Host a Chardonnay Tasting Party

Here’s a fun, inventive way to spice up your next tasting party—a “Blind Tasting Party!” Invite friends and family over to your beautiful home and showcase your hosting skills by entertaining your guests with a classy, fun game that puts a spin on the classic tasting party. Follow the simple setup instructions below, style your home with an astounding tasting set-up, and let the party begin! When hosting a tasting party in your home, you want to ensure that it’s classy, elegant, and refined. Opening your home to friends and family means a chance to show-off the impeccable style you’ve cultivated. From the furniture to the décor, it’s important that your home reflects your personal style.  Find some ideas for creating the perfect atmosphere for your tasting room and get a burst of creativity at Design Home 2014. With a spotless house, a perfect tasting room, and some delicious Chardonnay wines ready to go, you’ll be set for the perfect tasting party. Chardonnay is one of the most famous white wine grapes on the planet, and yet its personality in any given bottle matters entirely on the winemaker’s whim. Everyone thinks they know it. Many love it—or at least a certain style. Some hate it—or at least they think they do, based on a certain style. But, do they really understand its range of possibilities? Host a “Blind-Tasting Party” with your friends to showcase the various styles of Chardonnay. So, throw on your best outfit, set up your tasting room, and get ready for a great night! Sniff, swirl, and sip delicious wines surrounded by friends in the comfort of your home. And, if you want to spruce up your house before hosting, come out to Design Home 2014. The house is now open to help you find other great project ideas, so grab your tickets here and come find the next great upgrade for your house.  Follow the simple instructions below to get started on your next great tasting party! Here’s how to do it: The Set Up: Before guests arrive, chill all of the wines. Then, wrap each bottle in a brown bag tied at the neck with string or aluminum foil to conceal their identities. If you need to further chill the wines until guests arrive, you could put them in ice buckets, putting those in brown bags in a plastic bag first to keep it dry; those in foil will be fine in ice. Remove the capsule that covers the cork completely. With a marker, write a number on each bottle from one to six (or as many as you’re pouring). If you’re serving multiple bottles of the same wine for a large crowd, be sure they are numbered correctly. Then, set up six stations featuring a large, lined notepad and a pen. On each pad write “Wine No. 1,” “Wine No. 2,” etc. for the number of wines you’re serving. When you’re ready to serve the wines, place each bottle in front of its corresponding notepad. Without guests seeing, pull the corks and taste each bottle to make sure they aren’t corked (or taste off, like moldy cardboard). Don’t forget to hide the corks, because they often display the wine’s logo or other info that might give them away. Now, invite guests to taste the wines in any order, and then write their name on each notepad as they taste, along with their guess as to which type of wine they are drinking. Is it Chardonnay? Is it something else? Take a guess! Next Steps: After all of your guests have tasted the wines, and written their guesses down, unwrap the bottles and let guests see if they guessed correctly or not. Then, open some more bottles, open the buffet, and rediscover these new wines again with food. If one guest guessed the wines particularly well, perhaps you might even offer them a prize: one of those delicious Sonoma-Cutrer bottles to take home.