Hosting a Blind Wine Tasting Party

Back in January, I hosted a wine tasting party with a group of my friends! I had been excited about this for a while and thought it would be a fun thing to do while the weather was still cold and all we wanted to do was be inside. It was one of the most fun nights I have had in a long time and all my friends who attended constantly ask me when I'm hosting the next one! 

We had a mix of people from what I would consider wine experts to complete novices. Everyone brought a bottle of wine of their choice to contribute to the tasting. We had an array of food that people could snack on while drinking, which was definitely a good call. After hosting this once, I have a lot of suggestions and thoughts on how I would do this next time. 

Choosing a Theme 

Choosing a theme is a key aspect of having a successful blind wine tasting. For our first party, we decided to do "Wines from around the World." Even though this theme was very clear, over half of the wines were from the US, so the wines were not as diverse as I had anticipated. If I was to do the same theme again, I would assign each couple a country known for their wine and let them decide the varietal. For my next tasting, I want to do Virginia Wines and keep it local! Plus that's my speciality so hopefully I would do better at guessing the varietal this time around. Other ideas I had were just sticking with red or white wines, picking a different wine region, or just choosing a varietal and tasting how different it tastes depending on the country of origin. 

Scoring the Wine

Something I had really wanted to do for the party was have a place where people could write their wine notes and score the wines. Then you don't get confused between that 2nd wine you tried and the 5th when they all start blending together. I also wanted to make a little competition out of it and have people guess the varietals and country of origin. The prize was the winner got to pick which wine they wanted a glass of first, but you could definitely do something more exciting like a bottle of wine! In the end of course we ended up finishing all 10 bottles, but you could definitely tell which ones were the favorites. 

If you want to download and use my "Wine Scorecard," click here. 

Other Necessary Items

Food. Definitely food. Let's be honest, when you are drinking lots of wine, you will get hungry! My wonderful friends brought over lots of snacks and food for the tasting. My mom had texted to remind me to have food but make sure you only eat neutral foods like bread between tasting so that you don't skew the flavors. When you are tasting 10 wines, you definitely really crave that food by the end. Try and encourage people to enjoy it once they choose which wine they want to drink more of and have bread for those times in between tastings. 

Another thing I absolutely loved were my cloth wine bags to put the bottles in! I bought them off amazon for about $13 for a pack of 10. Plus, they are washable and you could even reuse them at future parties or for gifting wine. I could not have imaged doing it without them!