Ideas on Hosting Wine Tasting Parties

Hosting a wine tasting party is an ideal way to get friends and family together in order to learn about wine and to experiment with new or unusual varietals. Therefore, it is best to know the basics of how to organise this type of party at home or at the office.

First off, you need to decide which type of tasting you would like to host. This is because there are many versions of wine tasting activities, including wine and cheese pairings, vertical, horizontal, price point and beyond. Another thing is to determine your guest list and send invites at least a couple of weeks prior to your activity. Make sure to design a tasting card as well to specify the type of wine, vineyard, year, and a brief description of the wine.

You can even make the event a bit more challenging by offering a blind tasting experience. Although you will still provide your guests with their individual tasting cards, you will pour each wine without identifying the label. Just allow them to incorporate all of their senses to identify the respective wines based on the descriptions of the label. Hence, the guest that is able to identify the most wines correctly will win a prized bottle of wine or may be a book on the art of wine tasting.

Additionally, if you want to make the activity a lot more fun and exciting, you can encourage your guests to share some thoughts and humour on each wine. Just do not forget to prepare four to six wine types, appetisers, loaves of bread, wine glasses, pitchers of water, and aluminium foil or brown bags to cover the wine bottles during blind tasting.