With the arrival of fall, your friends are ready for a nice indoor party. You want a reason to gather everyone together that doesn’t involve costumes and jack-o-lanterns. How about hosting a wine tasting party? It’s the perfect party for several reasons. It’s an easy one to organize. You won’t have to spend days in the kitchen cooking ahead of time. Best of all, wine tasting together makes for a great way to socialize and interact. Add a few other party elements and you have straight-up success.

Are you ready to start planning? Learn how to host a wine tasting party that will be the hit of the season by reading on. 

Decide On a Theme

Like most parties, a wine tasting party can be more focused and easier to plan with a theme. This theme can go in many directions. 

You might want to serve only French wines and then offer up French cheeses too. You might decide you want to have an Italian themed event, with Italian wine and Italian fare for food. Consider choosing a region to base your theme on.

Once you have decided on a theme, get going on invitations. One fun idea is to snap a photo of some of the wine you hope to serve, then use that as the backdrop for the invites.

Visit this website to learn how to add text on photo for invites that are creative and easy.

Select Wines

You will likely want to select wines from to go along with your theme. If you don’t know wine, consider visiting a local wine store for suggestions and ideas. 

You want to have around five wines to test at the party. Too many more than that can overwhelm your guest’s palate. If you are hosting a true tasting party, then each taste should be around one ounce. That means you need one bottle for every 10 people, of each kind you will be tasting. 

If you suspect your guests will want larger tastes, remember a bottle of wine can serve between four to five normal size glasses of wine. 

Plan Food to Accompany the Wine

This is not the kind of party where you need lots of food or fancy food. For a tasting party, you want food that is easy to pick up and pop in the mouth between wine tastings. 

Consider foods like different cheeses and plain crackers that will allow your guests to clear their palate between tastings. 

If you are serving red wines, consider having small pieces of good dark chocolate. This is the perfect pairing for heavier reds. 

Glassware, Dump buckets and Other Necessaries

You are probably already thinking I don’t have that many wine glasses! You really only need one or two glasses for each guess. Provide a dump bucket so if someone gets a wine they don’t like they can pour it out. 

Guests in the real spirit of wine tasting might want a spit bucket too. It is completely acceptable when wine tasting to have the wine in your mouth, let it hit your palate, then spit it out without swallowing it.

Have Some Fun with Educating and Rating

A fun feature for your party might be to make cards with information about each wine. You can teach your guests how to talk about wines with a wine vocabulary list. 

You could create a fun rating system. Then once everyone has tried a wine, everyone could vote or rate the wines. 

Another fun idea is to make sure you know the proper way to taste wine. Teach your guests to smell, swirl, look for legs and sip. 

How to Host a Wine Tasting Party Everyone Will Want to Attend

Want to know how to host a wine tasting party without lots of hassle? It can be as easy as buying some wines you like or want to try. Buying some good cheese and start calling your friends. 

This is the perfect social party, taste, and talk. Start planning yours today. To learn more about wine, visit our Beverage tab.