Notes Structure

Understanding Vino's Structure

Built on Vulpea

Vino is built on Vulpea v2, a note management library for Emacs. All wine-related notes must be indexed in vulpea-db for Vino to function properly. For more information about Vulpea's capabilities, consult the Vulpea documentation.

Note Types and Tagging

Vino identifies different note types through tags. While you're free to organize your notes however you like, tags are mandatory—Vino uses them to distinguish between producers, wines, ratings, and other entities.

Core Note Types

Each note type requires specific tags (all notes must have the wine tag plus a type-specific tag):

1. Producer (wine + producer)

   • Represents a wine producer or winery
   • No required metadata

2. Wine Entry / Cellar (wine + cellar)

   • Represents a specific wine release (producer + wine name + vintage)
   • Requires metadata: producer, region/appellation, grapes, vintage (optional)

3. Rating (wine + rating)

   • Records a tasting note and score for a wine
   • Requires metadata: wine reference, date, rating values

4. Country (wine + country)

   • Represents a wine-producing country
   • No required metadata

5. Region (wine + region)

   • Represents a wine region within a country
   • Requires metadata: country reference

6. Appellation (wine + appellation)

   • Represents a specific appellation or denomination
   • Requires metadata: country reference
   • Wine entries link to either a region or an appellation

7. Grape (wine + grape)

   • Represents a grape variety
   • No required metadata
   • Tip: Use aliases for grapes with multiple names (e.g., Syrah/Shiraz)

While Vino enforces certain metadata requirements, you're free to add custom fields, additional text, headings, and any other information you find useful.

Note Relationships

The relationships between these note types are as follows:

• Cellar notes link to one producer, region or appellation, multiple grapes, and multiple ratings.
• Rating notes link to one cellar.

Here's a visual representation of these relationships:

Wine Entry ─────┬───> Producer
                │
                ├───> Region/Appellation ───> Country
                │
                ├───> Grapes (multiple)
                │
                └───> Ratings (multiple) ───> (each links back to Wine Entry)

In other words:

• A Wine Entry contains references to one Producer, one Region or Appellation (which itself references a Country), multiple Grapes, and multiple Ratings.
• A Rating contains a reference back to its Wine Entry.
• A Region or Appellation contains a reference to its Country (and optionally a parent Region).

Setting Tags

Tags can be applied to notes in several ways:

1. Via Templates (Recommended)

   • Vino's creation functions automatically apply appropriate tags
   • Templates are configured to include required tags by default
   • See the Templates guide for customization

2. Automatic Directory-Based Tagging

   • Apply tags automatically based on file location
   • Requires custom configuration (advanced)
   • While this blog post targets org-roam v1, the concept applies to Vulpea v2 with modification

3. Manual Tagging

   • Add #+filetags: at the top of any note file
   • Example: #+filetags: :wine:cellar:
   • Useful for correcting tags on existing notes

Recommended Directory Structure

While Vino doesn't enforce a specific directory structure, organizing wine notes into dedicated folders improves clarity and reduces clutter. Here's the recommended layout:

.
└── wine
    ├── appellation
    │   ├── france
    │   │   ├── musigny_aoc.org
    │   │   ├── nuits_saint_georges_aoc.org
    │   │   └── ...
    │   ├── italy
    │   │   ├── cerasuolo_di_vittoria_docg.org
    │   │   ├── etna_doc.org
    │   │   ├── igp_terre_siciliane.org
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── ...
    ├── cellar
    │   ├── 2c012cee-878b-4199-9d3b-782d671bd198.org
    │   ├── 4faf700f-c8b9-403d-977c-8dee9e577514.org
    │   ├── b20373db-43d3-4f2c-992c-6c6b5a4f3960.org
    │   ├── c9937e3e-c83d-4d8d-a612-6110e6706252.org
    │   └── ...
    ├── country
    │   ├── italy.org
    │   ├── france.org
    │   └── ...
    ├── grape
    │   ├── frappato.org
    │   ├── nerello_mascalese.org
    │   ├── nero_d_avola.org
    │   └── ...
    ├── producer
    │   ├── arianna_occhipinti.org
    │   ├── pyramid_valley.org
    │   └── ...
    ├── rating
    │   ├── be7777a9-7993-44cf-be9e-0ae65297a35d.org
    │   ├── bbc0c0f6-6f85-41a8-a386-f2017ceeaeb3.org
    │   ├── 727d03f3-828a-4957-aaa9-a19fd0438a15.org
    │   ├── d9e29c8e-06af-41d3-a573-72942cea64da.org
    │   ├── a5022e95-4584-43bd-ac55-599a942a6933.org
    │   └── ...
    └── region
        ├── new-zealand
        │   ├── central_otago.org
        │   ├── gisborne.org
        │   ├── kumeu.org
        │   └── ...
        ├── italy
        │   ├── sicily.org
        │   ├── piedmont.org
        │   └── ...
        └── ...

Key points:

• Vino's default templates create notes following this structure
• Wine entries and ratings use UUIDs as filenames for uniqueness
• Regions and appellations are organized by country
• Other note types use descriptive filenames

You can customize this structure by modifying Vino's templates. Non-wine notes can coexist in the same directories—Vino uses tags, not file locations, to identify wine-related content.