While there’s nothing like visiting your favorite winery, brewery, or distillery, there are also ways to recreate a tasting experience from the comfort of your own home. See below for our guide on how to make a wine tasting at home into a fun and memorable experience.
1. Wear Something Fun
With many folks spending more time at home, it can be easy to wear the same sorts of clothes most days. Whether that’s jeans, sweats, or something else, one way to make a wine tasting at home feel special is to dress up a bit from your usual routine. Maybe you’ll wear a shirt you haven’t worn in a while, your favorite pair of pants, or shoes instead of slippers. Either way, experimenting with your clothing choices or wearing what you might have typically worn for a tasting outside your home can help an at-home event feel like a unique experience.
2. Choose Your Wines
Your next step will be to choose which bottles you’ll include in your wine tasting at home.
A wine tasting at home can follow a specific theme – such as old-world reds, wine from one region or country, the same varietal aged for different amounts of time – or simply be a grouping of your favorite wines. It’s entirely up to you!
For instance, we compared different styles of rosé from California and France in a wine tasting at home this past summer.
Once you’ve decided on the wines for your wine tasting at home, it can be helpful to do some quick research on the bottles you’ve chosen. Should they be opened in advance, so the wine has time to breathe? Should the wines be refrigerated? Most of this information should be easily available on the internet and will help you serve your wines the way they might be presented at an actual winery.
3. Gather Stemware
Once you’ve decided on the wines to include in your tasting, you’ll want to select which stemware to use.
If you have a limited number of wine glasses, you might want to use one glass per person and simply empty and refill as needed.
However, if you have a variety of different types of stemware available, it can be helpful to use different glasses for white and red wines. Wine glasses often have unique shapes specifically designed to help the wines open and be more flavorful. For instance, white wines are typically served in glasses with smaller bowls to maintain the cooler temperature. If you have multiple types of glasses on hand, using the appropriate type of glass can give you a more nuanced tasting experience.
4. Have Snacks Handy
Another thing we’ve learned throughout the years is that it’s important to have food on hand.
You don’t have oyster crackers or other wine crackers at home? No worries! Pretty much any type of light cracker will serve as a great palate cleanser between wines.
You can select foods that will go especially well with the wines you’ve already chosen, such as strawberries, popcorn, or fried food with sparkling wine. Or, feel free to include anything you enjoy! You can set out cheese, carrots, hummus, dips, or all sorts of other options based on your preferences and hunger level.
5.Take Notes
Part of the fun of a wine tasting is learning about what you like.
Taking notes during the tasting can help you identify which wines you enjoyed best and any unique aromas, flavors, or other aspects of the wine you noticed. This can help you identify which bottles you might want to purchase in the future.
Ultimately, there are many ways to enjoy a wine tasting at home. We hope these tips help to make your at-home wine tasting a fun and memorable experience.
Have ideas on other ways to improve a wine tasting at home? Feel free to reach out to us at info@winewithourfamily.com.
If you enjoyed this post, check out some of our related articles: