A Year of Nights, Counted in Bottles — A Year-End Wine Inventory to See How Your Taste Changed

You drank a fair amount of wine this year, but you have no idea how your taste changed. This article is for you.

Can you name the single best bottle you drank this year, right now, without thinking?

• "There must have been some great wines, but I can't recall the names or where they came from"
• "I don't know whether my taste has changed compared with last year"
• "I kept records, but I never once looked back at them"

Forgetting is not a failure of your memory. You simply never had an occasion to look back.

The point: line up a full year of records and compare them, and you can read your own change in taste yourself. All you do is tally the bottles, the stars (your private rating notes) and the Hints (tap-to-save flavor impressions), then compare the first half of the year with the second.

This year, the timing is on your side, too. Beaujolais Nouveau is released on Thursday, November 19. Finish your inventory before the release, and you can pull up last year's Beaujolais from your records and taste it against this year's new wine — a side-by-side comparison that is yours alone.

Why a year-end inventory reveals how your taste changed

The memory of a flavor rarely survives in a single bottle. The feeling of "that was good" stays, but what exactly was good about it blurs with time.

Line the records up, though, and the story changes. Compare what you drank in the first half of the year with the second half, and shifts appear in plain sight: "I used to drink nothing but heavy reds, but whites have been creeping in since autumn," or "the lineup of my 5-star bottles looks completely different."

Taste is not something you dig up by trying to remember. It is something that surfaces when you compare. This is the same idea behind the taste-type diagnosis that reads your palate from just 5 bottles — the inventory is its "full-year edition."

→ Haven't found your taste type yet? Start here: Find Your Wine Style in 5 Bottles

What to prepare before you start

No special tools. Just these three things.

• [ ] Your list of this year's wine records (the records in the app are fine)
• [ ] A split point between the first and second halves (this article uses the end of June)
• [ ] Somewhere to jot down what you notice (a notebook or a notes app)

If your records are not in an app, your phone's photo folder works as a substitute. As long as the label photos survive, you can still count bottles and regions afterwards. You won't be able to reconstruct the flavor axes, but instead of "starting from zero this year," it becomes your doorway into "let's keep them next year."

Step 1 — Count bottles, regions and types

Start with the big picture: the total number of bottles, your most frequent regions, and the ratio of red, white and sparkling. Don't try to analyze anything yet — just count.

Counting alone always surfaces something: "more whites than I thought," or "I keep leaning on the same region."

Every number in this table is an example. Replace them with your own records.

Step 2 — Look at the distribution of your stars

Next, the distribution of your stars. What matters here is not the average but the distribution. An average gets dragged around by a single extreme rating; a distribution shows you whether you hand out 4 stars freely, and how many 5-star bottles a year actually holds.

In POURPIN, your stars are never published and never folded into anyone else's average. "No reviews. No ratings. Just your taste." — precisely because they are notes for your eyes only, the distribution is an honest one.

Also check whether the way you give stars changed over the year. Generous in January, stricter by the second half — that "shift in your yardstick" is a finding in its own right.

Step 3 — Surface your most frequent Hints

Take only the wines you rated 4 stars or more, tally their Hints (the tap-to-pick words for flavor impressions), and list the top five.

These top five words are the vocabulary of what you like right now. Next year, when you are standing in a shop unsure what to pick, these words are your handholds.

And if the records are there, this tally takes a few minutes. This is the step where you feel glad you kept them.

Step 4 — Compare the first half with the second

This is the heart of the inventory. For the first half (January–June) and the second half (July–December), line up regions, types, frequent Hints and the number of 5-star bottles.

Once they are lined up, put one thing that changed and one thing that didn't into words. The thing that changed is this year's growth. The thing that didn't is your core. Both become material for how you choose next year.

If you have taken the taste-type diagnosis before, compare its result with your current distribution — watching your coordinates move is half the fun.

Step 5 — Look back at the places

Finally, revisit the places (home / restaurant) and the shops you bought them at in your records, and pick up to three "places I want to revisit." Flavor memories tend to stay attached to the place where you drank them.

Wines logged with a location appear as pins on the map, so you can also see whether your drinking clusters around your neighborhood, or happens mostly on trips. POURPIN records exist so you can revisit. Once you have chosen the places, next year's plans tend to make themselves.

The POURPIN YouTube Short "気づけば、一年分の夜がここにある" (Before you know it, a year of nights is right here) shows this same feeling.

How to read your results — a pattern guide

Inventories come out differently for everyone. Here are the classic patterns, paired with how to read them and how to choose next year.

Three mistakes people make with an inventory

1) Counting the bottles and stopping there

The count is only the doorway. Until you look at the star distribution and the Hints, you cannot read how your taste changed. Give it ten more minutes.

2) Deleting the low-rated records

A 1- or 2-star record is not a failure — it is an asset that maps what you dislike. Delete it, and next year you will buy the same type again. Keeping it is the right answer.

3) Looking back, then never choosing next year's bottle

The exit of an inventory is deciding one bottle to drink next year. Don't let it end with insights alone — finish by naming one bottle, or the exact conditions it has to meet.

Bonus — A mini-inventory for people with only 5 bottles

A small count is fine. With 5 bottles, comparing stars and Hints already works.

The method is the same. Line up the five, and compare the Hints of the highest-starred and the lowest-starred. That alone outlines what you experience as "like" and what you experience as a miss.

What matters is not the count but whether you lined them up and compared. And if you only managed to keep 5 this year, you are exactly the person who benefits from keeping them on the spot next year. For the 30-second method — photograph the label and log it — see How to Reunite with a Favorite Wine: The 30-Second Logging Method.

FAQ — Year-end wine inventory Q&A

Q1. Can I do an inventory for a year when I kept no records?
Yes. From your photo folder and purchase history you can reconstruct at least the bottles and places. The flavor axes (stars and Hints) cannot be recreated, though, so from next year on, the 30-second log is the way to go.

Q2. Is a small bottle count meaningless?
No. With 5 bottles, comparing stars and Hints already works. The essence is not the count but whether you lined them up. In a small year, each bottle simply carries more weight.

Q3. Can the whole review be done inside the app?
The list, search and map cover the basic review — detailed search filters are a Premium feature. If you want to keep it in a spreadsheet, or archive it across years, Premium's Export (CSV/JSON) makes it certain.

Q4. How should I set next year's goals?
Work backwards from the inventory rather than setting a bottle-count target. For example: "Try three new regions," or "Re-drink just one of my 5-star wines." Goals that come out of your own records are the ones that last.

Summary

• A year of records becomes an asset when you line it up and compare — that is when your change in taste becomes readable
• Read in this order: bottles → star distribution → Hints → first half vs. second half → places
• The exit of the inventory is deciding one bottle to drink next year

Today's one action

Tonight, open this year's records and count only the wines you gave 5 stars.

Just counting should bring the year's highlights back. And if last year's Beaujolais is among them, the release day — November 19 — holds a treat as well: tasting it against this year's new wine.

Start now

Try it free first
→ Sign in free at pourpin.fun (log up to 30 bottles). It is never too late to start — with what's left of this year, and next year's release day ahead.

To keep your records as an asset
→ Premium: unlimited records + Export (CSV/JSON). Insurance for your flavor history — a year of your taste, kept in your own hands.