Planning a wine tasting party can be a whole lot of fun as well as giving you and your guests the opportunity to learn more about different wines.  Your friends and family will enjoy it too.

Now you can do this two ways, well possibly more than two, but for now we’ll just stick with two.

If you have been madly brewing your own wine and have a good variety ready you can have your wine tasting party with your own wines and your guests can let you know how your wine making is going.

Or….you can ask your guests to bring along a bottle of wine.

For the second option, you may wish to choose a theme, say all whites or all reds then ask your guests to bring along a bottle but keep to a budget say nothing over $15, maybe something they have been wanting to try.  Keep the numbers down, maybe eight to ten guests.

You will need to have everything set up when the guests arrive.

What will be needed for you to set up:

• Wines, about six bottles
• Wine glasses, one for each guest plus a charm so the guest will know their glass, if you are having both white and red wines, then maybe two glasses for each guest or the disposable wine glasses.
• Plain water crackers and maybe some mild cheeses to cleanse the palete between wines
• Bucket for discarding wines between each variety
• Score cards, pens and extra paper
• Paper bags, table napkins to cover the labels if you are blind tasting.
• Jugs of water if any guests wish to rinse their glass or mouth between tastings.

There should be enough glasses for each person to try each wine, so disposable wine glasses are acceptable, of course if you have a good supply of wine glasses, both red and white, then by all means go for the real thing, much nicer.  Each different type of wine should have a fresh wine glass.

Next you need plain water crackers and maybe mild cheeses, these cleanse the palette between tastings.  Wine is known to leave a taste in the mouth, it compliments the food but can interrupt the flavor of the next wine.

Now you can turn this into a really fun night by making it into a contest.  Hide the labels on the wine bottles with table napkins or paper bags and give each bottle a number.  You, the organizer is the only one who knows which wine is which.  Provide each guest with a numbered list score card and ask them to rate each wine and guess what type of wine.  Ratings from one to ten, ten being the best.

People will be surprised at how high a very reasonably priced wine can be rated and tell them not to feel badly as this happens to the top wine gurus too.  I have seen a very moderately priced wine as the top pick and an expensive wine that gets consumed because of its name, with a very low rating. But it is all in the taste buds of the consumer.

This is a fun night for all, a wine tasting party takes a little organizing for the host but it is such a good night, especially if your guests do not know each other very well, gets them mixing and talking in a more relaxed way.

Also if you are using your own wines, then all the more fun as you get a good idea of how you are going with your home wine making.