Dear Diary...

I've started trying to keep tabs on the wines and spirits that I drink. Not because I worry I've a problem, but because I can never remember what I like.

You want the red

When presented with the vast armies of wines that I haven't tried, grapes that I'm ignorant of and wine producing nations I didn't know existed (I mean where on earth is Côtes du Rhône? Near France?), I traditionally select a bottle from the shelf using this patented approach:

1. Ignore everything that isn't Italian. Don't ask why, just do it! Hey presto and volia! (as the Italians say) You've suddenly reduced your pool of potential purchases down from all the wines produced in the world, to just those made in Italy. France? Shaddap your face!
2. Disregard all whites. That's not a racial statement, but the simple recognition that white wines are delicate little darlings, volatile little violets, that are not worth investing in. If you've gone to a wine store, you really want something you can club your dinner guests to death with, which a good red will most happily do. Unless you're serving fish.
3. Look at the labels. Do they make you laugh? Do they look expensive? Do they make you want to be the kind of person who would buy the kind of bottle with the kind of label which you just so happen to be looking at? Really at this stage, it's purely subjective, but if the label or any other aspect of wine's presentation offends your deeply held sense of aesthetics - discard it like a useless lover.
4. Pick your price. Excuse my hypocrisy here, but I am terrible at this. Decide that you want a wine between £5-£10 and don't budge! I used to go in for £5 bottles and come out with £10 bottles. Now I go in for £10 bottles and come out with £15 ones.

You are welcome to adapt this technique to suit your own vanities and vendors. 

You'll have noticed that while it is a largely scientific process - repeatable across infinite sets of wine - it has no sense of history. That is unless you have a good memory - you might wind up repeatedly buying the same terrible white which step 2 should have eliminated anyway so why don't you pay attention for once in your life or do I write these words for purely my own amusement? 

To solve the aforementioned issue of my limited memory (and your limited attention span) I bring to you The Wine Diary! Unfortunately not the wine dairy, which is still subject to that age old GM debate.

The notion is that upon finishing a bottle, you peel/rip the label off the bottle, stick it to something you can write on - like your monitor - and note down what you thought of it. That way you can learn that white wines are not worth buying and that actually you want the far more bolshy red wines with a hint of violence hidden beneath the tannins, by looking at your own notes.

In fact we can start right now! Copy this down 30 times: "I do not like white wine, I never have and all memories of enjoying white wine are purely delusions. I only like good strong red wine. I should see someone about those delusions"