Anatomy of a Wine Tasting Party

On Saturday Night, my cousin and I threw a wine tasting party.

The idea had been in the works for about a month. We both love wine, we both love throwing parties -it seemed like a logical step for us to take. We researched different wine tasting kits to buy and decided on this one:



It comes with a wine guidebook, six wine bottle bags (to conduct blind tastings), a ton of wine tasting note cards (that have different secitons where you could write down what the wine looked like, smelled like, tasted like and ultimately what you rated it from 1-10) , wine glass labels and a cheat sheet of wine terms. So once we had that and sent out the invites, we were off! We decided the theme would be French wines so we asked each guest to bring a bottle of any kind of French wine they fancied.

If you know me at all, you know my favorite part about throwing a party is decorating. I found the cutest faux grapevine at (where else?) Michael's and strung that up in Anna's living room entry way with some white Christmas lights.



And found some cute faux grape clusters that I paired with white tealights and placed on different tables throughout the room



And of course you can't have a wine tasting without snacks so we offered this spread to our guests. We are very into cheese, can you tell?



The dip is a new concoction : 6 oz of feta cheese pureed in a food processor with a large jar of roasted red peppers. It's like a cheese based hummus. Divine (and EASY)!

Our guests started to arrive and as they did Anna and I decided we would do two rounds of tasting: one red and one white. While people snacked and socialized, we set up the five reds on the table, in their bags so as to hide the identity of each wine. We gave each guest one of the notepads that came with the kit and they came up and sampled wine #1 and when everyone had tried it, we discussed what everyone thought about the color, the smell, the taste and then rated it before moving on two wine #2 and repeating.


Then at the end of each round we did the "Reveal" and told each guest what each wine was and whoever brought it told us all what it had cost, so that way if someone really loved a wine they would know exactly what it was! It worked out really great and we all found a new wine or two to add to our favorites. It was really great to hear the words other people used to describe wine, (ranging from "faint notes of honeysuckle" to "Bud-lighty").

I also made another discovery. We wanted to have some kind of background wine that people could drink before and after the tasting and came across a few new kinds of boxed wine in our search for larger bottles. Now, boxed wine and I have a sordid history. In college my friend Jill and I would pick up a box of good old Franzia chablis and have ourselves a NIGHT. Usually followed by a cheap wine induced migraine. But these days a boxed wine doesn't mean a bad wine. In fact: Black Box wines and Free Range are really quality plonk that are perfect for parties and are comparable as far as taste goes to wines you would probably spend $10-$15 a bottle on. So the fact that they are around $30-$35 for the equivalent of four bottles of wine is a quite a steal. If you can get past the In The Box stigma, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.


Anywho, our party was not without some competition, Anna had purchased a gorgeous cheese board to award to the person who brought the best wine and that award went to The Cappellas who brought a Louis Jadot Beaujolais and Chardonnay which went over FABULOUSLY! And everyone got to take home a wine stopper as a party favor!


So in the end, the party was a success, out guests were awesome and good sports, I developed a new found appreciation for reds and everyone enjoyed the wine-fueled banter that ensued during each tasting. Wine tends to have this snooty association , so I think it's good to show you can have FUN with wine and not take it too seriously . Thanks to everyone who came! Anna and I will definitely be throwing more in the future. (We already have a new theme picked out: a ladies only "Pretty On The Outside" party where the theme is bring a wine that has the prettiest label. Ha!)

The wine tasting kit was really great, offers ton of theme ideas and is condusive to throwing tastings of just a few people to a decent sized crowd. It's available at many bookstores for $25 and it's on sale for under $17 here. I highly reccomend it!