Wine Tasting Journal: 20 WSET SAT Practice Pages (Printable PDF)

We built this journal because every time we sat down to practice tasting notes — for our own WSET coursework, then later for the students we advised — we kept reaching for a structured page that didn’t really exist. So we made one. The Wine Scribes WSET Practice Tasting Journal is a 20-page printable PDF designed to align with the official Systematic Approach to Tasting (SAT) using the same categories, vocabulary and quality framework that WSET examiners actually mark on.

What’s inside the WSET tasting journal

• 20 full tasting pages — Appearance, Nose, Palate & Conclusions structured on every page
• Primary / secondary / tertiary aroma prompts to help you reach for the right vocabulary while the wine is still in your glass
• BLIC quality framework (Balance · Length · Intensity · Complexity) built into every page so you never forget to justify your conclusion
• Levels 2 & 3 SAT quick-reference sheet — the entire grammar of SAT in one printable page
• Aroma descriptor lexicon — over 90 descriptors organised into primary / secondary / tertiary categories
• US Letter, print-ready PDF — print at home, spiral-bind it, or fill it in on a tablet
• Yours forever — print as many tasting pages as you want

Why structured tasting actually matters

When we were tasting our way through SAT practice at UC Davis and during our WSET coursework, the single biggest jump in score didn’t come from drinking more wine. It came from forcing ourselves to taste every wine the same way. Appearance first. Always. Then nose. Then palate. Then conclusions.

WSET examiners aren’t scoring how poetic your descriptors are. They’re scoring whether you worked through the SAT in order, used the official vocabulary, and justified your quality judgement with at least one BLIC factor (Balance, Length, Intensity, Complexity). Skip a step — lose marks. Write “tropical fruit” without naming which tropical fruit — lose marks. Call a wine “good” without saying why — lose marks.

This journal locks in the order. You can’t accidentally skip development on the nose because the field is right there. You can’t forget to justify your quality conclusion because BLIC is printed on every page. That’s the whole point.

Who this tasting journal is for

We built it for three groups specifically:

• WSET candidates working through tasting prep alongside theory
• Aspiring sommeliers building a personal tasting library before Court of Master Sommeliers or ISG exams
• Serious wine enthusiasts who want to actually remember what they tasted at the cellar door — not just say “it was nice”

If you’ve ever finished a tasting flight and realised you can’t tell one wine from another in your own notes, this fixes that.

Inside the journal: a sample page

Here’s the layout you’ll use for every wine. A single page walks you through the full SAT, from clarity to conclusions, with check-the-box fields you can tick during the tasting rather than scrambling to write everything by hand.

The watermark is only on the public preview — the version you download is clean.

About the authors

Jesse holds a Viticulture & Enology degree from UC Davis and has made wine in Burgundy, Yarra Valley, California, Washington and the Douro Valley. Cassie holds WSET Level 2 with Distinction and assists with vineyard and cellar work. Together they co-founded Vespera Cellars, a small-batch wine label producing wine in the Columbia River Gorge and Douro Valley. They write at Wine Scribes, where they cover wine education, travel and tasting for over 8,000 monthly readers.

Want to keep practicing? Try our free WSET quizzes

This journal pairs naturally with our free WSET practice exams — 215 questions across Levels 1, 2 and 3, all aligned to the same syllabus.

If you’re preparing for a specific level, our written study guides go deeper into theory:

• How to pass WSET Level 1
• How to pass WSET Level 2
• How to pass WSET Level 3

Frequently asked questions