I have been keeping basic tasting notes for about seven years now, nothing extravagant just brief descriptions, vintage, place of purchase and a star rating based on 5 stars.

At first I made a template in Word, then I moved everything into Excel. I find excel to be very good, I can add label images, store notes by country and region and the search facility works well too. In fact, excel will do just about anything that the 'paid-for' programmes do.

Do you keep notes? What do you use? Do you know of any free tasting-note programmes that can be downloaded?

I have a very simple Excel spreadsheet. On the way home from tastings I type my notes into a very wobbly Psion which is getting worryingly temperamental. I then plug it into the PC and if often transfers across the details.

I'm an hour and a half from London on the train and if I really motor I can get about 90 notes typed up. It rarely happens because at certain times the train goes very fast, in a clicky-clacky way, and it's impossible to type without making time-consuming typos. Also the keyboard is a bit small. Am looking at small laptops, but they're too expensive on my student income.

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mel

I use CellarTracker. It is utterly brilliant, online and free. You can upload and download to Excel.

The major chore with recording wine details is entering the name/appellation details. But CellarTracker has more than 5 million bottles in its database and virtually any wine you want to add already has the details there.

The reporting is excellent, as is the support. Fully recommended. Just note that a lot of its strengths aren't apperent till you start to use it. Any problems or questions, use the associated forum

www.cellartracker.com