Wines for a festive blind taste test.
Everyone can enjoy Wine Tasting.
Here is a sure fire way to conduct a Wine Tasting Party as a friend’s EVENT!
What better time than a holiday gathering.
You will need:
•Five or more bottles of wine
•Plain crackers – no flavors and unsalted (“Carrs Water Crackers”, “Vermont Crackers,” unsalted Saltines, etc.)
•Brown paper – supermarket bags or butcher paper. Or Any festive holiday paper, fabric or wrapping. Use your imagination to color theme your party.
•Scissors and scotch tape
•Black pen
•Score sheets – download here (Adobe Reader Required)
•Pens,pencils, or even crayons, for everyone
•A spit-Opaque vessel
•Wine glasses- choose a nice tulip shaped stemmed wineglass
•A pitcher of water- no ice.
•A number of friends
1. First you decide what type tasting you wish to host: pick a winery, vintage year, varietal, AVA or country, to taste. Today we explain how to “blind” taste a winery.
2. If you are doing a winery, you pick up five bottles, or more, from a single winery. DEFINITION: Winery; all selections bottled by the same winery
3. Remove the cork covering, called a Capsule, from each bottle. Do not uncork the bottles yet. Wrap the bottles all the way up to the neck in paper; Brown paper bags from the supermarket works well or get creative. Do one bottle at a time and write A,B, C, or 1,2, 3, ….etc. on the outside of the paper. Put a decorative ribbon around the neck for fun and plenty of tape to keep the wines identity secret.
4. Print out enough copies of the score card PDF above. Each guest needs one per wine. Also locate enough pencils for everyone. A fun thing is to roll each guest set of score cards, pencil, and tasting “name card badge” and tie with a decorative ribbon set at each place around a table with tasting glasses-
5. 30 minutes before your guest arrive, uncork each bottle. Set the bottles out on a table- make it the focal point in the middle of the table. Also set out a pitcher of water and a big ”spit vesse;” or individual discard cups for people to discard their wine samples. The idea is to score the wines first by spitting out samples (not get sloshed!), the fun comes after the wines are “judged and placed” so everyone can help finish the bottles later.
6. At this point you have to decide how the party is going to run. Most tastes are run white to red and last the sweets. But you can simpley run then 1,2, 3…alphabetically or however you choose to label them when you wrapped them. The fun is to start wine-discussion between guests but actual scores are confidential to each taster. Have each person silently score the wine after each taste and before you move onto the next selection. It promotes learning but mainly the fun is sharing comments with each other as a group at the end.
Remember, just a little taste for each person- about one finger in bartender terms. You might explain how to “swirl, sip, baste ones tongue,” and then spit, score and rinse. A rinse of the glass with a splash of water is important if you are doing fruits, whites and reds, and a dry cracker chewed between samples is the professional mode for “clearing the palate” between samples. A good reference is “Wine for Dummies” or Sommeliers Prep Course.”7. Once everyone has tasted and scored every bottle individually, have each person rank their choices.
Each person must pick one as their best.
Each should also pick and place each wine as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and everyone can place any of them as ”Blah, no score”- Average your scores and award your medals.
You can decide ahead of time to pick additional “placing catagory” and vote as a group to award “Best Dessert or Sweet Wine” or “Best Party Wine” or make up another catagory for fun.
TIP: Make your own Tasting Medals ( a simple circle of colored paper on a ribbon) Medal your winners in Olympic style on a table centerpiece. And even make a few of them as favors, to designate every party member as “Official Wine Taste of ______Your Event Name_____” and present the medal tags as everyone arrives at your party.
8. As the host, when the wines are displayed and placed, you now unwrap each bottle to expose the labels and let the real fun begin. Let everyone read and share their indivual scores, read the wine back label descriptions, and pour up the rest of the bottles! Make sure you provide some feedback, good or bad, to the winery you have scored.
Raise your glass….Cheers!
Wines judged and displayed with medals.
