How to Host a Red Wines from Around the World Tasting Party

A few months ago, for my birthday, we hosted a Tidal Bay white wine tasting party. The red wine drinkers said they would rather test their favourites, so another idea was born. So, my friend hosted a red wine tasting party from around the world. 

How to Set Up the Party

We set the party up, much like when we hosted the white wine tasting party. All the instructions can be found in my other blog post. 

Red Wines from Around the World

For this tasting party, we chose cabernet sauvignon wines. We made a list of countries where we could find this type of wine. For our party, they included

Canada, South Africa, Argentina, California, France, Spain, Portugal, Australia and Italy. 

Using Evite to manage the invitation, everyone selected one of these wines to bring. 

Food from Around the World

Along with the wine, people were also asked to bring an appetizer from that country. These ranged from a variety of cheeses, some creative offerings of “California Raisins” (chocolate) and a bag of chips that said “EXOTIC” so they must have been from one of our countries! 

You can see we were very scientific about the process. There was NO food pairing happening here. 

Two of us brought desserts. One was a delicious cake from South Africa. 

Then, because it was my sister’s birthday, I attempted a cake from my selected country, Argentina. 

It turned out to be a prime candidtate for the “NailedIt” show. We had a great laugh, and ate it anyway. 

The Tasting

As we had done before, our host poured glasses of each wine for us to sample. 

At our last party, we had a different wine glass for each wine. This left a lot of dishes to keep washing throughout the night. This time, we got different coloured disposable glasses and labeled them accordingly, instead of using stickers, like before. 

This worked well, but was still a lo of garbage. Someone suggested everyone bringing their own unique wine glass the next time to self-rinse in between. 

Then, we tested each wine, and recorded our results in our high-tech, scientific chart. 

DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE OF WINE TASTING CHART HERE

“Are you doing an official wine tasting where you spit the wine out?” one of them men asked. “We’re wine TASTING not wine WASTING!” 

The Results

After we had tried all 8 of our selections, we revealed the results. 

The group’s two favourites were the Protea cabernet sauvignon from South Africa

And, 19 Crimes from Australia. This one won the coolest bottle, too. Download the app, and the person on the label comes to life telling you a story! 

Safety First

Please drink responsibly. We all arranged our husbands to come pick us up afterwards, so plan ahead to have a good time! 

Future Ideas for Tasting Parties

We decided that our next tasting party will be ciders of Nova Scotia, since there are so many cideries popping up now! 

The possibilities are endless, but really, it’s just a great excuse to get together with friends.