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Doing it yourself? Here's some tips!
When hosting a large event, such as a wedding or a party, the emphasis is usually on socializing! Consequently, the wines will take on a secondary role: try to choose wines with broad appeal such as Chardonnay, Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc.
An intimate party can allow for more focus on the wines themselves, and this is where you have room for experimentation: Roussanne, Viognier, Mourvèdre, or Tempranillo for example, would all make interesting choices when pairing with food.
How Much to Order
There's a simple calculation you can use to determine how much wine you'll need for a larger event. Check out the Marquis Wine Cellars' Ordering Guide (47KB pdf), which has served us well for years!
Basic Rules of Thumb:
- Each glass of wine is approximately a 150ml serving.
- Each bottle contains 750ml of wine.
- Therefore, you will get 5x 150ml glasses of wine from one bottle.
- One 12 bottle case will serve 60 people a single glass each.
The Calculation
So, if you have 100 people attending your event, and the average* consumption is 3 glasses per person, that's an average of 450ml per person. Multiply that by 100 and you have your approximate consumption for the evening - in this example, 45,000ml, or 60 bottles. If you want to be on the safe side order a case extra; six red and six white, but usually no more than that.
We have a responsibility to ensure our guests do not consume too much - be on the safe side!
Drink responsibly & get home safe
*Remember this is an average per person; some will drink more some less, some not at all.
What to Order: A Quick Breakdown
- 2/3 white to 1/3 red for luncheons and cocktail parties with little or no food.
- 50/50 for buffet situations and lengthy cocktail parties.
- 60/40 red to white for multi-course sit-down meals, depending on the menu
Wine Tasting
If you are planning a wine tasting, you will need a larger selection of wines than for a regular dinner party, but do keep in mind that you will only be pouring a couple ounces per glass. There are essentially two types of wine tastings you can have...
Sit Down Tasting
These types of wine tastings are more formal and require a larger space. You will need individual glassware for each wine tasted, so if you are pouring five different wines and 10 people are attending you will need 50 glasses. Ensure the glasses are free of any foreign smell, such as soap or any chemical odor, cardboard box, or cupboard smell, this can have dramatic and adverse affect on the wine. Try and select no more than five to seven wines at any one time, this can be divided between white and red.
Print a tasting sheet or card for your guests with the vintage, producer, wine name and origin of each wine: not only does this help people keep track of the wines they have tried, but it is also a great way to quickly jot down some notes on wines as they are tasted. For an extra level of intrigue you can pour the wines blind and vote on your favourite at the end of the tasting.
Make sure you have some bread available for your guests to eat; spit buckets should be available and easily accessible for your guests to spit and dump their wine into. What I like to do is have paper coffee cups at each place setting for individual spittoons then people can safely dump their wine in the large spit bucket.
At the end of the tasting think about serving a cheese and bread plate, remember, keep it covered as the smell of the cheese will overwhelm the room and make it difficult for you to smell and taste.
Stand Up Tasting
These are easier to organize and require less work. Select the number of wines you wish to pour, five to seven wines is a good start, print up a tasting sheet, a small clip board is always an added bonus making easier to write your notes on, get a dump bucket and someone needs to be in charge of pouring the wines. You can make it a bit more fun by wrapping the bottles in a paper bag and guessing the year, grape varieties, where the wine is from the region and voting on your favourite wine, the person with the most right wins a bottle of wine.
Themed Tastings
Determining what type of tasting to have can be a bit intimidating but here are some ideas:
Regional
This is perhaps my favorite style of wine tasting, when you can pull it off. I generally incorporate dinner into my tastings. I plan for three or four flights of wine and a corresponding number of courses. Before each course is served, I allow for ample time to explore the wines, and then serve a dish that’s appropriate for the wines in question. For example...
- Prosecco -- Asparagus-stuffed shrimp wrapped with prosciutto
- Soave -- Sarde in saor (Venetian-style sardines)
- Valpolicella -- Radicchio risotto with a touch of ginger
- Amarone -- Venison pastissada and polenta
- Recioto -- Cheese plate that included Sottocenere and Mountain Gorgonzola!
Old World vs New World
There are huge distinctions in style between the "Old World" wines of France, Italy and Spain, and the "New World" wines of Australia, North and South America, and so on. The climates of New World wine regions are often warmer, which tends to result in riper, more alcoholic, full-bodied and fruit-centered wines. These wines are often made in a more highly extracted and oak-influenced style. Old World wines tend to be lighter-bodied, exhibiting more herb, earth, mineral and floral components. This kind of tasting makes for an interesting and enlightening experience!
Vertical
The vertical tasting is a classic style of wine tasting, but one that requires some effort. A vertical is simply the wines of one producer across a range of years. This is a tricky tasting. Not only can it be a challenge to assemble the wines, but you also have to worry about the how well the wines have been kept. If you can pull a vertical together it can be fascinating because you not only learn about the winemaker’s style, but having the various vintages made by the same hand lets you understand the differences between the years as well.
Horizontal
In a horizontal tasting you taste the same vintage across a range of producers. There is a lot more flexibility with horizontals than verticals. You can buy all current release wines for a horizontal tasting. Of course, you can also dig around for older wines as well.
Varietal
One of the easiest tastings to pull together is one that is simply variety-based. Gather up as many bottles as you like of the same grape -- it can span countries, vintages, and producers. This sort of tasting really can teach you all about a grape and how it works in various climates and develops under differing winemaking regimens. I find this to be the best type of tasting if it’s going to be a very casual, just hanging out type of tasting.
Producer
One of the most common styles of wine tastings is the producer-based tasting. While I put these together fairly rarely, it’s common due to all the winemaker dinners that wineries and retailers put on every year. This is a fun style of tasting where you can really learn a winemaker’s style. It’s frequently the best kind of tasting to accompany a dinner, since most wineries produce wines that are great before dinner, with various courses, and then after dinner!
Chaos
And then there is the theme of no theme. This is what usually happens when I try to get my friends together for an organized tasting! Lots of promises for this bottle and that bottle. But in the end everybody seems to bring a few bottles that they want to drink. So we happily drink a lot of random bottles. It may not be ideal, but at least we pay more attention to each other than to the wines on these occasions!