Birthday/Wine Tasting Party

My husband turned 44 this weekend. We decided to celebrate his old age by having a birthday/wine tasting party. The rules for the wine tasting were included in the evite:

We were looking for an excuse to drink copious amounts of wine so we decided to throw a wine tasting party and mask it as P's birthday party.  To make it interesting and educational we implemented some rules.

1. Each person/couple brings a bottle of wine and must not spend more than $12 on it.
2. The bottle must not be from California
3. The wine can be red or white
The bottle identities will be hidden and each bottle will be numbered.  Guests will sample each and score them from 1 to 5.  A prize will be given out to the person/couple who brings the bottle with the highest score.  Hopefully we will discover some great inexpensive wines from regions other than California.

It was such a fun evening spent with great friends! CS was a wonderful co-host! At first, everyone was nervous about not having adequate knowledge of wines. That did not last long!

As the guests arrived, I had everyone write their name on the label of their bottle and then tape it inside a brown bag. We put the numbers on the bags after we received all of the wines so people would not know which one was their own during the tasting.

We gave each person a notepad to
score the wines.

Two hot mamas!

44 looks good on my husband!

So nice to hang out with old friends.

That's my Cousin Leigh!

Me and my sweetie!

So many smiles, that must not be wine
#10.

These two decided a spreadsheet was
needed to calculate the winner.

Everyone wanted to know if their wine
was the chosen one.

What is Cousin Leigh doing?

Enjoying the patio.

Each person/couple was given a number
to write a comment on the white board
for that numbered bottle. The comments
got more "interesting" as the evening went
on. I edited a bit (not much) of the white
board before posting this picture.

There was a prize for last place, a bottle
apron with opener and stopper. Don't
they look happy to receive it? Bottle
#10 Fall Creek Chardonnay 2010

Bottle #14 won first place - a binocular
flask!

The birthday boy.

Summoning his wishing power.

The winner - Bottle #14 Root:1 Carmenere Chile 2010

The line-up after the labels were revealed. Some were empty
and some (#10) were not!

It was an amazing evening of great friends, good food, and good/bad wine!!!


My husband is going to post the spreadsheet here when he gets around to it.