Credit: Peter LaMastro
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Okay, we know you have tons of friends to invite, but it’s best to have a manageable number for focus—and a really great time. So determine your ideal number of guests to know how much wine and supplies you’ll need. Remember, one bottle yields about 10 to 12 glasses for tasting, or 5 glasses (standard 5-ounce wineglass) for drinking. Twelve guests make for a good gathering. And this list of party-planning must-haves will help ensure that things go smoothly:
PARTY ESSENTIALS
• Invitations (stationary stores often carry them with a nice wine motif)
• Corkscrew (waiter corkscrews come in various styles and prices)
• Clear wine glasses with stems (the stemmed glasses help with swirling)
• Pitchers or bottles of water
• “Dump” buckets (opaque vase with a wide mouth: for guests to pour out wine they no longer want to drink)
• Ice buckets and coolers: for keeping white, rosé and sparkling wines chilled
• Bottle covers (they can be little brown paper bags or reusable cloth covers, but adding the element of not knowing what you’re tasting makes the experience a lot more exciting.)
• Pens or pencils and paper or miniature note pads: (for guests’ note taking)
• Music (start with smooth jazz to ease guests as they start sipping, then transition to pop, rock, R&B, or whatever music you and your guests like when everyone’s more relaxed, and really enjoying themeselves)
• Soft, mood-enhancing lighting will make for a mellow and inviting environment
• Fresh-cut flowers
• (Wine-tasting party kits, available in many wine stores and book stores, often include items like note-taking paper, a cheat-sheet of terms and bottle covers.)
SELECT THE RIGHT GLASSES
Wine glasses are specifically designed to enhance the experience of each type of wine. For example, for red wines you could use a 14-ounce balloon-bowl type of glass, which would allow you to swirl your wine more. You can buy inexpensive glasses: Target has Vivant, a line of Riedel glasses (the state-of-the-art wine-glassware company), target.com. Or you can rent glasses from local party-supply stores like classicpartyrentals.com. And remember, selecting your glasses is part of the fun!
Credit: Peter LaMastro
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TO CHILL OR NOT TO CHILL
Red Wines are best served at 55°F to 65°F.
White Wines and Blush Wines are best served at 45°F to 50°F.
Champagne is best served at 45°F.
WINESPEAK
Talk the talk! To record your tasting notes and have really cool wine-savvy chats, here are the words and lingo of the pros (and wannabes like us).
• Acidity: Balanced acidity makes a wine taste refreshing and crisp.
• Aeration: process of letting a wine breathe by leaving it open right before serving
• Aftertaste: the flavors that linger in your mouth after you swallow wine
• Alcohol: Boldly flavored wines, like zinfandel, taste balanced with a relatively high degree of alcohol (13 to 14 percent), but subtler wines, like whites and light reds, will taste too strong with hot aftertastes if the alcohol level is too high.
• Astringent: having mouth-puckering dryness
• Balance: the way in which a wine’s key components such as fruitiness, sweetness, acidity, and alcoholic strength come together to make the wine
• Blanc: French word for “white”
• Body: It’s the fullness of the wine in your mouth. The texture or feeling that it’s smooth or rough is related to the wine’s body.
• Bouquet: complex aromas that develop with age
• Closed: not aromatically forthcoming, most likely due to recent bottling or to the particular stage of the wine’s development
• Colors: Red wines can be described as: purple, ruby, garnet or red-brown. White wines can be described as yellow-green, yellow, straw and yellow-gold.
• Complexity: combination of richness, depth, flavor intensity, balance, finesse, etc.
• Crisp: having good acidity on the finish of a wine
• Decanting: slowly and carefully pouring the wine from the bottle (to pour gently and carefully from one container to another so as not to disturb sediment)
• Dry: simply not sweet
• Earthy: having a mineral character that can add interest to the palate
• Finish: the final taste left by a wine after you swallow it
• Firm: perceptibly acidic or astringent in a positive way; firm wines are appropriate at the dinner table since they clean the palate
• Fortified: more alcohol than usual
• Fruity: wine with a dominant fruit like apple, black currant, raspberry, etc.
• Full-bodied: full proportion of flavor and alcohol
• Generous: a well-constituted wine possessing good texture and a flexible quality; usually a sign of thoroughly ripe fruit
• Green: too acidic, raw, vegetal, or herbal; a wine can taste green due to under ripe grapes, but can also mean it needs more time to develop
• Heady: used to describe the smell of a wine high in alcohol
• Hard: a wine that’s too acidic for its underlying fruit
• High-toned: lively and aromatically expressive due to a level of volatile acidity that is just short of excessive
• Late harvest: wines made from grapes that were allowed to hang on the vine until their sugar content was very high, so, the wine will be sweet
• Mouth feel: how a wine feels in your mouth and against the tongue
• Nose: the smell of the wine; a “good nose” is pleasant and a “bad nose” is offensive
• Oaky: aroma and taste of oak
• Oxidized: wine that has spoiled from overexposure to air
• Palate: the feel and taste of wine in the mouth
• Pungent: wine with a distinctly strong nose
• Short: a wine which does not remain on the palate after swallowing
• Sommelier: French word for “wine steward,” a restaurant manager who has charge of wines and their service
• Tannin: compounds that occur naturally in the seeds and skins of fruit and have an astringent, mouth-puckering quality. Most apparent in young red wines, tannins smooth out with aging.
• Varietals: refer to the distinguishing features of each grape variety
• Vino: wine
• Vintage: the year the grapes were harvested (most Champagne is a blend of different vintages, and better for it)
• Vintner: wine merchant
Have you hosted a wine party or planning to soon? Share your experience below.
RELATED LINKS:
PHOTOS: The Essence wine-tasting party »
Our complete wine-tasting party guide »
Easy and delicious wine-tasting party recipes »
African-American Vintners, wine shops and other resources » |
