We all have read something like this: Dry, high acidity, 15% alcohol well integrated, medium (+) tannins, medium (+) flavour intensity, smooth and velvety with a powerful body. That is a real tasting note. I wrote it, for a real wine, on a real webshop. It is also, almost word for word, a reason a shopper closed the tab without buying, because not one line in it tells a general wine consumer whether they would actually enjoy the wine on a Tuesday.
Online, a wine has exactly two things doing the selling: the bottle picture, and the words next to it. I have already made the case for the picture in Your Bottle Photo Is Planting Doubt (And Costing You the Sale). This piece is about the other half, the words, because a tasting note that reads like an exam answer quietly loses sales all day long, and almost nobody notices it is happening.
My confession: I wrote notes like this, while I knew they were not working
Here is the uncomfortable part. I have been guilty of exactly this. I wrote technical tasting notes like that one on my own webshop, back when I owned one, and in articles that carry my name. And some part of me already knew, in my gut, that they were not really helping anyone decide.
I published notes like this for years before I admitted they were quietly costing me sales.
But the industry writes tasting notes a certain way. And when you are new in the industry (back then), I assumed the industry must be right, because the industry is what taught me. So, naturally I copied its house style, and moved on. Look anywhere online and you will find the same dreadful technical note, bramble and medium-plus this and well-integrated oak tannins that, the kind no ordinary wine drinker can decode. Right? So, why didn't I follow my other skills that I had before entering the wine industry, being Marketing to be exact.
Here is the thing I wish someone had said to me sooner. From a pure quality-assessment point of view, that technical note is a need-to-have. It is precise, it is comparable, it does a real job when the job is grading the wine. The same way I do, when I judge wines at Concours Mondial for instance, but a person deciding what is nicer for their Friday night drinks? They honestly do not give a fuck about medium-plus tannins. They want to know one thing: is this wine decent for the price they must pay.
A tasting note is doing two completely different jobs
The confusion at the heart of this is that we use the same phrase, tasting note, for two things that could not be more different in purpose. One grades the wine. The other sells it. They are written for different people, in different language, to do different work, and most wine webshops publish the first one where the second one belongs.
The grader's note is the WSET-style systematic assessment: appearance, nose, palate, structure, quality, all in a fixed vocabulary so that two professionals anywhere in the world can compare the same wine and mean the same thing. That is genuinely useful. It is a need-to-have for a buyer building a range, a competition judge, a sommelier. Keep it. Just keep it on the trade sheet, not on the product page.
The seller's note has one reader: the person with their card half out, trying to picture whether this bottle is right for their night. And the technical version actively pushes that person away. A survey of 2,000 wine drinkers reported by Uncorkd found that 25% already find buying a bottle of wine intimidating, and 45% cope by sticking to the same grape they always buy. When your note is a wall of jargon, you are not informing that shopper, you are confirming their fear that wine is a club they are not qualified to join. So, they retreat to the one label they recognise, and your wine stays on the digital shelf.
The same wine, two notes
Let me show you the difference rather than describe it. Below is that real note from my old shop, a Spanish Monastrell blend, in its original technical form on the left, and rewritten for the person actually deciding whether to buy it on the right. Same wine. Same truths. Completely different job.
| What the buyer sees | The note that grades the wine | The note that sells it |
|---|---|---|
| Colour and nose | Deep ruby red. Concentrated black fruit: bramble, blackberry, violet, cinnamon, a subtle earthy leather note. | A deep, dark red with a scent of blackberry and warm baking spice. The kind of nose that says cosy night in, something good in the oven. |
| The palate | Dry, high acidity, 15% alcohol well integrated, medium (+) tannins, medium (+) flavour intensity, smooth and velvety. | Full and velvety, never sharp or thin. A big Spanish red that fills the glass and drinks softer than its strength suggests. |
| Ageing | Slight bottle age keeps the wine fresh yet complex; capable of further ageing. | Drinking beautifully right now, and sturdy enough to keep for a steak night that earns it. |
| What the buyer takes away | I will need a wine textbook to know if I will like this. | Rich, smooth, ready for dinner. Into the basket. |
Notice what did not happen. I did not dumb the wine down, invent flavours, or strip out the truth. Every fact on the left is still true on the right. I just stopped writing for the examiner and started writing for the buyer. That is the whole move.
Grab the free resource from this article →The formula for a tasting note that sells
You do not need to be a copywriter to do this, and you do not need to reinvent it for every wine. The people who study ecommerce copy for a living keep making the same point: when a shopper glances at their options online, they want one, two or three quick reasons a wine fits into their life at that moment. So, give them exactly that, in the same order, every time. Four short moves:
The feel. One line on what the wine is actually like to drink, in words a human uses. Rich and velvety. Crisp and zippy. Light and easy. This is where your tasting vocabulary earns its keep, translated out of exam language.
The moment. One line on when to drink it. A Tuesday-night red, a sunny-terrace white, a bottle for the dinner you are trying to impress at. You are answering the question the grader's note never touches: where does this belong in my week.
The pairing. One specific line on what to eat with it. Not with food, but with a Friday-night curry, with roast chicken, with salty crisps on the sofa. Specific is what sells, and as you will see in a second, specific is also what gets you found.
The nudge. One short line that points to buying, not to more homework. Never make people email you for details or click off to a spec sheet. Give them the reason and the button in the same breath.
This is not padding that sits on top of the real information. It is the real information, doing its real job. Salsify's 2025 consumer research found that 77% of shoppers rate product titles and descriptions as extremely or very important to their decision, and 53% have abandoned a purchase because the description was incomplete or badly written. The words are not decoration around the sale. A lot of the time, they are the sale.
Pairings are not a nice-to-have. They are how you get found.
Here is the part that turns a good note into a discoverable one. When you write with a Friday-night curry instead of pairs well with spiced food, you are not just being warmer, you are writing the exact words your future customer is typing into Google's search bar. People do not search for medium-bodied red with supple tannins. They search for what wine goes with curry, and increasingly they ask ChatGPT the same question in the same plain language.
This is the same discipline that decides whether your shop gets found at all, which I break down in SEO, GEO, AEO: Which One Actually Gets You Found. A specific pairing is a magnet for a real search. Grilled ribeye with chimichurri beats red meat every time, because it matches the way people actually ask. And this matters more by the month, because the tools doing the recommending have changed. AI search engines now suggest specific bottles to buyers directly, the exact shift I unpack in AI Is Recommending Wines Right Now. Not Yours. Those tools cannot taste your wine either. They read your words. A note written in plain, specific language gives an AI something concrete to match to a shopper asking for an easy red under 15 euro for a weeknight. A note full of medium-plus tannins gives it nothing, so it recommends someone else.
Write it once, the same way, for every wine
One last thing that quietly builds or bleeds trust across your whole range: consistency. If one wine gets three warm, specific lines and the next gets a bare copy-paste from the winery's back label, the shopper feels the gap even if they could not name it. It is a subtle thing, but it registers: when one product is richly described and the next is thin, the thin one feels off, even when nothing is actually wrong with the wine.
So, decide your shape once, the feel, the moment, the pairing, the nudge, and hold every wine to it. Two sentences of profile, one of pairing, a clear nudge to buy. It does not need a bigger budget, it needs a rule you make once and do not break, and then it works on every product page at the same time. A catalogue that reads in one confident voice feels like a real, cared-for shop, and a shop that feels safe is a shop people buy from. This is the same trust signal I talk about with photography: online, your words and your pictures are the entire shop floor, so both must pull their weight.
Stop grading the wine. Start selling the sip.
Your shopper cannot taste your wine, so they taste your words first. Every line of jargon is a small nudge toward not buying, a reminder that they might not be qualified to choose. The fix is not to dumb anything down. It is to remember who is reading, translate the exam answer into the feel, the moment and the pairing, write it the same way for every wine, and point them at the button instead of at more homework.
I turned that fix into something you can use today. It is a free AI prompt that takes any tasting note you already have, the winery's, your own, the one on the back label, and rewrites it into a note that sells the wine and gets read by Google and AI search. You paste in the technical version, you get back the one that works. Grab The Tasting Note That Sells and run your worst offender through it first.
And if you would rather someone did it with you, rewriting your shop so every wine earns its click, in your voice, found by search and AI, that is the work I do at Wine with Margot.
People also ask
Any questions related to this topic? Maybe you can find your answer here. Click here!
How do you write a wine tasting note that actually sells?
Write for the buyer, not the examiner. Give three quick things in the same order every time: what the wine feels like to drink in plain words, when to drink it, and one specific food pairing, then point clearly to the buy button. Keep the technical assessment for your trade sheet, not the product page.
What is the difference between a technical tasting note and a consumer tasting note?
A technical note grades the wine in fixed vocabulary, appearance, nose, palate, structure, so professionals can compare it precisely. A consumer note sells the wine by helping a shopper picture whether it suits their night. Both are useful, but they are written for different readers and should not be swapped.
Should online wine descriptions include food pairings?
Yes, and they should be specific. Pairing a wine with a Friday-night curry or roast chicken, rather than with food, gives the shopper a reason to buy and matches the exact words people type into Google and ask AI tools. Specific pairings are one of the simplest ways to make a wine easier to find.
Why do customers find wine tasting notes confusing?
Because most notes are written in professional assessment language, terms like medium-plus tannins or high acidity, that mean nothing to someone who just wants a nice bottle for dinner. A survey reported by Uncorkd found 25% of people find buying wine intimidating, and jargon-heavy notes make that worse, pushing shoppers back to the one label they already recognise.
Can AI help rewrite wine tasting notes?
Yes. A good AI prompt can take a technical note and rewrite it in plain, specific consumer language while keeping every fact accurate. It also helps on the discovery side, because AI search engines recommend wines based on the words in your description, so a clearer note is both easier to read and easier for AI to surface.
Resources
- Salsify, 2025 Consumer Research Report - 77% of shoppers rate product titles and descriptions as extremely or very important, and 53% have abandoned a purchase over incomplete or poorly written descriptions.
- Uncorkd, survey of 2,000 wine consumers - 25% find buying a bottle of wine intimidating and 45% stick to the same grape they always buy.
- Jill Barth, The Power of Copy in Ecommerce, Outshinery - shoppers want one, two or three reasons a wine fits their life, and consistent, specific product copy sells.
- Laurie Millotte, How to Think Like a Customer and Sell More Wine, Outshinery - 80% of customers are more likely to buy from brands offering relevant, personalized experiences.
- Silicon Valley Bank, 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report - online is the fastest-growing channel in direct-to-consumer wine.
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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