Most wine notes fail as reference systems because they capture the impression and discard the provenance. A rating of 7 out of 10 for a Sangiovese-based wine from "somewhere in Tuscany" tells you almost nothing useful when you're standing in a wine shop eight months later trying to remember whether it was worth rebuying.
The Wine Notes template addresses this by treating every entry as a research record rather than a tasting diary entry — capturing not just what you thought but exactly what it was, where it came from, and how confident you are in that information.
What the Provenance Chain Captures
Producer and Wine Name are the top-level identifiers. Type — Red, White, Rosé, Sparkling, Port — is the basic category that allows sorting and filtering by style.
The varietal structure separates Primary and Secondary Varietals as two distinct multichoice fields, each offering 39 options covering the range from Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir through Nebbiolo, Mourvedré, Grüner Veltliner, Arneis, and Piedirosso. The separation matters. A wine labeled as Sangiovese on the front label with 15% Merlot in the blend is a different animal than a pure Sangiovese, and the difference is often the key to understanding why a wine from the same region tasted completely different on two occasions.
Country plus Region plus Detailed Location creates the geographic precision layer. Italy as country, Campania as region, Taurasi DOCG as detailed location identifies the wine's terroir with the specificity needed to understand it in context — the volcanic soils, the Aglianico grape, the required aging minimums. A record that just says "Italy, Aglianico, Good" is not the same kind of reference.
The How Many Times Drank Field Is the Honest One
The consumption history field runs from Never (wines on a wishlist that haven't been tried) through Just a tasting, Once or Twice, and up to Lots. The "Never" category is the one that makes this a forward-looking tool as well as a retrospective log.
A wine marked "I Want This Now" with Never consumption is a wishlist entry. It might be a reference from a sommelier, a recommendation from a friend, a bottle seen in a shop that was too expensive that day. The References From Others field holds that external context — who recommended it and what they said. When you finally try it, the record is already there, and you're adding your own tasting notes to an existing entry rather than starting from nothing.
My Rating uses a nine-level qualitative scale — Lousy through Great — instead of a numeric 100-point score. The distinction is deliberate: a 91-point Parker score for a Nebbiolo from Langhe is precise in a way that's easy to read as objective. "Very Good" or "Great" is explicitly your own subjective response, which is actually the more honest and useful reference point when you're deciding what to open for dinner.
Price Range bands the acquisition cost without requiring a specific dollar amount — useful for wines where you no longer remember exactly what you paid, where the price varies by retailer, or where recording an exact figure feels unnecessarily precise for a personal journal. The combination of Rating and Price Range creates the value assessment: a wine rated Very Good at $15-$20 is a different kind of find than the same rating at $35-$50.
Where and When I Got It anchors the record geographically and temporally — the wine shop on vacation in the Finger Lakes, the restaurant where it was on the list at an irrational by-the-glass markup, the winery direct purchase on a weekend trip. That context is the difference between "I should find this again" and "I can actually find this again."