Hosting a Wine Tasting - How to Prepare

When I was camping with a few friends earlier this summer, as we drank our wine in the evening after some light hiking, we talked about the possibility of getting together every so often to taste wine. We did this at the camp each night we were there and it was a lot of fun. We also learned about wine and came up with some common ground in terms of smells and tastes.

Shortly after the trip was over I invited my friends and their wives for a tasting evening - and that is happening tonight.

There will be five couples in all so this is how I organized it:

First pair of wines will be Sauvignon Blanc - I asked one couple to bring one from the New World and one from the Old World.
Next pair of wines will be Pinot Noir - I asked one couple to bring one from the New World and I will supply one from the Old World.
Finally, -we are going to do Syrah/Shiraz -  I asked one couple to bring one from the Australia and I will supply one from the Old World.

Yes, I have to supply two bottles but I figured that's the host's responsibility with an odd number of people.

I asked that people spend between $20 and $30 so we will be hopefully getting a decent representation. If a person were to do this themselves, they could pick anything - it doesn't have to be the same varietal in each pair or they could do six different Pinot Noir wines in one night. Since this is the first time I have hosted, I thought doing three different wines would make it a little more interesting.

Next thing I did was to make up a wine mat. I went online and took some information from a couple of different mats and then added my own. Here's what I had:

• two circles for the wine glasses (I bought the small ones from IKEA - 6 for $5) so that everyone had two glasses and could compare. The IKEA ones are fairly small and super cheap so if you break them, it's not the end of the world.
• a box with columns for the number of the wine and rows for appearance, nose, palate and finish. I didn't want to make this overly complicated - in fact, I will suggest that people just put a high, medium or low rating - if they rate each wine at all. Perhaps people can just check the box after we talk about each row.aromas to draw from - although I'm not sure about gooseberry
• overall rating - BLICE - this is the overall rating that we used in WSET 2 to decide if a wine was outstanding (all 5 rated high), very good (3 or 4 rated high), good (2 rated high), adequate (1 rated high) or poor (none rated high). 

Well, you might thing, that's all well and good, but what does BLICE stand for?

• Balance - are the flavours balanced? Is the acidity balanced with some sweetness? Is the alcohol the right strength? Is it overly oaked? 
• Length - is the finish long enough? Can you still taste the wine after 30 seconds? a minute? The taste of the wine should be pleasant.
• Intensity - is the aroma strong? Does the taste really impact your mouth?
• Complexity - are there several flavours/aromas in the wine? If it just tastes of strawberries or oak, it is probably not very complex.
• Expressiveness - from what you know about this type of wine, does it taste similar to them.

I set up the wine mats, and then put the two IKEA glasses down, a water glass, a Solo cup for a spit cup, some crackers and a jug of water.

When guests arrive, I will take their wine and put each bottle in a paper bag that I procured from the BC Liquor store. Hopefully, I will remember to label each bag as well. The plan is to go over what is on the wine tasting mat, then pour two of the Sauvignon Blanc (the first wine) and discuss. Then repeat. And again!  I bought wine pourers from the liquor store so I will have to see if that makes a difference.

I plan to do all six wines at the beginning of the evening. If I make fairly small pours, hopefully there will be enough for people to be able to get another glass of their favourites.

After we taste all of the wines (and people are encouraged to spit, if need be) we will serve a number of cheeses, meats and pulled pork sandwiches as well. This is meant to be an informal night so we wanted to serve food that will be easy to prepare and that people can dig into while they drink their wine.  We also bought some regular sized universal wine glasses (from Costco - and they were not all that expensive) for guests to use as they sip and nosh.

We do have a couple other bottles of wine on hand as we really don't know how this will go. And you certainly don't want to run out of wine!

I''m pretty excited about this evening - I think it will be a lot of fun and I hope that we will all learn something!