For years my notes were just me transcribing whatever the lecturer said, as fast as my hand could move, and then never reading a single line of them again. They looked diligent. They did nothing. Notetaking that actually sticks is a different animal: it is active, it makes you sort and shape the information as it lands, and it hands you something you will genuinely use when you sit down to revise. There is no one right way to do it either. The method that works depends on the subject, on how your head likes to hold onto things, and on whether you are in a lecture, watching a webinar, or buried in a textbook. So treat the seven below as a toolkit, not a rulebook. Try them, bend them, mix them, and keep whatever turns a blank page into notes you will actually come back to.
1. The Cornell Method
I have a whole article on the Cornell Method, so I will keep this short and point you to it for the deep dive. In a sentence: you split your page into three zones, a narrow left column for cues and questions, a wide right column for the actual notes, and a strip along the bottom for a summary you write in your own words once the lecture is done. That summary strip is the bit that does the heavy lifting, because forcing yourself to boil a page down to a few lines is where the understanding actually happens. It is my default, the method I reach for when I am writing up my summaries, and it plays beautifully with every other technique on this list.
2. The Outline Method
The outline method is notes with a skeleton. You structure everything hierarchically, main ideas as headings and supporting detail indented underneath, so the shape of the information is visible on the page. It shines when the material already has a logical order to it, like working through the chapters of a textbook or following a lecture that moves point by point. A few things make it work: use a consistent system to mark the levels, Roman numerals for the big ideas and letters for the detail beneath, keep every heading short, and lean on indentation to show what belongs to what. And if you want the hierarchy to really pop, colour the levels differently, which is exactly where colour coding earns its keep.
3. Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is the one I reach for when a topic has too many moving parts to hold in a straight line. You put the subject in the middle of a blank page and branch outward, so instead of a list you end up with a web that mirrors how the pieces actually connect. That branching shape is easier to hold in your head than paragraphs, and because it works your visual and your associative memory at the same time, it tends to stick. It is just as handy for untangling a big project or a sprawling topic as it is for a single grape.
Say you drop Rueda in the centre. Your main branches come off it: climate, grape varieties, viticulture, winemaking, geography, wine law. Then you grow each one. Off grape varieties you hang Verdejo, and off Verdejo its own cluster: mid budding, mid ripening, moderate yields, happy in hot dry summers. A few rules keep a mind map useful rather than chaotic. Use single keywords, not sentences. Draw lines between the branches that relate, so the climate branch visibly ties to the grape it shapes. Keep it clean, because an overstuffed map is as useless as a wall of text. And revisit it as often as you need, until the whole web sits in your head on its own.
4. Charting Method
When information comes in sets you need to compare, a chart beats prose every time. You rule your page into columns and rows, label each column with a category, and fill the grid in. It is made for anything that lines up side by side: timelines in wine history, the maximum yields in hectolitres per hectare allowed across different appellations, the production splits of a region. Laying it out as a grid instead of a paragraph means the differences jump out, and it doubles as a revision tool, because a half-remembered chart is far easier to reconstruct than a half-remembered page. It is also the format I would build if I had to present the same numbers to someone else, say the residual sugar levels that separate a Vendange Tardive from a Sélection de Grains Nobles, because a table makes the pattern legible in a way a column of figures never will.
5. The Sentence Method
The sentence method is exactly what it sounds like: you write full, self-contained sentences that capture each key point as it comes. It is the one to use when you want the detail and the nuance, the explanations and the caveats, rather than just headline keywords. The trick is to keep each sentence coherent enough to stand on its own when you read it back cold weeks later, so write for clarity over speed and make sure every line still makes sense out of context. One tip I swear by: record the lecture on your phone as well. Then if a sentence comes out garbled in the moment, you can replay the audio while you tidy your notes, or listen to the whole thing again when you revise.
The Use of Abbreviations
Whichever method you land on, abbreviations will make you faster. They are simply shortened forms of words, and the payoff is twofold: you write less, and you write quicker, which adds up over a three-hour lecture. Two cautions though. First, keep them clear enough that they still make sense to you when you reread them, because a clever abbreviation you cannot decode later is worse than the full word. Second, do not carry your personal shorthand into an exam. The common ones everyone knows are fine, and the shortlist beside this section is the set I actually use, but my habit of shortening "with" to "w/" is exactly the kind of thing that will confuse an examiner, or simply is not allowed. Save your private code for your own notes and spell it out on the day.
6. Wine Mapping Tip
This one is my own, and it is the single most useful thing I do for wine geography. Get hold of a good regional map, then turn it into a working document. Pin the geographical features onto it: where the mountains sit relative to the vineyards, how a river and its tributaries run, which slopes face the coast and catch the prevailing wind. Use sticky notes to flag specific soil plots and the grapes grown on them, trace the major wind flows across a region, and keep going. It is a cousin of mind mapping, but anchored to real geography, so instead of an abstract web you are building understanding straight onto the actual place. I do it as I read, so the moment a book mentions a feature I mark it, and the map becomes something I can come back to whenever a region blurs. The picture above is exactly this: all the maps I marked up during my French Wine Scholar studies, which is the only reason the sheer size of France ever made sense to me.
A few good places to find the maps themselves: Australian Wine, New Zealand Wine, Wines of Argentina, Visit Napa Valley, Vins Val de Loire and Austrian Wine. The WSET provides some, but not many, and I do not always find them clear enough. And do not discount drawing them yourself. It does not need to be pretty. The act of drawing a region by hand makes it stick, because you paid attention to every line you put down.
7. Fishbone Diagram
The fishbone diagram breaks a process down into its parts and lays them out as a visual, which makes a complicated sequence far easier to follow and to remember. You draw a horizontal spine, then branch the contributing steps or factors off it like the bones of a fish. I love it for winemaking, where there is a clear process with plenty of forks. When there are regional variations on the same technique, I can run the whole thing through the diagram in my head and follow each branch to remember exactly where the steps diverge.
Now Go and Have Fun!
So there is your toolkit: seven ways to turn passive scribbling into notes that actually work for you. Pick one, pick several, mix them until studying a tricky topic feels less like a chore and more like something you have a proper handle on. And keep some perspective while you are at it. Studying for D3 can feel like a lot of pressure, but you chose this, you chose to go deeper into wine, and that is worth enjoying. If today is a write-off because your head is somewhere else, deal with whatever that is first and come back tomorrow, rested. The work will still be there, and you will do it better. Now go and make a beautiful mess of your notes.
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What is the best notetaking method for studying wine?
There is no single best method; the right one depends on the material. Use the Cornell method for lecture summaries, the outline method for ordered textbook content, mind mapping for topics with many interconnected parts, the charting method for comparisons like yields or sugar levels, and the sentence method when you need full detail and nuance. Most wine students end up combining two or three.
How do you use mind mapping to study wine regions?
Put the region or grape in the centre of a blank page and branch outward into its main themes: climate, grape varieties, viticulture, winemaking, geography and wine law. Grow each branch with single keywords rather than sentences, and draw lines between the branches that influence each other, such as climate and the grape it shapes. The branching, visual structure works your visual and associative memory, which makes it easier to recall than a plain list.
What is the Cornell notetaking method?
The Cornell method splits your page into three zones: a narrow left column for cues and questions, a wide right column for your notes, and a strip along the bottom for a summary you write in your own words after the session. The summary strip does the real work, because condensing a page into a few lines is where the understanding happens. It pairs well with almost every other notetaking technique.
Should you use abbreviations when taking study notes?
Yes. Abbreviations let you write less and faster, which matters over a long lecture. Keep them clear enough that they still make sense when you reread your notes, and stick to common ones. Do not carry your personal shorthand into an exam though, because an examiner may not understand it or it may not be allowed.
How can you memorise wine geography more easily?
Turn a good regional map into a working document: mark where the mountains sit relative to the vineyards, how the rivers run, which slopes face the coast, and which grapes grow on which soils. Drawing the map by hand, even roughly, makes it stick because you pay attention to every line. It is a form of mind mapping anchored to the real place, so the geography and its features lock together in memory.
Margot van Lieshout
Wine marketeer, sales expert with over 20 years in the trade, public speaker and international wine judge. Thousands of wines scored from Steiermark to Ningxia, and a trade she knows from the inside out. Wine with Margot is where she helps wine brands tell the stories that sell them.
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