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Wine tasting parties are all the rage these days. Lifestyle mags offer tips for throwing them, and our friends seem to go to them all the time (why aren't we invited?).
It's not hard to figure out the appeal. You get a bunch of people together in a friendly environment with a half-dozen or so bottles of wine, and people get to unearth new finds or expand their tastes a bit.
But unless you've hosted a few of these, you might need some help to make sure you remember all the details. Local company SmartsCo offers a hand in the form of WineParty ($25.50), a great, all-in-one kit for throwing a wine-tasting party. Just add wine, says the label, and you're good to go. (Glasses probably aren't a bad idea, either, unless you're doing a "6th and Market" theme.)
Photo by Melissa Schneider
In addition to wine party paraphernalia—notepads, glass identifiers, wrappers to hide the labels—the brightly colored, retro-motif box offers a small pamphlet on how to throw a party, a short guide to tasting wine properly, and flavor charts to help your guests describe the wines they're tasting, sort of consumer-friendly repackagings of Ann Noble's Aroma Wheel with some helpful wine geek terminology ("finish," "body," and "balanced," for example).
The key to the package is the "Hosting Your WineParty" pamphlet, which gives you good advice for a successful event. The authors offer tips for planning the party, a short, practical guide to choosing food, and a primer on corked wines. They emphasize a fun, casual event, free of snobbery and oneupmanship, and they offer ideas for vinous themes as well as simple contests with prizes for people who correctly guess the most or least expensive wine, or who correctly identify the most number of covered bottles. This SFist, who teaches wine tasting classes, was happy to see that they offer more professional advice than the "Throw a Wine-tasting Party!" blurbs in style magazines. They encourage you to spit, which keeps you sober and your palate fresh, and they even suggest you don't rinse your glass with water, something that we've seen many a taster do.
We'd add one bit of advice: Keep the wrapped bottles far away from the guests. The vinyl smell is so overpowering that your guests will think every wine smells like Band-Aids. We're also annoyed by the lack of reusability: The box will probably get you through three or four parties before you run out of glass identifiers or wrappers. But those are our only complaints. If you want to throw a wine-tasting party, but don't know how to start, WineParty will get you going better than a tiny suggestion in a magazine. And by the time you've used up your supplies, you'll be able to run a party solo.
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"6th and Market theme"
LOL...{Guffaw}
Could you please clarify on the rinsing with water rule? I didn't realize that was a no-no. Does the trace amount of water left in the glass taint the next wine more than trace amounts of the previous wine would have?
Any thoughts about the Chronicle Books kit? (http://www.chroniclebooks.com/site/catalog/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&products_id=5217&store=books) It doesn't look as purty, but the bottle covers appear to be reusable...
Rory,
Sure. Water dilutes the flavors of the wine more than wine does (also, it seems like when you rinse with water you end up with more in the glass than when you rinse with wine--a surface tension thing?).
So normally at a tasting I'll just dump out the wine I've got; sometimes you end with a little splish in there but probably not enough to affect the flavor of the wine. However, if you're going from a stronger wine (say, a Zinfandel) to a lighter wine (say a sauvignon blanc), it's probably best to rinse your glass with a little of the lighter before you get a pour in your glass. But still, rinse with wine.
I hadn't seen the Chronicle one, but it looks like it might be a good deal: Same price and more reusable. I'll keep an eye out for it.
Thanks for the explanation, makes sense I guess.