Learning About Wine While Enjoying It
Wine tasting parties do not have to be solemn gatherings of pompous individuals swirling, spitting, and uttering terms like “carbonic maceration” in reverential tones. A wine tasting party can be anything you want it to be.
Start with your intention. Do you want your event to be educational in nature so that your guests come away having learned something new about wine? Would you rather assemble a bunch of different wines and let your guests learn something by guzzling the wines on their own? There's room for both of these approaches, and everything in between.
When you're planning your wine purchases, remember that a “tasting” serving is much smaller than the typical four- or five-ounce glass of wine. About two ounces is the norm. You can get 12 servings from a standard bottle. Buy a little extra just in case one of your guests wants to come back for another taste.
“Traditional” Wine Tastings
Traditional wine tastings tend to have a structure, and they need a leader — someone knowledgeable about the wines being served who can facilitate discussion and answer questions. If you're not comfortable in that role, perhaps one of your friends would be thrilled to play host. (Make sure the person in the lead role has a sense of humor and is willing to go with the flow of your party.)
Whom do you invite? Anyone — regardless of their wine sophistication — who has an interest in sampling and learning about wine. How many wines do you serve? As many as you want — but five or six wines work well.
Food has a place at a wine tasting. It can be as simple as some unsalted crackers for guests to cleanse their palates between wines. At a structured tasting, you don't want the food to interfere. But an alternative “theme” would be a food and wine tasting to see how certain flavors — salty, fatty, acidic — affect the taste of the wines.
Seat guests at a table with empty wineglasses in front of them — one for each wine if possible. It is possible to rent the proper glassware if you don't have enough. If want to taste both reds and whites, two glasses per person will work best. In any case, have a pitcher on the table to rinse the glasses between wines. And, of course, a dump bucket for the water (or, heaven forbid, a wine).
As with the sequence of wines for a dinner party, the general guidelines are white before red, light before heavy, and dry before sweet. In selecting the wines, you might want to consider a theme. Consider these traditional options:
Vertical tasting — You serve several bottles of the same wine from the same producer, only from different vintages. For example, you could serve a Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley from 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. The objective is to identify the wine's traits that appear from year to year — or the differences from one year to the next.
Horizontal tasting — You serve the same kind of wine from the same year from the same general area but from different producers — say Pinot Noirs from Oregon's Willamette Valley from the 2003 vintage from different wineries.
Blind tasting — You keep the identity of the wines secret while they're being tasted. That way no one is influenced by the reputation of a particular winery or region or vintage. Go ahead, include a jug wine in the tasting and see how it compares in the judging.
