I’m hosting a wine tasting for about 20 people. How do I assist my guests in keeping track of their glasses?
Friday, February 26th, 2010 at
6:10 pm
Sage asked:
Are there typically ways to mark the glasses for each guest or do I just have a certain amount of glasses available? For example, if I’m serving six wines, do I have at least four to five glasses per guest? Also, how is the water pitcher used? Are guests expected to rinse their glass and use it for each varietal?
Are there typically ways to mark the glasses for each guest or do I just have a certain amount of glasses available? For example, if I’m serving six wines, do I have at least four to five glasses per guest? Also, how is the water pitcher used? Are guests expected to rinse their glass and use it for each varietal?
Tagged with: Varietal • Water Pitcher • Wines
Filed under: Wine
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Each wine should be served in a new/freshly washed glass. Either you have enough ready or at least 40 of them so while they taste a wine the other ones can be rinsed out (maybe a friend can help you). Pls don’t forget to have some bread ready for the tasters…
get disposable glasses, and dony forget my invite,
Use wine Charms. You can find out more about them here:
give them each a chart
Six is a lot of wines to do a tasting with. Its nice to have a few glasses on the table at one time, to compare between. But Ive been to tastings with 6 or 7 glasses in front of me, and the tastes start to jumble together.
So I suggest maybe having an Act I and Act II, each with 3 wines, or some logical division based on the varietals. Between Acts, gather the glasses and wash them thoroughly with hot water. The guests can drink water and eat bread during this time. I do not feel it is necessary to dry them, just let the glasses come to room temp before pouring the next Act.
A notes page is a must.
Oh, and for keeping track of the glasses, you can use a sheet of paper with circles on it and the name of the wine under each circle. Guests can set their glasses on the appropriate circle, and it helps keep track of which is which.
It all depends on what sort of tasting you are doing. Is it a sit down or walk around? Are the wines served one after another or all at the same time?
If the wines are served one after another then only one glass is needed.
If all 6 wines are poured are poured together or at the start of the tasting then you need six glasses and the best (& cheapest) way of identifying them is to use a sheet of paper with numbered circles drawn on it. Here is a PDF of on eyou can print out –
There is no reason why people shouldn’t reuse their glasses. At professional trade tastings where people may taste upo to a 100 wines they don’t use a new glass for each wine, but just one which they empty before pouring the next.
Remember to have plenty of dump/spit buckets for emptying unwanted wine in.
Plenty of water pitchers; again people can use their wine glass for water in a walk around, but at a sit down or when all 6 wines are poured atthe same time a separate water glass is usual.
At wine tastings I’ve been to, you only get one glass, that is refilled with the different wines.
Make sure you have a bucket designated for unwanted wine. That way, if people don’t want to drink all the wine in the glass, they pour it into the bucket, and voila, the glass is empty, ready to be refilled.
Water is available for palette cleansing, but I’ve never rinsed my glass before.
Wine charms–little distinctive, decorative rings that go around the base of wine stems–are great and relatively cheap for distinguishing between wine glasses, but not overly necessary, because people normally keep hold of their wine glasses during tastings.