As we get to the dregs of 2025, inventory for the 2026 Edition of the Grid Book is on its way to NYC. SommPuzzlers who have enjoyed the 2025 Grid Book (and are still gridding holiday bottles therein) will find much to esteem in the new version.
Firstly, a reminder: Grid Books are daybooks for wine tasting. Fill-up your annual Grid Book with a year's worth of tastings and bottles. In December, before the turn of the year, equip yourself with the new vintaged Grid Book in preparation for the year-in-wine to come.
In emending the 2025 Grid Book for 2026, we have focused on speeding-up the wine-evaluation process. Even as a glass of wine causes one to pause, enjoy, think, wax discursive, SommPuzzles designs its products for wine professionals, wine professionals who are often stretched thin between managing inventory bins, receiving wine shipments, tallying sales numbers, attending industry events and tastings... The list is expansive.
All considered, we have made strides in expediting penwork and evaluation notation within the 2026 Grid Book. We at SommPuzzles want our Grid Books to work for you on the fly, at tastings, in the shuffle of a convention or during protocol-dense pre-shift meetings. As such, we have made many of the evaluation categories more circle-able. Wherever possible, we have eliminated the need to jot down predictable phrases under regular use. E.g., if Intensity will almost always be either "low," "medium" or "high," we have decided render these options as a circle-able scale. If one looks below, she will find "Intensity" circled in orange; the 2025 Grid is on the top, while the improved 2026 Grid is on the bottom.
2025 Grid Book:
2026 Grid Book:
SommPuzzlers will note that many of the 2025 categories have been thus expanded into circle-able scales. All categories that have undergone a scalar expansion in this way or have been otherwise modified (e.g., Tannins will be, in 2026, "Tannins/Phenols") are circled in colored marker above (colors correspond across the two versions). Categories that have merely been moved or nudged elsewhere are highlighted in yellow.
The categories highlighted in bright green are new additions to the Grid. Of particular note, perhaps for its extensivity, is Character. We have decided that, when bouncing between wines at a tasting event, it will be much easier to circle some palatal and textural characteristics than self-prompt and originate lexemes, write words.
In the end, SommPuzzles is committed to the ineluctable complexity and sensorial depth that wine-tasting and wine affords those willing to taste and think and write and discuss. We continue to dedicate an entire Field Notes page, per wine, to welcoming this discursive situation. However, where it comes to the wine trade and the hubbub of industry events, we want the Grid Book to be a technology of expedition, not friction. We want to mitigate the inhibition and exhaustion associated with writing something down during the whoosh of collective tastings and industry gatherings.
In the next blog post, we will review the rest of the 2026 Grid updates. Perhaps by then, we will have an inventory update for you!—until that moment, keep using using the 2025s while 2025 bottle-tastings are still possible. Let the record hold: you tasted well.
Salute,
The SommPuzzles Team