As you can probably tell by the content on our site, wine and parties are a big part of our life. But we would be remiss if we didn’t mention how important sharing time with our friends plays in all this as well. In today’s post I wanted to share a couple ideas for wine centric parties that have a proven track record at our house. We usually have around 16-20 people and we always have a blast.
Our wine tasting dinner, which we call Tapas and Tasting, consists of about 12-14 different wines paired with 6-7 small plates. The amount of small plates is usually dictated by the number of guests. The more bottles of wine we are going to drink, the more food I need to make. It is no small undertaking, and takes several weeks of planning to pull off. I could definitely pair it down a little, if I wanted to, but I enjoy doing it so much that I usually go overboard. You have the ability to make your tasting as simple or complex as you want. And I’ll help you with both.
The theme of the tasting is the first thing that is decided. Without the theme I am unable to plan the menu for the event. We have done a few different themes that have been really fun and interactive with our guests. We always provide the food and assign the wine to our guests. It helps cut down on the cost for the host, and you get such a great variety of wines that you may have never tried by having everyone participate. Plus I find that my friends always want to bring something and chipping in with the event makes everyone happy.
For each of these themes I suggest starting with a sparkling when everyone arrives with light appetizers. In my experience, everyone is ready to start tasting, but not everyone has arrived so I do this to get the party started.
Theme #1 – Head to Head Match Up
This is probably the simplest theme and the easiest to pull off, if you are hosting your first tasting event. Assign 2-3 guests attending your event the same varietal. A varietal is a wine that is primarily made up of one grape and is labeled so on the bottle. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Chardonnay are some popular examples. Then during your event you will taste the same varietals at the same time. This will allow all of your guests to see how different the same varietal will taste, and also how they pair with the food. It’s fun to see how different a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand tastes compared to one from France.
Theme #2 – Country Showdown
This could be the hardest theme to pull off, but can be very interesting if you are just learning and experimenting with wine. You can do something similar to the varietal head to head, but you bring it up a notch. Along with giving everyone a varietal to bring you also tell them what wine region that it needs to come from. You can make this simply a country or can you make it more specific and select a wine region within that country. For example you could say Malbec from Argentina or you could be more specific and say it has to be from Mendoza, Argentina. Or even more exact by saying it needs to come from the Uco Valley. If you have guests that are new to wine, I suggest just giving them the more commonly available region/countries that they can easily find at their local grocery store. The foodie side of me loves this theme because I can create a course specifically themed to the country’s selected to go with the wines. (ie. Pasta with Italian, or chimichurri with Argentina)
Theme # 3 – Does Price Matter?
Each couple is assigned to bring two bottles of wine. Assign them a varietal and a price range for each wine. I suggest one bottle under $10 and one bottle over $25 to be served against each other at each course. This should be done as a blind tasting. You can put all the bottles in paper bags or you can also buy cute wine gift bags. I like to be simple and use paper lunch bags for all of my blind tastings. With a sharpie marker, assign each wine a number so we know what course it will go with. After each course you can vote on which wine you thought was the under $10, and which bottle was the over $25. It is fun to see everyone’s opinion of the wine and how everyone determines which wine is which. We unveil the results before the next course and everyone has fun finding out if they were wrong or right.
No matter what theme you go with I guarantee your guests will have fun. If you have any questions or need suggestions for variations please comment below and I will help you out. Sign up for our newsletter for info on our future segment on how to create the menus for these themes.
