How to host a wine tasting at home
A tasting at home needs less than people think: five or six bottles, a glass each, water, bread, and a few printed sheets to turn drinking into tasting.
Choose a theme so the wines have something to say to each other: one grape from different countries, the same wine at two prices, old world against new. Serve whites before reds, light before full and dry before sweet. A tasting pour is about 4 to 6 cl, so one bottle of each serves twelve guests; the host sheet does the sum for you from the number of guests and wines.
Decide whether it is blind. Blind, the bottles go into bags with numbered tags and the guests guess; you keep the answers on the host sheet and reveal them at the end. Open, everyone sees the labels and the evening becomes a conversation about what they find.
Set the table before anyone arrives. Lay a guest sheet at each place: Verdetto puts the glasses in a row on numbered rings, with room under each for stars, one word, a guess and what they would pay. Put out water, plain bread and a spittoon or a jug for pouring away; tasting is not drinking, and the evening is better for it.
Walk the guests through the first glass together. The how-to page, How to taste, gives the four steps (look, smell, taste, decide), the five score rings and six words beginners can use, so nobody stares at an empty column. Then let the table talk.
At the end, read the answers glass by glass, count the right guesses on the scoreboard and fill in the keepsake: the podium, best nose, best value, and the wine you fought over.
Verdetto is chosen for this evening; you can swap it on the next screen.
Questions
How many bottles do I need?
A tasting pour is about 6 cl, so one 75 cl bottle gives twelve tastes. For up to twelve guests one bottle of each wine is enough; the host sheet works it out from your numbers.
How many wines should I serve?
Five or six. Fewer and there is little to compare; more and palates tire. Serve whites before reds, light before full, dry before sweet.
Blind or open?
Blind is a game: guests guess and you reveal. Open is a conversation: everyone knows the wines and compares them. Both work; blind is livelier with beginners.