WOOOO! HI GUYS. Welcome to my blog’s new home HAYLEY’S CELLAR!!
I realized that my last few posts are all about wine and all my new ideas about it as well. SO. That being said, I’m studying for the WSET Diploma and I’m going to be posting what I learn about here! To start, I wanted to share my tips on how to host a wine tasting party from my recent experience!
Let’s face it. Millennial love wine. How can we not? It’s AMAZING.
What I’ve found though is that most haven’t tried a wide variety of wines. Of course the most popular among the age group seems to be Rose for obvious reasons (it’s pink, duh!), but I wanted my friends to experience different types of wines!
Since some of my friends are more experienced tasters than others, I made a few guidelines for what I wanted the party to be so everyone would enjoy:
Tips For How To Host A Wine Tasting Party
The Game
There are hundreds of ways that you can choose how to host a wine tasting party. I decided that this party was going to be a blind tasting, meaning that no one would know what they were drinking!
Everyone brought their bottle in a bag and I covered each one with foil and assigned them a number so that I was the only one who knew which bottle was which. Because I did it this way, I drank, but played more of the hostess as opposed to guessing with the others. If you wanted to guess as well, just have people bring their bottle wrapped!
I bought these really cute tasting cards off of Etsy and printed out enough for each person to take notes on every wine. These also served as a fun souvenir for people to take home notes on what they likes!
Photo Credit: CloudDesign, Etsy
Here are a few key guidelines in order for your party to be a success:
Choose A Theme
For this party I decided that I wanted the group to only drink red wines so the “entrance fee” to the party was a bottle of red of each person’s choice! You could also do something like tasting different wines from the same producer, or even try the same wine from different years! Next time I may try something like “Everyone bring a 2014 Merlot from a different winery” and taste the differences that wine makers and regions can bring.
Pick A Price
My friends like wine, but they are not wine snobs by any means. I wanted the party to be fun, but accessible by not making people break the bank by coming. The second guideline was to bring a red that was valued at $20 or more. $20 seemed reasonable and I felt like when you start to go below that price, trying to guess nuances of grape varietals could be more tricky.
Have Some Food Pairings
We went through 8 bottles of wine at my party. Yes, I know it’s a lot! I wanted to make sure that there was food not only to fill us up, but also to complement the wine! We all enjoyed having a sips, trying some cheese and seeing how that developed the flavors.
For dessert I went a little overboard and made a red wine chocolate cake. Not going to lie, it was pretty delicious with just the slightest hint of red wine. Recipe here.
I may have also made red velvet cake balls.
#sorrynotsorry
Give Some Advice and Tips
One of the best parts of the night for me was being able to share some of my knowledge on how to taste wine. Since I was the one that ordered the bottles, I paired them lightest to darkest just as you would get at a formal tasting (only a few people caught on to this hehe).
Photo Credit: Wine Folly
I also put up some fun graphics on my TV to help people guess. Since the only tip they were given is that no bottle was considered a “blend” I thought maybe it would be juuuust a little mean to not help at least a little.
Photo Credit: Wine Folly
Make It Fun!
We all went around the circle and tried to vocalize what we were smelling and tasting. It was even more fun to try and find the silliest smell!
After everyone tasted the wines and wrote down their guesses, we enjoyed some desserts while I read off some of the funny tasting notes and correct answers. The person who brought the highest scoring bottle and then one who guessed the most wines correctly each got a prize!
My Advice?
Here’s my one tip about letting people pick what to bring. A few people ended up bringing not only the same type of wine, but the exact same bottle! It worked out though because people we’re getting different flavors out of each taste since no one knew it was the same wine! I would however, maybe clear what people are bringing before hand if this worries you!
That’s it! There are so many different ways on how to host a wine tasting party which is what I think is so fun about it! You get to make it completely your own. I hope these tips help! Comment below and tell me about your party!
