Now that you’ve bought your new True home, it’s time to meet the neighbors! The perfect excuse to have a party and invite some of your new True Homes neighbors over is for a wine tasting. Use these hosting tips to plan an interactive wine tasting night your friends and neighbors will never forget.
Who to invite?
While the idea of entertaining all of your friends and neighbors might be exciting to you, it’s a good idea to limit your guest count to 10 or fewer. Our first entertaining tip is to invite just a small, intimate group in order to encourage conversation. It also makes it easy to pour out single bottles into these portions. Once you exceed this guest count, you’ll have to think about having duplicates of each wine in order for everyone to have a taste. When hosting a wine tasting you should also think about starting small, pouring short tastes for each of your guests. Providing spit buckets is also a good idea for those guests who don’t want to get too tipsy.
Which Wines?
While you can obviously choose to serve any wines you like at your wine tasting night, it’s fun to choose a theme or to select wines that have a particular feature in common. Think about choosing wines by region, by varietal, by vintage, or by price. Based on how much you and your guests know about wine, you can choose the ones that would be best for this entertaining event.
What food?
Any wine drinker knows that wine is meant to be enjoyed with food—but which food? When planning a wine tasting, keep in mind that the perfect food match can bring out subtle characteristics in a wine and enhance your guests’ tasting experience. Here are some entertaining tips to help you choose food that pairs perfectly with your wine selection. For True Homes residents looking for a fun wine tasting party idea, try preparing a buffet of appetizers that are designed to be enjoyed with each wine you’re tasting. For example: smoked salmon on toast points with sparkling wine, Chardonnay with cheesy gratins, Pinot Noir with stone fruits and cured meats, and dessert wine with chocolate-caramel tartlets.
The Tasting
The idea of a wine tasting is to not only try different kinds of wine you like, but to find something you don’t know you like yet and to start a conversation about wine. The next wine tasting hosting tip is about how to ensure your True Homes guests are
experiencing all types of wine and sharing their thoughts about each. In order to get your True Homes friends and neighbors talking, pass out a wine tasting chart or glossary of tasting terms to help them describe the characteristics they are smelling and tasting. Another fun idea is to have a blind tasting, where each wine bottle is concealed during the tasting so your guests don’t know its varietal, vintage or producer. You could place each bottle in a brown paper bag and write a number on the front of each bag, and then have your guests describe the wines by number, asking them to guess what they think the varietal might be. At the end of the night, you could reveal the answers—maybe even offering a prize to those who guessed correctly.
Before you can host a wine tasting in your new True home, you’ve got to find a new True Homes home you love! Contact us today to see which True home suits you best.