost among the schoolwork and what not. Just not a priority for my brain.
But I'm really trying to be better about it.
We probably drink 20-30 wines per month as well, but a lot of repeats. On weeknights, I tend to go with one of our "house" wines, that is repeated often, therefor, no need to keep track of it. I usually only track the new and noteworthy.
Mo-
We like our standbys, but we still try so much new stuff that I have to keep track of what we thought. During my note taking lapse, I really noted that I forgot what we had and just thought was "ok", so I'd buy it again and think it was "ok" again. Although I certainly acknowledge that I have nowhere near the memory Lucy has-do you know she can cite the location of all her wines in her cellar? (ie- the Imagery Petite Verdot is on the left side, 4th row over, about 8 down...that type of thing) Its amazing!
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