Hosting a Wine Event at Home | Traveling Vineyard

If you can’t tell by the title of this website (and everything that I post about;)), I love wine. I love everything that has to do with wine. Learning about wine and everything that goes into the different varietals and bottles has become really interesting to me lately, so when the Traveling Vineyard suggested hosting a wine event at home, I was 100% on board!

Hosting a Wine Event at Home with the Traveling Vineyard

First of all, any excuse to drink wine, I am in it to win it! For this event, the wine guides that came to our house from the Traveling Vineyard, Debra and Al, asked me to choose 5 wines that I wanted my guests to sample. This was super fun for me because they sent me a description and tasting notes for each one. I got to choose one sparkling, two whites, and two reds. A great selection so that there was something in there for everyone.

Debra also sent me some food pairings, because I really wanted to make the food for the event. There is the option to have the food provided, but to me that takes some of the fun out of the event!

Obviously, I had to get some phone shots for social media. #bloggerlife 🙂

For this event, I made a ton of different things, all of which had a pairing with the specific wines that we were tasting. I had a cheese plate (for the white wine), some fancy meats from this Italian eatery in Scottsdale, artichoke dip (for the white wine), stuffed olives, a dessert tray (for the sparkling and the red), and baked brie with cherries (for the red), pecans, and rosemary. So yummy!

Debra and Al were really great. The first wine we had brought on a fun experience because they had it set up to taste it three different ways, in order to bring out the many different flavors of the wine. The first was chewing the jelly bean, which was all about demonstrating how the receptors in your nose are vital for your sense of smell. The second was a lemon and a green grape, seeing how they changed the flavor of the wine, and the last was with the wine and cheese pairing. I learned a ton about the notes in wine through this experiment.

We went through the 5 wine tastings, and Debra showed everyone the wine and gave information on the tastings after each one. We learned how to properly See, Smell, Swirl, Sniff and Sip each of the wines that were presented.

The Traveling Vineyard has 17 different wines that they offer, and are adding on even more in the near future. The five that we had were all pretty good. I ordered three of them myself, one red, one white, and the sparkling. Reviews on these will be coming soon!

It seemed like everyone had a really good time and learned a lot from the hosts.

Final Thoughts

I would say to make sure that the group of people you invite when you are hosting a wine event at home, really like wine and/or want to learn about it, or else they might get a little restless. You are sitting pretty close quarters listening to quite a bit of information in between tastings. Some hosts may not include as much information, while others chat about how the wine is made, different varietal components, etc… To me, this is really interesting and I loved learning so much information!

At this rate, I’ll just be here, on my way to becoming a sommelier;) 

Interested in hosting your own wine get together? Contact my hosts here and they can get you started. It was such a great time. I had a blast planning it and I would definitely do it again. It would be the perfect event for a bridal shower or a girls get together.

*Cheers to going to a wine tasting, right in your living room*