Attending a wine tasting without formality is indeed possible. This is an invitation to learn about wines, have a great time with your best friends, and enjoy a wine tasting from the comfort of your home.

Beyond the more formal experiences that do occur in the world of wine, especially those that involve professionals in the field, wine is a product made to be enjoyed. It is a drink that is owed to its consumers, to accompany them in moments of pleasure, relaxation and other not so happy ones as well.

However, we want to emphasize the possibility of creating a home wine tasting to learn more about this drink, in an experience far from formality and much closer to fun. Follow the next steps to do a wine tasting at home:

• Good wine glasses

Sorry, but before the guests, the most basic element for this meeting are the glasses. Without glasses, there is no tasting. We will serve the wine in them and if we want the participants to be able to appreciate it with all its qualities, the type and quality of glasses matters. Invest in a set of good quality glasses, ideally from brands like Riedel or Zalto. Choose a universal model, so you can use the same glass for white, rosé, red and sparkling wines.

• Don’t forget the accessories

Once the glasses are ready, don’t forget to have accessories on hand such as a good corkscrew, ice buckets to cool the wines, drinking water and in case you want to do the tasting blind (without the participants knowing in advance which wine they are in front of), some fabric bags to cover the labels will give suspense and more fun to this experience. Also, don’t forget to have spittoons for those who don’t want to drink all the wine. Sheets of paper and pencil to make tasting notes are also necessary.

• The guests

I recommend a group of 5 or 7 people. First, because odd numbers are always better. Second, because if there are a lot of people the tasting can get messy and, although the idea is to have fun, you also must make it work. Maintaining an intimate group will help guests to really focus and immerse themselves in this experience. Remember that, in addition, one of them (ideally you the first time) must play the role of sommelier!

• The wine selection

A very good way to organize wines is to have a theme. Considering that in the world of wine the labels are almost infinite, so the theme will guide you and keep the wines aligned. One option is to do it by grape variety, another by country, or even more focused on one place and oriented only to one valley. If you do it with Carmenère, for example, you could choose a high-end wine like Carmín de Peumo, then Marques de Casa Concha Carmenère, Gran Reserva Carmenère and Casillero del Diablo Carmenère. The good thing about the theme is that in addition to guiding the tasting itself, it also helps guide the purchasing process. Whether purchased by the host or guests. When guests contribute a bottle each, another reference is to provide a price margin per bottle. Don’t forget to put the bottles quickly in the fabric bags so that no one guesses the wine beforehand.

• May there never be a lack of food

Drinking wine quickly calls for eating something…both to cleanse the palate and to satisfy our stomach. Other times, also to play and try interesting food and wine pairings. Although the idea is not to “contaminate” the palate with many flavours at the same time, we said that it is an informal tasting so any cheese board, nuts or sandwiches will be very welcome by your friends.

• Have a good time

Play music that you like, have the table ready with all the accessories and get ready to spend some entertaining time with your friends. Whether they guess the wines or not, the idea is that they enjoy them. Little by little the palate will be trained and perhaps they will conclude that this should be a weekly or monthly meeting. Have you heard about tasting groups?