For my birthday last month, my sister presented me with a small bag from the esteemed leather goods store, Smythson of Bond Street. Upon opening the package, I discoverd a pocket-sized folio for taking wine notes — a wine lover’s dream.

The sleek, black book is imprinted with Wine Memoranda in gold lettering on the cover and is elegant enough to use at high end tastings, dinners and winery visits.

I christened the book on a recent trip to Sonoma, where I visited 16 wineries. While familiar with Smythson in name only prior to its receipt, I quickly became a devoted fan of its featherweight paper and binding. Part of its Panama line, this copyrighted paper makes the book very lightweight and easy to use. The pre-printed categories work well for both novices and wine professionals, with headings for wine name, vintage, grower, country/region, price, recommendation, remarks and tasting date. The remarks section provides ample room for notes on aromas, flavors and structure, regardless of one’s preferred method or format. In addition, the book is divided into three sections — White, Red & Other — providing some categorization of one’s notes.

However, with an average of five wines tasted at each winery and some as many as nine, the pages quickly began to fill and I feared that I would use up all of the space before the trip was completed. Accordingly, I began to be more frugal with the wines I chose to write up and listed several similar wines (i.e. 4 single-vineyard Pinot Noirs) from the same winery on a single page.

My Other section is completely blank because I did not taste any roses on this trip. Perhaps I could have used it for fortified and/or sparkling wines as well, but too late now.

While I do indeed have remaining space, I am sorry it is so limited as I envisioned being able to keep the book in my purse at all times to use it for wine notes at restaurants, wine shops, etc. I still can, of course, but my time with the book will come to an end all too soon and at $75.00 (or more?) I am loathe to replace it myself.

However, with the holidays coming up, if you have an oenophile on your gift list, this is a perfect present and with 64 pages, most (non-wine industry) people probably won’t use it up quite so quickly.