If yes, then look at trying out your new found wine knowledge with a Wine Tasting Party. If you don’t really know how to go about it or your wine knowledge low , a Wine Information-Wine Beginners Wine Blog will supply you with the basic wine information you need. We will discussed the basic wine tasting steps here but there is a great book available called Wine Tasting With Friends. Click the title for further information on how to order book.
Lets get back to the wine tasting. If you have been casting about in your mind for some way to entertain your friends and to look good doing it, consider a wine tasting party?
The first thing you do when people show up with all the bottles of wine is to make sure everything is anonymous. Every wine bottle is to be covered in a paper bag.(ask your local wine/liquor store for a few). Mark the bags with numbers to keep them straight. I suggest tasting all the Cabernets together and all the Pinot Noirs together. Makes the wine comparison easier. If you are going to use red and whites drink the white wines first the reds.
Now that you have a theme, you need to start planning for a wine tasting party that will bring out the best in your theme. You don’t do a wine tasting party to try to be pretentious. It’s really all about the guests learning how to really appreciate life’s finer pleasures. It is about learning how wines can be different in subtle and noticeable ways. So your wines are covered. This way, people won’t look at the label and say to themselves, “Oh, this is a Cabernet – I’ve heard it’s supposed to be a world-famous wine; I’d better say I like it!”. With the bottles all covered up, people can judge the wines they taste just by the way they taste. Like or don’t like!
For each bottle of wine , you need to have a space listed on a tasting sheet. This way, everyone can note down what they thought of each wine. Before you actually get to the tasting part, you are supposed to savor the wine in other ways. Wine connoisseurs take a lot of pleasure in the color and clarity of the wine, and the bouquet or aroma of it. They hold it up against the light to see the color. They swirl it around in their glass to release the bouquet. (trick here is have your guests put the glass on a table and swirl the glass around – a lot less dangerous) The goal is to smell all kinds of scents. Make sure your tasting sheet has a area for each of those steps. Color – Clarity – Bouquet – Taste – Like – Don’t Like.
Again check out the Wine Information – Wine Beginners Wine Blog for more helpful information and wine terms to bring you up to speed. May want to print out the wine terms to have available. Also make sure you read the section on using the wine’s back label and the winemakers notes.
There is quite a bit of a debate around wine tasting do with whether you’re supposed to drink in every sip or spit it out. Most people agree that you can’t have a wine tasting event where everyone drinks everything they taste. They’d be drunk in no time. You probably want to have a dump bucket for everyone so that they can spit. And make sure that everyone has plenty of water to drink between sips, crackers and cheese to clear their palate and also water to rinse glasses in-between wines.
Then comes the tasting. Doing a wine tasting on the first couple of wines may feel like you need a cheat sheet from The Wine Guide. ( print out the wine terms) But you don’t even need to put on any airs. Wine isn’t just for snooty rich people anymore. It’s for everyone. And everyone needs to learn. Remember wine is an opinion and every one’s opinion differs. The best thing you can come up with is do you like the wine or do you not. Salute!
