How to Host a Wine Tasting at Home

Four or five bottles, a few friends and two hours: everything you need to run a proper wine tasting at home, including a glass experiment that does the explaining for you.

The clocks go back tomorrow, and from then until March the evenings start early and go on for ever.

You can treat that as a problem or an opportunity. I’d go for the opportunity, and the opportunity is a wine tasting at home.

A tasting is simply several wines, side by side, with people paying attention. That’s it. The comparison is the whole point, because you notice far more about a wine when there’s somebody else next to you tasting it and talking about it than you ever do on your own with a single glass on the sofa.

You don’t need a cellar, a sommelier or an expansive vocabulary. You need four or five bottles, some decent glasses, two hours and a plan.

This is the plan.

Pick a Format

Start with the theme, because it decides which bottles you buy. Choose something your guests can grasp in one sentence. Here are four that work.

Same grape, different places. Three Sauvignon Blancs from the Loire, Marlborough and Chile, say, or three Pinot Noirs from different corners of the world.

Guests who couldn’t tell you what acidity is can still tell you which wine feels fresher, riper or more savoury, and that’s all the vocabulary you need.

Old World against New World. Pairs of classic and newer-style wines, one after the other. It’s a messier divide than it used to be, which is half the fun, and I’ve written previously about why it’s becoming more and more obsolete.

English sparkling against the world. An English sparkling wine, a Champagne, a Cava and a Prosecco, ideally poured blind. If you want the case for the English bottle up your sleeve in case of disputes, it’s here.

A blind tasting, Judgment of Paris style. Wrap the bottles, number them, score them, then reveal. The aim isn’t to catch anyone out. It’s to get honest reactions before the labels and reputations have their say, and the original 1976 tasting is a good reminder of how that can go.

If you can’t decide, go with same grape, different places. It’s the easiest to shop for and the easiest to talk about.

The Sums

Four or five wines is the sweet spot. Fewer and it’s over before it starts. More and the evening dissolves into a pleasant blur.

Pour 50 to 75ml of each. At 75ml a standard bottle gives you ten pours. At 50ml you’ll stretch to twelve or so, allowing for the odd drip and the host’s tax. So one bottle per wine covers up to eight guests at the generous pour, or around twelve at the smaller one.

Add one spare bottle of whichever wine is your personal favourite, for a re-pour at the end.

That fifth bottle is the one that makes people look up and ask where it came from. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it has to have character: a Portuguese white, perhaps, or a southern Italian red you’d happily buy again.

This is where a good independent merchant earns their keep.

The wine calculator here will help you to plan.

Glasses, and an Experiment

The basics first. You want clean glasses, a decent size, and no cupboard smell. Ideally that’s one glass per guest per wine. If you haven’t got enough, one glass each with a water rinse between pours will do.

If yours have seen better days, our Complete Glass Care Guide will help you sort them out.

Most tables end up arguing about it, which is rather the point. If it gets you curious about which glass suits your wines, Match the Glass will tell you, and our tasting sets are a ready-made way to get several shapes on the table at once.

Before They Arrive

Temperature. Take whites out of the fridge 10 to 15 minutes before pouring. If the room’s warm, give lighter reds 15 to 20 minutes in the fridge. A white wine served too cold goes quiet, and a red served too warm turns heavy and boozy.

Air. Open the reds about half an hour ahead, or decant them. I’m firmly in the camp that most wines benefit from a little air, even some whites, though how much varies.

Our guide to decanting different wines has the details.

Check every bottle. Taste each one as you open it. If a bottle’s corked or otherwise off, you want to find out before eight people are holding glasses. Here’s how to spot it.

Hide the labels. If you’re going blind, wrap the bottles in foil or paper bags, or Le Creuset (or VacuVin) wine sleeves, number them, and keep the key somewhere only you can see.

Setting the Scene

A few small things make a surprising difference.

• Good light and something white. A white tablecloth or a sheet of plain paper under each place setting makes it easy to judge colour.
• No competing smells. Skip the scented candles, the perfume and anything frying in the next room. Unscented candles can come out for supper.
• Water for everyone, and a jug for rinsing glasses.
• A way to tip a wine away. Nobody has to finish every pour. Give each guest their own container, a mug will do, rather than passing a shared bucket around.
• Pencils and scorecards, or a notepad each.

Running the Evening

Serve in this order: sparkling first, then lighter whites, fuller whites, lighter reds and fuller reds, with anything sweet or fortified at the end. It isn’t a rule for the sake of it. Big, oaky or high-alcohol wines flatten the delicate ones if they go first, and the order gives each wine a fair hearing.

Here’s a two-hour plan, assuming five wines.

Time	What happens
0:00 to 0:15	Guests arrive. Welcome drink and a two-line briefing: the theme, how many wines, and no wrong answers.
0:15 to 1:30	Wines one to five, about 15 minutes each. Pour, taste, answer the three questions, then a show of hands.
1:30 to 1:45	Votes, the big reveal if you’ve gone blind, and a re-pour of the favourite.
1:45 onwards	Supper. The best bottles stay on the table.

If you’re doing four wines, give each one 20 minutes instead.

For each wine, take everyone through the usual five steps: look, swirl, smell, sip, then decide. If you want a refresher, our guide to tasting wine covers them, and the glossary is there when someone needs a word for “ooh... what's that smell?”

Then ask three questions, and only three.

1. What does it smell like?
2. What does it taste like?
3. Would you drink it again?

The last one tells you more than any list of technical descriptors. You can make it more fun by framing it around real life: which one would you open on a Tuesday night at home alone, which one would you open on a Friday night with your other half, and which would you take to a dinner party?

At the end, ask for three votes: the favourite, the most surprising, and the "best value". Reveal the prices only after the votes are in. “Best value” is a lot more interesting when people don’t know the cost.

Another fun question, if you have spent more on one bottle than the others, is "which was the most expensive?" I love it when a £4.99 from Aldi wins that one!

What to Eat

Keep it plain during the tasting. Bread, plain crackers and water will reset the palate between wines. A little mild hard cheese or some charcuterie is fine. Spicy, very sweet or garlicky food will bully the wines, so save it.

Supper comes afterwards, and the best bottles can carry on alongside it. By then everyone’s formed an opinion, and it’s a pleasure to find out which one holds up with food.

Everyone Gets Home in One Piece

Small pours add up faster than you’d think. Five wines at 75ml is 375ml, which at a typical 13% ABV comes to roughly five units of alcohol for anyone who finishes every glass.

So tip a little away, keep the water flowing, make sure everyone has a lift, an Uber or a bed for the night, and don’t pressure anyone to finish a pour.

It’s also worth having a bottle or two of good no and low wine on hand. Non-drinkers can still join in with the glass experiment and the votes, and the no and low category is so much better than it was.

So download the scorecard, pour the wines, count the votes.

Let me know which bottle won. I’ll bet it isn’t the most expensive, and if the cheapest bottle on the table took the vote, even better.

Just make sure you rush out and buy a case of it before your friends snap it all up!

Frequently Asked Questions

How many bottles do I need?

One bottle per wine serves up to eight guests at 75ml a pour, or around twelve at 50ml. For four or five wines that means four or five bottles, plus a spare of the likely favourite for the re-pour.

What if none of my guests know anything about wine?

That’s fine, and often better. The three questions don’t need any wine knowledge, and “would you drink it again?” is the most useful one anyway. Keep the opening briefing short and tell everyone there are no wrong answers.

Do I need special glasses?

No. A decent, clean, reasonably sized wine glass is plenty for a relaxed evening. The glass experiment is a way to show your guests what changes when the shape does, and you only need three glasses for that.

How do I run a blind tasting without it getting silly?

Wrap the bottles in foil or paper bags, number them, and keep the key to yourself until the votes are in. Ask for impressions and scores before anyone guesses the wine. The point is honest reactions, not a quiz about who can identify what.

Can I do this for just two of us?

Easily. Choose two or three wines, pour smaller measures, and use wine stoppers to save the rest. The same questions and the same glass experiment work just as well for two, and you'll probably spend more time talking about your impressions.

What do I do with the leftovers?

Stopper them and keep them somewhere cool. Our guide to how long wine lasts after opening covers how long each style will keep.