How to Make a Killer Wine Journal – Cheap!
If you love wine you’ve probably at least glanced at the fancy wine journals you can buy from the likes of Wine Enthusiast and elsewhere. They let you scrawl a few tasting notes and scrapbook labels into a central repository that you can file away and look up the next time you want to know what you thought of a particular wine.
Much of this functionality is now replicated with a bunch of the new wine sites online, but for me there is something very attractive about having a tangible thing in my hand. Ephemera, a physical token of an experience – whatever you want to call it – just appeals to me.
The thing is every journal I’ve ever seen has been so unbelievably overpriced and downright fugly that I just never bothered. I don’t want some overly-serious leather bound tome with flowery script on the cover – or worse – some lame still life of a wine bottle or a vine peering back at me every time I decide to do a little scribbling. Yet at the same time a plain old spiral bound notebook didn’t seem to fit the bill either. I’m a Mac user after all, and I want my tools to be beautiful as well as practical.
Enter the Moleskine. Pronounced either Mole-skin, Mole-skeen, or Mol-uh-skeen-uh, the little black notebooks were the Macbooks of the early 20th century. Originally available only from Parisian stationery shops, Hemingway used them to write the rough draft of the Sun Also Rises while dining at various cafes around the city. Van Gogh used them to doodle and sketch what later became “Sunflowers”, and Picasso and Matisse dabbled with them as well.
And now you can use one as your wine journal since they fit the bill perfectly. The best model I’ve found for wine journaling is the Large Sketchbook. It’s 5 1/4″ by 8 1/4″, with 100 blank archival quality pages and a killer little page-sized folder in the very back to hold wine label removers. It comes with a cloth bookmark and convenient band that wraps around the opening to secure any loose items you might keep in it as well. Plus it just looks cool.
Best of all Moleskines are pretty cheap, especially when you consider that they have a HUGE aesthetic advantage over every other wine journal out there. They generally run 15 bucks per, with small discounts for larger orders online. You can also run down to Barnes and Noble and grab one there.
But if you are a serious journaler and want to buy in bulk, where you can save some really major cash is on wine label removers. Without exception, all retail wine label removers are insanely – ludicrously – overpriced for what they are – basically some mylar and a bit of stickum. You can buy a box of of the 4×6 ScotchPads, which normally sell for as much as $23 per 25 sheets, at R.S. Hughes for only $56 plus shipping for 1000 sheets. That’s a buck eighty (with shipping included) for 25 sheets, a savings of something like one million percent. Score!
Put it all together and you’ve got a first class wine journal for cheap. Let me know in the comments if you give it a try. We might offer them in our tasting room at some point, and the feedback would be really valuable.
Finally a quick tip: don’t just write about what the wine tasted like, which can get mind numbingly stale. Instead write about the circumstances that surrounded you drinking it. It’ll make going back through and reading about the juice you’ve tasted much more enjoyable.
18 Comments → “How to Make a Killer Wine Journal – Cheap!”
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[...] Russian River Valley.” Diverging from the stated theme theme, Josh wrote a post today titled “How to Make a Killer Wine Journal – Cheap!” This is one of many posts by him that fit our readers and club [...]
- - 4 years ago
[...] How to Make a Killer Wine Journal – Cheap!Put it all together and you’ve got a first class wine journal for cheap. Let me know in the comments if you give it a try. We might offer them in our tasting room at some point, and the feedback [...]
- - 4 years ago
[...] How to Make a Killer Wine Journal – Cheap!Put it all together and you?ve got a first class wine journal for cheap. Let me know in the comments if you give it a try. We might offer them in our … [...]
- - 3 years ago
[...] The wine journal provides a savvy way to retain those beautiful labels and remind us which bottles we have tasted before. Several Google searches found that someone else had had the same concept – for more tips on wine journaling, check out PinotBlogger. [...]
Can you email me a description of how you use the 4 X 6 scotch pads? I’m assuming that you still have to soak the bottle, then lift the label. Do you put the adhesive pad over the label to help remove it? Or just use it to affix the label to your notebook page? If the latter, there is info during the past year on Moleskinerie re: using wide packing tape for this purpose.
Don’t forget the pocket digital camera for taking pictures of labels that are not removable – the baked on variety. Nice post – the last paragraph being the best advice!
Sure thing Shirley. Email is on its way.
For anyone else wondering, you don’t need to soak the label. Just apply the scotchpad to the label and then, using the back of a spoon or some other hard surface, rub all over the scotchpad so that it adheres well to the label. It takes about a full minute of rubbing to assure that you won’t rip the label.
Then all you have to do is remove the scotchpad and the label will come right off with it. It will leave behind a white mark the same size as the label on the wine bottle where the stickum was, but the layer of the paper label holding the ink will be safely transferred to the scotchpad.
El Jefe – Good tip! There are plenty of fantastic wines like Twisted Oak that have baked on labels and a digital camera is a good way to do it.
Great job, Pinotblogger! I responded to your post at my site, http:www.awinestory.com and added some ideas of my own.
Hah! Have been using Moleskin’s for years. They’re great and fit in a pocket. It’s always funny going winetasting and taking notes… everyone thinks you’re a wine writer.
Where is a great store to pick up those 4 x 6 scotch pads?
I’ve tried Office Depot, Staples, etc…all with no luck
I finally got the scotch pads. This method is good.
If you do it this way, I advise running the wine label under luke warm water for a few seconds before applying the scotch pad. It makes the process that much more effortless, particularly for those stubborn wine labels.
However, I do believe that taking a digital pic of the label is the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing way to do this. Don’t just use this method as an alternative for baked on labels, use it for everything. What you will essentially create is a wine photo album. Even if you are an avid wine drinker who goes through four or five bottles a week, it only costs 27 cent to develop a 4 x 6 photo of the label. Furthermore, since you are taking a photo you have the liberty of getting very creative with your presentation.
Glad to have found this post. Great piece of advice here for anyone keen to start a wine journal. With the easy access to video cameras and the internet, wonder how a digital version wine journal will look like.
Are the ScotchPads acid-free? In other words, are they scrapbook quality?
Save some paper and create a free wine diary at CorkSavvy.com. You can snap a photo of the label and email it directly to your account.
I made my wine journal today, as previously recommended, with great results. The book is hand-made and of high quality and the heavy pages are perfect for adhering labels. I am using self-sealing laminating sheets, which can be purchased at any office supply store. I paid $25.00 for fifty letter-size sheets, yielding 200 laminations for an average sized wine label. I had a two-part wine label which required it to be larger. It’s nice to have the flexibility of making them larger when necessary. Thanks for the fantastic ideas.
That is a very cool idea – I always thought that keeping a wine journal adds to the fun and helps me focus on the smells and tastes. I use to keep all my notes on a spreadsheet, then a Windows mobile phone and finally on the iPhone with Wine Pad. A physical book though is pretty classy.
There is nothing OK about plastic at any price, just wrong. Learn to free your labels using The Note, an Old-World stye tool that’ll last you forever, and ever. And it beautiful. Trust me, I’ve liberated thousands…and in an much more “honorable” way than…plastique! Love thy label.
“Honor the Wine. Savor the Memories!” Just hitting NYC this holiday season, see us at Morrell One Rock Plaza on 11/28, but soon in a city near you…or available online at HinckleyCellars.com. Or see our awesome write-up in Wine Spectator Oct 31, 2008.
What are scotch pads and where do you get them?