What I’ve learned from years of wine tasting and party planning is this: If you want to guarantee that your guests will have a great time, then treat them to a professional-style wine tasting. (Yes, I’m assuming that if they’re your guests, they enjoy wine.)
Building an evening around a wine tasting offers all kinds of advantages over a run-of-the mill social. Perhaps most important, it provides focus — something all of your guests can talk about from the moment they arrive. Think of it as a built-in icebreaker.
It also greatly simplifies your planning and preparation. No need to worry about what kind of beer Jack drinks, or whether Jill likes margaritas or Cosmopolitans. And with wine as the main event, you can scale back on the food.
Offer a selection of cheese and pâté, throw in a few loaves of crusty bread, and call it a night. (Better yet, ask each guest to bring an hors d’oeuvre.)
Best of all, a wine tasting can save you money. Yes, you need to buy the wine, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. And just think: no booze, no beer, no need for mixers, and a smorgasbord of nibbles to satisfy every taste.
All you need is a game plan. So let’s get started.
The first question is whether to organize a formal, sit-down event or a more casual tasting around the kitchen counter. The former requires a little extra preparation, some additional equipment and perhaps a few more wines. Let your guests be your guide: Are they casual wine drinkers or full-blown wine geeks like yourself ?
If your group is really into wine, then you might want to make it a sit-down event. If not, then the kitchen counter is probably your best bet.
The big challenge in organizing a sit-down tasting is glassware. Ideally, you want to provide each guest with one glass for each wine. So if you expect a total of 12 people and want to sample six wines, you’d need 72 glasses. No, that doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy 72 glasses. Most party stores rent glassware for less than $1 per stem.
One way of cutting down on the number of glasses is to organize the tasting in flights. Let’s say you want to taste three whites followed by three reds. You can get away with three glasses per person, as long as you pass a pitcher of water between flights so your guests can give the glasses a rinse.
For stand-up tastings, one glass per person is sufficient — so long as you put out a pitcher of water and dump bucket for rinsing. A kitchen sink works just fine, too.
At professional wine tastings, the glasses typically are arranged on a paper placemat printed with a series of circles marking the position of each glass. Inside each circle is the name of the wine to be poured in that glass — or, in the case of a blind tasting, a number indicating the order in which the wines will be tasted. In a blind tasting, the participants don’t know which wines they’re tasting until the very end. Either way, a placemat makes it easier for tasters to remember which wine is which as they alternate between sipping and scribbling their tasting notes.
To make a placemat, arrange your glasses on a blank piece of legal-size paper turned sideways. You can get away with one row across if you have three to four glasses; use two rows for six to eight glasses. Next, take a pen and trace a line around the base of each glass. Finally, write the name of the wine inside the circle. For a blind tasting, write a number in each circle — “No. 1” to “No. 6,” for example. When you’re done, you can make as many copies of the placemat as you need.
In addition to glasses and placemats, each of your guests will need pencil and paper to take notes, a water glass, a napkin and a small plate for bread and cheese or other food. You’ll also want to put out a big pitcher of water for every four to six people, along with a deep bowl or bucket so people can dump after they rinse.
Now all that’s left is picking a theme for your tasting. Unless your guests are major-league wine collectors, I’d recommend a simple theme that illustrates the fundamentals of wine. For example: Start with three white grape varieties (such as Riesling, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay) followed by three red grapes (pinot noir, merlot, Syrah). This will illustrate the basic differences between these so-called noble grapes.
If that seems a little too basic, then try comparing wine regions. In a first flight, you could taste a California chardonnay vs. a white burgundy (made from the same grape) vs. an Australian chardonnay.
Then you could try a California cabernet sauvignon vs. a cabernet-based Bordeaux vs. an Australian cab.
If you’re not sure which European wines match up with which California varietals, ask a local wine merchant — assuming it’s a reputable store with a manager who’s familiar with the inventory. He or she can introduce you to the California counterparts of, say, an Italian Chianti Classico or Spanish rioja (the former is made from the Sangiovese grape, while the latter is primarily tempranillo).
One final note: Because you and your guests will be tasting multiple wines, you want to carefully monitor the size of the pours. For instance, if you’re going to taste through six wines, a series of 2-ounce pours will add up to a half bottle of wine per person. Since a regular bottle contains 24 ounces, figure on 12 servings per bottle.
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