How I Take Notes - by Ted Gioia - The Honest Broker

When I was a college student, I had to compete in a wine-tasting contest. But I was at a total disadvantage. Upgrade to paid I hadn’t even reached legal drinking age, and knew almost nothing about wine—but that was only a small part of the problem. Even worse, the other participants had tasted these same wines the previous week, but I hadn’t been there. And now we all had to identify the same vintages in a blind test. So I had no chance of winning the contest—I’d merely be guessing. But at the last minute, one of the other contestants gave me his tasting notes from the previous session. He had written down his subjective impressions of each wine. “Maybe you can identify the wines based on my descriptions,” he suggested. I laughed at this notion. But then I looked at his notes, which were richly detailed and even brutally poetic. They were something along the lines of: This blustery white smells like the back room at the local dry cleaning shop. I keep hoping for even a hint of sweetnes

When I was a college student, I had to compete in a wine-tasting contest. But I was at a total disadvantage. Upgrade to paid I hadn’t even reached legal drinking age, and knew almost nothing about wine—but that was only a small part of the problem. Even worse, the other participants had tasted these same wines the previous week, but I hadn’t been there. And now we all had to identify the same vintages in a blind test. So I had no chance of winning the contest—I’d merely be guessing. But at the last minute, one of the other contestants gave me his tasting notes from the previous session. He had