Several years ago, I came across this idea of a blind wine-tasting party on Pinterest. I thought it sounded really fun but it was kind of one of those things that I thought I should do sometime but never really made it happen.
Until now 🥂 🍷
I told David I was kicking him out (with Ari too!) and I was going to pick a date, invite a few friends, and give it a go. I’m always down for a good excuse to hang out with friends and drink wine but this actually turned out to be tons of fun. Much more fun than I could have ever envisioned. I loved tasting the wines but not knowing what was coming made it a brand new experience. The element of surprise was so fun! Plus, seeing what everyone brought as their favorite was a bonus.
Want to host your own? It’s actually really simple (and cheap!) and I highly recommend this for a girls’ night in. Here’s what I did.
- Select a date and invite your friends. I wanted to keep things fairly intimate so I kept my invite list small and I enjoyed it that way. (A few people bailed at the last minute so we had a total of 5 of us and had a blast.) I chose to create an invitation on Canva and then I just texted it to my friends. You could also send real invitations but I wasn’t working with a lot of time. Here’s the one I sent:
- Hit up your local craft store. I thought the chalkboard look would be simple but also reusable for other parties so I chose it. Here’s what you’ll need:
- rectangle labels to write names on cups
- round labels to number bottles
- two signs: one for red, one for white
- brown lunch bags to cover up the bottle when each guest arrives
- washi tape to secure the brown bags around the bottles
- red and white wine to serve when people arrived
- oyster crackers for in between wines
- wine dish towel (for the prize)
- wine glass (for the prize)
- Reminder! Two days before the event, I sent out a reminder text. It seems like life gets so busy and I thought it might be helpful. Plus, I was having everyone bring their favorite bottle and an appetizer so I knew that would be difficult for someone to throw together last minute.
- Label everything. I love writing with chalk so all my stuff was kind of centered around that theme. I wrote everyone’s name on a glass and created signs that said red and white. I wanted to incorporate the centerpiece since I didn’t have any decor so I made that my centerpiece.
- Cheers! Literally, that was it! We had a great time. When each guest arrived with their wine, Katrina opened the bottle and placed it in the bag and then numbered it. We used these to write our comments about each wine and when it came time to select a winner, we were glad we had something to go off of. (Feel free to print and use if you’d like!)
