6 Themes for Your First Wine Tasting Party

Okay, you've been to a few wine tasting parties and now you want to host one of your own.

A theme can give character and structure to your event, and there are quite a lot of themes you can use for your first wine tasting party. Here's six themes you can use for your first wine tasting party. I say "first" because while you may need a little help for the first one, once you've gotten past your "first night" jitters, you'll probably have lots of ideas for future events.

Wine tasting parties are a lot of fun and are easier to plan and host than you might think. If you are at the point where you are wanting to host your own wine tasting party, then you need to keep in mind that the theme will give the party, and your guests, an entertaining focus for the evening or afternoon.

However, coming up with that first good idea can be a little elusive in some cases, so, here are six ideas that you can use to establish a theme for a first, and maybe future, wine tasting party.

• Horizontal Wine Tasting

In a horizontal tasting, you will only focus on one wine variety from a single year. However, you will offer wine from multiple vineyards and different producers. For example, you could focus on a 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon from several different wine producers or wineries.

You will learn whether you, and your guests, prefer wines from the same region or if your tastes are varied. With all the large and small wineries out there these days, you can mix it up by tasting the same type of wine from different wineries, such as from California, Australia or Italy.

• Vertical Wine Tasting

Here, you and your guests will sample just one variety of wine but of different vintages.

For example, you may only choose to concentrate on tasting a Chenin Blanc from the same producer. However, the wines will be from different vintages or years. For example, you can taste the Chenin Blanc from one winery from years 2004, 2005, and 2006.

This will demonstrate to you, and your guests, how dramatic, or even how subtle, the change in a wine can be from year to year.

• Priceless Wine Tasting

Many people assume that expensive wines are naturally going to taste better than the cheaper ones. Although this may be true in some cases, if you try testing your, and your guests', palate by hiding the price of the wine you are offering for tasting. It will be interesting, and enlightening, to learn what your guests think about various wines when they don't know if it is "worth" 120 dollars or 12 dollars.

• Price Point Wine Tasting

You might want to do this over several get-togethers as it can actually involve several different tastings. The wines offer at a given wine tasting event will be in a similar price range. The goal here is to keep the wines comparable in a baseline price and allow you, and your guests, to understand how the quality and taste of wine can vary even among wines of similar price.

• Big Eight Wine Tasting

At this sort of wine tasting party, you will get your guests to try eight different kinds of wines and determine which one they prefer. This will also give your guests, particular the ones that are not very knowledgeable as yet, a new appreciation for the different kinds of wine.

Most consider the big eight wines to be Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, and Pinot Noir for the red wines; and Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio to represent the white wines.

• Blind Wine Tasting

It is simple to take any of the other themes, remove or cover the labels from the bottles, or even put the bottles into wine bags, and you have a blind wine tasting party that will appeal to many of your guests, especially those who are proud of their palate. It may be revealing to learn what your guests think of various wines when they cannot tell anything about it other than the taste.

While you will certainly see that there are many possible variations on these themes, these six themes for a wine tasting party will set you up for success with your first, and perhaps even subsequent, events.