How to Host a Blind Wine-Tasting Party
Blind wine-tasting parties can be fun, educational and a good way to show off your wine knowledge -- of lack thereof. And while you don't need blindfolds to hide your party members' eyes from the wine, you do need bags to hide the wine labels from your guests. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Brown paper bags
- Stickers
- Paper
- Snacks
- Water pitchers
- Dump buckets
- Prizes (optional)
Instructions
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Ask everyone to bring a bottle. Set a price level, such as $20 a bottle, and set some boundaries; for example, allow no brands that a major super market chain would carry. It's not that you can't find decent wine at your chain, but if everyone goes to the same grocery store, you might end up with two of the same wines. Encourage your friends to seek out wines that are unique so that everyone might learn something.
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Hand out the brown paper bags and have everyone put their wine into one. Bags not only hide the label but also can somewhat obscure the shape, thus making it slightly more difficult to identify a wine by the bottle -- Rieslings and Gewurtztraminers, for example, usually come in long, slender bottles.
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Figure out a tasting order. You do not want to try a dry Cabernet and then a sweet white wine. A good idea is to start with off-dry whites like Rieslings, move to drier whites like Chardonnay, then move onto the reds. Have some stickers for sub-categories such as "LW" for light whites, "DW" for dry whites and "R" for reds. If dessert wines are present, you might want to put those aside for last. You can use masking tape pieces instead of stickers. Have everyone put the appropriate sticker on their bag at the same spot. If someone isn't sure which category his wine should be under, have him make his best guess, or have a miscellaneous category.
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Hand out sheets of paper for guests to make their wine guesses on. After each category is done, reveal the wines. For example, after all of the guests have tried all of the whites, reveal the white wines. This often is the best approach because it allows guests to compare wines in one category to help them make their guesses.
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Start the tasting. Remember to take your time. A wine can change over 10 or 20 minutes. Let everyone discuss and maybe debate the wine being tasted. Encourage everyone to eat crackers and cheese or other little snacks and to drink water between wines. This not only helps cleanse the palate, but also can help maintain a somewhat sober party.
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Tips & Warnings
Depending on how much work you want to put into your party, you can supply the food, or have it be a potluck of appropriate wine tasting fare. This usually includes cheese and crackers or bread, maybe some cured meats, grilled vegetables, but nothing too strong as to take away from the wine. If you are doing dessert wines, someone should probably bring something sweet and probably chocolate. You should probably let guests know what category of food to bring, so everyone doesn't show up with sharp cheddar. Although, you could always tell everyone to bring a cheese, and have a similar blind tasting in cheese.
Depending on your wine glass supply, ask your guests to bring glasses or rent some glasses from a party rental business. You can always find cheap glasses at thrift stores as well. You really don't need to have a clean glass for each wine, but definitely have some water pitchers out with some "dump" buckets for the "cleaning" water.
Depending on your group, you can have prizes for the most wines correctly identified. Maybe a bottle of wine. Or maybe just bragging rights. Either way, a blind wine tasting can be both fun and educational, so start your planning.
Always provide guests the option of staying over if they imbibe too much, or call a cab.
References
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