Casual Affairs
The more casual the party, the more you’ll enjoy it, and the more likely you are to have another, and that’s a good thing. So let’s say you’d like to have some friends over to enjoy some wine with you, but there’s no time to prepare a five-course meal. No problem.
Get some pies from the local pizzeria, or order takeout Chinese or Thai. Make the food the theme of the wine tasting. With pizza, buy an array of simple Chianti wines; with Chinese, make it Riesling. Put all the wines out in numbered paper bags, so no one can see the labels, and have people vote on their favorite. That way, you’ll not only eat and drink well, but you’ll casually have done some good wine study, too.
A food-and-wine party doesn’t need to be fancy. It can be as simple as some wine and some cheese, or dry sausages and bread. Give it extra interest by creating a theme— buy an array of American farmhouse cheeses, for example, and a selection of American wines to match. Or make it Spanish wine and Spanish cheese, or Italian cold cuts and red wines. Not only will it narrow the choices, making it easier to make your selections, but pairing wine with the foods that it grew up around greatly ups the chances that the two will go together well.
Maybe it sounds cheap, but it also sounds like a lot of fun. Pick a theme, any theme, and a price range, like $1 to $10, and ask everyone to bring a bottle. The theme could be the starring dish: say, a deep pan of lasagna. Or it could be a variety, like Merlot. Or it could be the movie you’re going to watch that night—anything from sultry wines with which to match a showing of Casablanca to wines that would pair well with buttered popcorn. (I mean it—there are some Chardonnays that go well with buttered popcorn.)
In order to keep competition down, you might want to paper-bag these wines, too. I know of some people who do this regularly, and award prizes (silly stuff, always) to the person who brings the most popular bottle. There’s always one bottle that goes faster than the others.
This is also a terrific way to learn about lots of wines at once: With 10 different Merlots, there are bound to be some clunkers. The few that are great you can add to your shopping list; the rest you never have to wonder about again.
