Winemaking Made Easy
Hosting a Wine Tasting Party at Home
August 30th, 2010 by jolan in wine lifestyle
Hosting a wine tasting party at home is a delightful way to enjoy time with friends and family. Wine novices and experts alike can share in the fun, as home wine tasting parties are less about strict evaluations of wines than exploring and comparing individual impressions and preferences.
To host a basic wine tasting party for ten people, you’ll need:
1. Four to six types of wine. A simple way is to serve two or three white wines and two or three red wines. You can choose different varieties, or stick with one variety made by different producers. Remember: tasting lightest to heaviest is best, so if you’re serving various styles, serve your white wines before your reds, and dry wines before sweet wines. If you pour each glass with about two ounces, one 750 ml bottle of wine will easily serve ten people.
2. Wine glasses. To keep dishes to a minimum, offer one glass per guest. Typically, glasses don’t need to be rinsed between tasting.
3. Dump/spit buckets. If you’re tasting a lot of wine (and want to keep your scores as fair as possible), provide a few vessels for dumping excess wine after tasting. These can be simple bowls or pitchers.
4. Evaluation cards. Evaluation cards can be simple or complex. A simple evaluation card could rate appearance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste and overall impression on a scale from one to five. A good example can be found here. Don’t forget to include space for personal notes and special impressions.
5. Water. A pitcher of water on the table allows your guests to take a few needed refreshing sips between wines. Bread and crackers are also helpful palate cleansers, and can help stave off the inevitable (though welcome) effects of wine consumption.
You can certainly delve deeper when hosting a wine tasting party, depending on how elaborate you would like your party to be: regionally themed cheeses or dishes, for example, are perfect if you decide to host a wine tasting party with bottles from a specific viticultural area.
One fun twist to a wine tasting party is to serve wines you’ve made yourself, possibly including wines made by friends (friends willing to give up a bottle or two from their cellar, that is). You might consider serving a few commercial wines alongside homemade wines, and conducting a blind tasting – not tasting blindfolded, but rather hiding the wine labels when pouring. Compare evaluation sheets – the results from your fellow tasters might be surprising.
Be sure to save everyone’s evaluation sheets and tasting notes at the end of your wine tasting party. Keeping note of your friends’ and family’s preferences in wine is a great resource for future gift giving – and perhaps more themed wine tasting parties at home.