Want to host a wine tasting but not sure how? I’m going to give you three ideas for you and your friends to have a blast while drinking wine. And at the bottom of this post, I will give you my FREE checklist for everything you need to prepare. Are you excited? I am!
The 1st kind of wine party I love hosting is a "Get to Know a Grape Party". Having a theme to your party is a great way to give it a focus and come up with really fun ways to enhance the party.
So for this wine tasting, pick one grape variety that you really like, say like a Pinot Noir. Tell each friend to bring a bottle of Pinot Noir that they like or want to try and then also a food that you want to try with them.
Now for extra fun, you can research some of the things you find in Pinot Noirs. A simple google search will tell you that people often smell roses, berries and coca cola. Go out and buy these ingredients and put them in little jam jars for people to smell.
This is really fun because as you all taste the different Pinot Noirs you will see whether or not you can also detect the smells of those things in the wine! And maybe you won’t, which is totally fine but it gives some context to those smells in wine that can seem esoteric.
The other cool thing about this party is that you can learn what the differences and similarities are for all the Pinot Noirs. I bet even those of you who think you can’t smell or taste anything, might at least find some differences. You will walk away feeling like you actually got to really know a grape variety better! The next time someone says Pinot Noir you will be like - oh yeah! I know that guy.
Another fun idea for a wine party is to choose food and centre the whole wine party around that. This is for my friends who love to cook. I’ve done paella parties, pasta parties, raclette parties, fondue parties, you name it! Now take a moment to let me know if the comments below what kind of food party you love hosting!
So for this party, you could make it a challenge to your guests. Tell everyone you are serving paella or even something simple like popcorn and it is everyone’s job to come up with the best idea for a wine pairing for that dish.
Then you can make it exciting by doing different versions of that food. Say you are doing a pizza party and you can see the video I did on a Busy Mom’s Guide to hosting a homemade pizza party. And you can choose all sorts of different toppings so that everyone could try the different wines with all the different foods. And you could use little note cards or chalkboards to have everyone vote on their favorites!
The 3rd wine party that is so much fun when you have people who feel comfortable around wine, meaning they don’t get scared about describing it or guessing what a wine is. This is a blind tasting party!! Here you want to hide what the wines are until the end.
So all you need for this party is a way to disguise the bottles. You could put them in bags, cover them with foil or I loved these little decanters I found when looking for gifts for wine lovers. You can see the link to that video above. This way, everyone tries the wine without knowing what it is and in the end, you all talk about what you liked, any guesses and then you reveal what they are! This is kind of fun if you have any friends in the room who are like - I hate Chardonnay or Merlot or whatever because a lot of times they will give it a fair try and discover new or old wines they love.
I bet you didn’t realize how easy it can be to host a wine tasting party right?
In general, I think hosting a wine tasting is one of the most fun and easy ways to entertain because you don’t need to do much cooking, you can have people pitch in and each bring a bottle of wine and voila - you have a party.
If you want to make that even easier with full-proof step by step instructions for hosting the wine tasting, download my Guide to Hosting a Wine Tasting here. It is going to give you everything you need, so click on that link.