Newbie looking for Wine Party Info

I'm not sure what you mean by "winner" since the people will be tasting wine and giving their impressions, who is the "winner" and what is the measurement? If the folks there are not "wine geeks" I'd just let them enjoy the wine and food. Just remember that there is a limited number of pours from a bottle so if you have a group larger than about 10 you'll have a hard time giving pours large enough to make a decent sip of wine from each bottle so it's unlikey that everyone can taste each wine. To keep it simple I would just have folks vote for which wine they prefered of the lot.

Salut/Hi Bunny,

le/on Mon, 31 Jan 2005 10:12:49 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

Sounds fun.

like taste, smell, and

May I suggest that instead of small sip cups, which are utterly hopeless for tasting purposes, that you have some reasonably decent tasting glasses. I use the INAO glasses for this, but I'm guessing you're in the USA, so you'll have to ask advice from other US residents as to what's available and not too expensive. Very briefly, to taste a wine you need to be able to judge the smell, and to do this yu need an appropriately shaped glass.

As for the tasting grid, I do have one, but a) it's in Wordperfect format and b) it may not be sent here to a non binary newsgroup.

I'll see if I can post it as HTML on a random page in one of my websites.

How would you pick a winner? In fact are you after a winning wine? (That's relatively easy) or a winning participant, if the latter, what criteria would you judge by?

Beware. Although cheese and wine have this reputation as perfect partners, be aware that they aren't as easy as all that. I quote from the late great Tommy Layton's book on cheese and wine.

"Wine's affinity to cheese is remarkable. There is a wine to go with every cheese. But let us not exaggerate: every wine does not go with every cheese by a long chalk. Indeed there are a growing number of people who experience a marked dislike of their red wine after they have had a mouthful of a certain cheese."

I find that "cooked" cheeses like gruyere, go better with reds than soft cheeses. Blue cheeses go better with sweet wines than others, Goat cheeses are better paired with sauvignon based wines, though they'll also go with some reds. VERY soft stinky cheeses don't (with apologies to my burgundian friends) go that well with anything.

As I said, I'm concerned as to how you judge who wins, and why.

Hi Bunny,

The key for something like this is keeping it informal and fun.

One thing I would do is not use "small cups" ... have enough wine glasses for everyone. Then provide a dump bucket to empty glasses out in. A 1 - 1.5 oz pour is sufficient for tasting.

We'ver compiled several thoughts on wine tasting parties on our site at

Art Stratemeyer ============================

A Community Celebration the Joy of Wine,Gardening and the Arts

Cellar! Wine Software

Bill, I assume that by winner, she means the person who brings the most popular wine. I agree with you about the judging.

For Bunny: I'd ask each person who brings a wine to categorize it broadly (dry/sweet, red/white/rose) and group them accordingly into five "flights" (or maybe 6: hopefully, no one brings a sweet red, but I guess you never know...) Have a winner for each flight to give each style of wine a chance to "win" (it also allows your guests to skip filghts of wines that they expect they wouldn't like). As for the cheese plate, keep in mind that many wine/cheese combinations are not particularly pleasant. For dry reds, choose hard cheeses like a not-too-sharp Cheddar, Manchego or Asiago. For sweet whites, try a good blue cheese; for dry whites, a soft cow's milk cheese; for sweet blush (rose) wines, perhaps some assorted nuts. Or just combine all the cheeses and nuts onto a platter and let your guests test the various combinations. Good bread or crackers are also useful.

HTH Mark Lipton

In fact, INAO glasses are available in the US, Ian -- if you know where to look for them. IMO, they remain the most cost-effective general-purpose wine glass as they can be had for ~$2 per stem which is why we have a dozen of them lurking about our kitchen for everyday use.

Given Bunny's description of the potential tasters, I'd thought that a simple ordinal ranking of wines within flights would make the most sense and be the least intimidating for novice tasters. After the results are revealed, people could be encouraged to describe why they voted the way they did, in a strictly volutntary way (allowing the cork dorks to weigh in).

Mark Lipton

Bunny,

I agree with both Mark and Ian's comments regarding both the glassware and the cheeses. While I love wines w/ cheeses, the pairing requires a bit of caution. the "hard" with reds and soft (well some of them anyway) with whites is a good starting point. Plain crackers and a french bread without seasonings or butter is a plus to "cleanse the palette."

As to the glassware, IKEA, the Swedish "furniture" importer is reputed to have some really good ones at a great price. I don't know where you are, or where in the US they have opened stores, but Crate & Barrel, or similar, also has inexpensive wine glasses. To effectively taste a wine, I cannot stress a wine glass too much. Now, not every person is as anal-retentive about glassware, as I, but having done many dozen tastings, I CAN say that glassware can certainly "break" an otherwise good wine. You can also contact a large "party" rental facility in your area and even rent the glasses. I've done this on rare occasions and they come in a case of 24, which will hold the rinsed glasses for return. As the rental facility will clean them, only a good rinse is required to return them.

If you are unable to get Ian's "tasting" mat layout, please e-mail me at: the snipped-for-privacy@newsguy.com and I will send you one. Mine is in Adobe Illustratior AI format, but I can put it into about any format that you might want. I print mine out onto an 11x17 sheet of white paper (the white is good for judging the color of wine - I have a glass table!), but I can do it down to 8.5x14 (legal) for you, if you can't print 11x17.

Most of all, have fun and let us all know how it went!!!!!

Hunt

Salut/Hi Hunt,

le/on 1 Feb 2005 01:54:52 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

I've managed to upload it OK, but it's not going to be perfect, as it has been converted into HTML. My problem is that I don't know how to set up a web page to allow for a downloadable file! If I did, I could easily convert it into PDF, which would be usable by anyone.

Thanks.

Absolutely. You've only got to pour the same wine into a pastic "cup" and a decent if unglamorous glass to tell the difference.

rent the glasses.

Good thinking.

Mine is now on

Exactly.

Just upload the PDF to your webspace and put the the whole address to it, including the pdf file. Most news clients will just allow you to click on it and fire up Acrobat. I converted it to pdf to give you an example, and made it a bit smaller so as to fit on one page.

Cheers

David E

Salut/Hi David E,

le/on Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:40:04 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Hey!! It worked.

Thanks very much.

I've been able to put a link to it at the bottom of the page on

and by clicking on the link, was able to download the tasting grid directly into Acrobat, as you said. It's designed to fit onto an A4 sheet, but acrobat will resise it.

I converted it to pdf to give you an example, and made

Thanks very much.

Ok, after reading all of your wonderful replies, I realized I know even less than I thought I did about wine. I have decided, since this is all in fun and everyone is just here to have a good time, that I am going the simple route that I best understand. It came down to the following:

I'm having each couple/person if single, bring two identical bottles of wine. The total of the two wines can not exceed $30. They will bring them covered so no one can tell what they are. I'll be serving whites first, then rose/blush, then reds. It will probably be done in teams of two, since two bottles of wine won't go far and I already have 20 people signed up. I'm using the format that I believe Ian put out, with the basic tasting format with points given to each wine. It's got a nice description at the bottom that explains what these categories mean, which will help most people. Then, I'll collect the ballots, add up the scores, and the wine that got the highest number of points is the "winner". The person who brought that bottle of wine will go home with a GC to the local wine shop and maybe a few other wine goodies/accessories. There will be a cheese/fruit/breadorcracker platter of probably 3 types of cheese, a soft, medium, firm and maybe a fourth strong cheese. Nothing fancy, just tidbits. I'll also have nuts scattered around, oyster crackers, water, buckets and napkins. I'll also be doing the tasting out of glasses rather than my first message which sip cups which would have been plastic. Since I read thats a no-no, I decided if I was going to do this, I would find the glasses, even if I had to purchase some fm a local dollar store. I have 12, but had no idea I'd have this many people want to come. Not that I mind, it just goes to show my thought was correct in thinking this would be something our group would be interested in. We had our monthly meeting this week and when we discussed it and how it would work, everyone was very excited and they thought it was a wonderful idea. Sounds like it will be a wonderful night.

So, thank you to all of the people who responded with ideas, no-nos, suggestions and helpful information. Hopefully this will be a great event and I will post how it went here after the party (on the 19th).

Btw, if anyone has any good suggestions for good cheeses that I can't go wrong with and that I can find locally without breaking the bank, I'd take that help as well. I figure grapes & strawberries on the sides as well as some small bread slices, probably some stuffed globe grapes if I can find them, with crushed pistachios and goat cheese, Parmesan puff pastry straws, and some desserts, although I haven't figured out that yet. Anyway, thanks again for all the wonderful information you've given me and hopefully you'll be hearing a YIPEE from me on the 20th!

"Bunny McElwee" wrote in message news:ctli1b$cqk7$ snipped-for-privacy@news3.infoave.net...

Bunny, fun is what it is all about!

Actually, with 2 btls of each wine, you should not have any problem, as you do not want each person to have too large a pour, especially since you are not having a full meal. Even with dinner, I get 12 pours from each 0.75ltr bottle. Now this is for "tasting" purposes, and NOT for "drinking" purposes.

I'm

It sounds like you are on the right track for a great evening. I know that the glassware can be a bit of a drag, but trust me, you, and your guests will appreciate the difference.

[SNIP OP]

Do let us know how it goes - the good, and the things you'd do differently next time.

Hunt

Would you - and the group - please reply to uraniumcommittee's (or whatever name he takes) postings simply with one line:

"DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS!"

This applies to the first seeing these utterly bullshit postings.

Thank you.

M.

If you would also forward any message that he posts in AFW to snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com it might help get rid of him also. I know they are already working on a number of complaints about him.

Sorry Michael,

Missed reading this thread before I did reply to his "tasting" thread where the tone was civil

Art Stratemeyer ============================

A Community Celebration the Joy of Wine,Gardening and the Arts

Cellar! Wine Software

The fad for 'tastings' by amateurs represents a cultural void. Only Americans do this. Italians don't.

Bad advice, Bill. He doesn't post through yahoo, but rather through Google (groups snipped-for-privacy@google.com) from a nuvox account ( snipped-for-privacy@nuvox.net). However, many ISPs don't consider abusive language to itself by a violation of their acceptable use policy. However, both of the organizations in question do list "verbal harassment" among their no-nos.

Mark Lipton

( snipped-for-privacy@nuvox.net).

Which of course I have not done....

Ok, hopefully I can get some advice from you guys without getting attacked again. Seems like I post a message and instead of getting replies to my message, I get a bunch of replies to the Trolls ! Anyway, I've figured out my party setup, I'd like to know of any advice you can offer that would help me with the food aspect of my Party. No, this is not a full meal, yes *I* will be making ALL OF it, I am just short of a gourmet cook and I make ALL of my own party foods, big or small, at my home or someone else's. I would like to have a cheese platter, maybe three to four cheese varieties and along side it fruits (grapes, strawberries, etc) and crackers/breads. What are the best all around cheese's that any cheese platter should not be without? I know they should be served room temp, but I don't generally eat these kinds of cheese's so I don't know how to serve them? Rind on or off? Let them guest decide, or cut it off in advance? And suggestions on types of cheeses I should have that would likely be good ones to have on a platter of this kind, with the inclusion of people drinking wine? I understand that the wine & cheese thing does not always go together, I really am looking more for a good accompaniment of cheeses for people to nibble on and not necessarily for them to eat WITH their wine as a matched set. Also, any ideas of other "wine/Italian" type dishes I could serve or no Wine party should be without? I want to keep this to mainly finger type foods, but I want there to be enough to eat that people won't be falling over drunk everywhere after they've had a couple glasses. I was think some stuffed globe grapes with goat cheese and crushed pistachios, bruschetta, nuts, parmesan puff pastry sticks, maybe some squares of simple cheesecake. This doesn't sound substantial enough to really fill the belly. I'd like to do something with chicken, maybe some marinated chunks of chicken thighs on skewers, but not sure what type of marinade to use at this point. Anyway, hopefully some of you kind people who have been helping me with this can give me some suggestions on some more suitable foods to provide my guest. My original post stated 20 people, I am now looking at 30-40 guests.

BTW, I will also be having a BDay cake on hand as it is my Husbands birthday on the 26th and we decided to surprise him on the 19th because he says we never can. I think we will this year!

"Bunny McElwee" wrote in message news:ctli1b$cqk7$ snipped-for-privacy@news3.infoave.net...

I've

cheese

advance? And

drinking

bruschetta,

cheesecake.

Husbands

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Charleston,

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participate

The cookbook "Ultimate Recipes Italian" has an excellent section on "starters".