Party Planning
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 TastingsDetermining what type of tasting to have can be a bit intimidating but here are some ideas for you.
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