What is your preferred way of documenting your tasting notes

In a wine journal? On a PC? On a software program?

I like to catalogue my notes by hand in a custom journal. The reasons are two-fold:

A) The pure fun and romance of it.
B) I like having a tangible reference of my wine experiences that I can physically hold or leaf through - kind of like a scrapbook.

Having said that, I also "backup" my hand-written notes by adding them to Excel, where they can be catalogued and searched under any type of criteria or descriptor.

Jeff

Most of my notes are written in a little black notebook. I'm on my fifth so far. The only backup is on this and another forum. On CT, I post notes only on wines from my own cellar.

I've always written on paper, in various notebooks over the years. The big downside is that they can get ripped or damaged (and take up a lot of space) but it's much more convenient for me to write on paper while drinking wine at home than to worry about getting to my computer to type. And there is no way I will take the time to later transfer them to a computer. Such is life.

For home consumption, I keep a pad in kitchen and make notes just after dinner. I keep a doc called Notes on Google Drive (so I can access from home.office, or phone) to type up in batches (with my disclaimer on bottom). I try to write up within a day or two as my scribbles are atrocious.
At offlines, I try to make notes contemporaneously. Then enter following dates in my Notes doc.

Once my diary style notes are written, I post here and AFW (if from an offline with folks who post at Berserkers, I post there as well to troll for disagreement). This gives me search options (I can search for wine, or to discover what we served when Salil came to dinner, etc). My disclaimer helps limit noise in searches (I can search for Lapierre AND objectivity to find my notes).

I post to CT for wines that I have entered there, but not for most "everyday" wines or wines others bring to offlines.

We keep on the WP on a file called Wine History.

I used a couple of wine journals when I was getting into wine, then started just typing/saving impressions in word - and then came across the genius that is CellarTracker. Now just about everything goes in there, whether or not it's something inexpensive, writeup from a high end dinner, something I plan on posting here or just keeping for my reference...

I've been jotting notes in little spiral-bound notebooks for several decades now and have a collection of them archived in various states of decay Since migrating my cellar to CellarTracker, I now make a point of entering my notes there, too, as part of removing wines from the database.

Mark Lipton

[David M. Bueker]

100% of what I actually write up ends up here. Some ends up in CT and on Berserkers.

Initial notes taken on a PDA (remember those?), or laptop if at home. Tidied up on a PC or laptop as structured text with consistent use of new lines and separators. All in plain text files so far. Then imported "automatically" into a MySQL database on my PC, where it is searchable with a program I wrote myself. Exported from the database and imported to another one that is searchable online - also works as a backup. If I publish notes elsewhere, they are taken from my database and tarted up a little.

It's a lot simpler in practice than it sounds. In particular, I think an old PDA with stylus is a great way of taking notes. At walk-around tastings, it's even possible to hold it and an ISO in my left hand, while tapping the keyboard with my right.

Eventually all make it onto CT. Some go straight there, but if visiting a wine region, I'll make notes in a pocket notebook and then write up later.

CT for me!