The score sheet template (100-point scale)
| Category | Points | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance | 15 | Clarity, color depth, and color hue appropriate for the wine's age and variety |
| Aroma | 25 | Intensity, complexity, and whether the nose matches expectations for the grape and style |
| Palate | 40 | Body, balance of acid/tannin/fruit, structure, and how the flavor evolves across the sip |
| Label / Presentation | 10 | Optional category for tastings that score packaging and presentation alongside the wine itself |
| Finish | 10 | Length and quality of the aftertaste once the wine is swallowed or spat |
Each guest fills in a row per wine, totals the five columns, and the host averages every guest's total per wine to get the group ranking. This weighting mirrors the scale used in Wine Night's scoring guide and by professional competition judges, where Palate dominates because it's the largest part of the actual drinking experience.
Printable layout, if you want paper
For a simple printed sheet, set up one row per wine with columns for Appearance, Aroma, Palate, Finish, Total, and a free-text Notes column. Leave the wine name blank if running a blind tasting, and number the wines 1 through however many are in the flight instead.
Why paper sheets slow down group tastings
The math is the real problem, not the writing. With 6+ guests scoring 5-6 wines each, someone has to collect every sheet, total five columns per wine per guest, then average across guests — usually while everyone else is standing around waiting for the reveal. It's also common for sheets to get wine spilled on them or for a guest's handwriting to be unreadable at the point someone tries to tally it.
The paperless alternative
Wine Night uses the exact same category breakdown as the template above, but every guest scores on their own phone after joining with a 4-digit PIN — no app download, no account. The host adds the wine list once, scores sync live across every device, and totals and rankings appear instantly the moment the host reveals results. Nothing to collect, nothing to add up by hand, and no risk of a key sheet getting lost or stained.