Wine Tasting Party Ideas
So you want to throw a wine party. Maybe you’re a wine aficionado and want to bring friends together for a wine pairing dinner. Perhaps you have some Cheese-Its and a bag of wine and want to invite friends over to share. Friend’s birthday party and they love wine and you want to make it fun? Or maybe you love wine tasting, but want to do a wine tasting in the comfort of your own home. Whatever the occasion, you need ideas and guidance to turn your wine tasting party dreams into a reality. Enter: This guide to ideas for throwing a wine tasting party at home!
At-Home Wine Tasting Party Idea Guide
In the first section, we will provide a bunch of fun ideas for throwing a wine tasting party at home. This is most of the guide.
In the final part, we will dive into some of the details of how to throw a good wine tasting party and provide resources to help you throw your at home wine tasting party.
Fun Ideas For Wine Tasting Parties
Hosting a wine tasting party can be a great excuse to get together with friends or family and enjoy each others’ company. Most cultures have long traditions of friends and family sharing food and drink together for the reason that it is one of the great simple joys of life!
Wine in particular has a long tradition of being enjoyed with food and amidst gatherings of people. For one, wine has the classic effect of alcohol, acting as a social lubricant, causing conversation to flow and smiles to abound. Beyond that, turning your social drinking event into a wine tasting and ideally food pairing as well, can really elevate the experience by creating a theme and conversation topic for the event. Sharing wine and food is truly a great joy and fun way to connect with your friends & family.
With that in mind, and without further ado, here is our list of fun ideas for at home wine tasting parties:
Wine & Food Pairing Dinner Party: This can be a great recurring event. Maybe in your younger years you threw a house party or went to a rave, but over time you found those to be too much mindless partying, and wanted to start having friends over in a more thoughtful setting full of conversation and laughter. A wine and food pairing party, or wine dinner party, is a perfect match for this desire. One way to do this is the take turns once a month hosting. Whoever hosts that month, makes dinner, and guests bring wine. To take it up a notch, make 3 to 5 dishes, and have each guest bring a wine to pair with each dish. To make it more casual, make it a potluck: everyone bring 1 dish and 1 bottle of wine.
Trashy Wine & Cheese Party: Not into the whole classy thing? Throw a more casual wine and cheese party! Have everyone bring a wine and cheese, but insist that no corks are allowed (only screwtop bottles or bags of wine), and no “proper” cheeses (think cheeze-wiz, cheese-its, velveeta, American cheese, so on). Pour your wine into ridiculous cocktail glasses, use crazy straws, just get wild with your trashy wine & cheese party!
Classy Wine & Cheese Party: Similar to the trashy wine and cheese party, but classy. Everyone brings a wine and a nice cheese (gouda, asiago, brie, manchego, bleu cheese, goat cheese, sheep’s milk cheese, etc). Eat, drink, and be merry! Wanting to make it more organized & formal? Steal a page from the wine tasting contest party idea, and add a voting/rating system to the event.
Classy or Trashy Wine Tasting: Buy wine in pairs, one expensive and one cheap. For example, buy a $5 Cabernet Sauvignon and a $50 Cabernet Sauvignon. So on for various wine types (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, etc). Have everyone try the matching wines at the same time, and cast their vote for which is the “classy” expensive wine and which is the “trashy” cheap wine. You will be surprised how hard it is to guess!
Wine Tasting Contest—Blind Tasting Party: Have each guest bring a bottle of wine, any bottle of wine, but keep it hidden. An easy way to do this is with a bunch of brown paper bags scrunched around the neck of the bottle so the label is hidden. Number the bags. Have them pour a small amount of each wine into their glass, and take a taste of each wine. Give everyone a piece of paper and a pencil or pen, and have them write down their favorites, casting as many “favorite” votes as they want. Once everyone has tasted, announce that the competition has started. Go down the list wine by wine and have everyone raise their hand to vote for their favorite. The wine with the most favorite votes is the winner! For added flair, add prizes for the winner.
Varietal Wine Tasting: Have everyone bring a bottle of the same type (varietal, variety) of wine. This is extra interesting if everyone gets their bottle from a different country, region, vintage or style. For example, have everyone bring a Cabernet Sauvignon. This can be a great way to get to know the range of flavors available within a particular variety of wine. Put all of the bottles out and enjoy them casually if you’re looking for something more informal, or all sit down together and taste them as a group if you want to be a little more focused, educational and on-theme. You can even go around the table each commenting on the wine, getting your thoughts on it, then moving on to the next wine
Country-themed Wine Tasting: Much like the varietal wine tasting, but with a country. France, Italy and Spain are classics of course, but you can go non-traditional by choosing only Argentinean wines, or Australia wines, or wines from New Zealand.
At-Home Wine Tasting Kits & Food Pairing Packs: Some wineries and ecommerce retailers sell at-home wine and food pairings. We here at Voluptuary & Lucid Winery specialize in these. Our kits include 5 different wines which you can taste through, and our food pairing packs pair with the wines. The kits come along with music pairings, life pairings, literary pairings, and food pairings, giving you a turn-key wine tasting experience and wine and food pairings. You can even watch along with our wine tasting video! The nice thing about at home win tasting kits is that they are single serving, so you don’t have to invest in 5 entire bottles of wine. This is especially useful if you aren’t able to gather all of your friends in one room; each can order their own kit, and you can all gather on Zoom or another video platform and enjoy the wine tasting kits together, virtually! This option is best for date nights, birthday gifts, holiday gifts and other special occasions for small groups or individuals.
Hosted Group Tasting Virtual Wine Tasting: If you like the at-home wine tasting kit idea but wish you could have someone to lead you through the wines personally, then a hosted private virtual tasting may be the choice for you. You can order the at home wine tasting kits for each person joining or buy full bottles. Then, you hop on a Zoom video call (or other platform) and a sommelier or winemaker will lead you through the wine tasting. This option works great if you would like a little more structure to your wine tasting event, or want to be able to make the virtual wine event smooth, easy and turn-key. You can learn more about our hosted virtual wine tastings here.
Hosting The Wine Tasting Party
Once you have decided on your style of wine tasting party, next comes execution of the event. It doesn’t have to be too complicated, but you don’t want everyone the show up and not be ready! Here are a few easy guidelines:
Have glassware & openers: This is relatively straightforward: just make sure that you have enough wine glasses for everyone attending. Ideally, everyone’s glass would be the same type and size, so that you all are experiencing the wine in the same way (the size and shape of a wine glass can substantially change the way a wine tastes, believe it or not!). This is especially important for blind tastings or competitions, where you want consistency. But in a pinch, it’s not too critical: you can drink wine out of a wine glass, mason jar, cocktail snifter or dixie cups if you need to! It will totally depend on whether you want to throw a more casual or more classy wine tasting event. If classy, stick with stemmed wine glasses. If casual (like the trashy wine & cheese party), go wild and use dixie cups and crazy straws! Lastly, if you are buying wine with corks, you will need a wine bottle opener (wine key). Our wine party essentials makes this part easy.
Have food: Wine is just better with food, let’s be honest. Plus, having food will help keep the party under control, as the food will slow the body’s absorption of the wine, resulting in a more balanced experience and decreasing the likelihood of hangovers. After all, you want everyone to have a great experience and come back for the next party! Our wine & food pairing kits make this part easy.
Have platters & plates for the food: Cutting boards work great for cheese & appetizers, and small plates for everyone to serve themselves and eat off of. For full meals, plan to set a table with plates, forks and knives. Our at-home tasting kits & food pairings packs come with cute bamboo serving utensils, making it easy!
Bring enough wine: Your wine tasting party won’t last very long if you run out of wine! Therefore, bring enough wine to keep the party going. The perfect amount will depend somewhat on whether you are lighter or heavier drinkers, but is typically between 2-5 glasses of wine per person. A bottle of wine holds 5 standard glasses, so if you bring a bottle per person that should be plenty. If people are planning to drive, you should keep it in the 1-3 glasses of wine per person range, and maybe invest in a breathalyzer! Much better is to have everyone carpool, have designated drivers, or use rideshare services such as Uber or Lyft, particularly if you plan on having 3-5 glasses of wine per person or more. If you plan to have the party end in a slumber party, then maybe plan on 2 bottles of wine per person! If you decide to go with our wine tasting kits, you can choose between single serving tasters, larger “glass sized” tasters, or full bottles depending on your group size and if you are all in one place.
Invite your friends! Don’t forget to invite your friends! We find that anywhere from 4-12 people is the perfect amount. Since people may have other plans, you’ll probably want to invite a few more people than you want to come, since a few will inevitably be busy or have something come up.
Enjoy! Eat, drink and be merry! Most of all, have fun! Wine can seem intimidating on the surface, so throwing a wine tasting party might seem complex. But when it boils down to it, we are talking about eating and drinking, something we do every day, and sharing that food and wine with good people, friends & family! The wine and food will add that extra flair and theme to make your party extra fun and memorable.