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When I hosted my very first Blind Wine Tasting (check it out here) I got a lot of feedback from people about wanting to go to one or how to host a blind wine tasting themselves. So I figured, because I can’t come to all of your houses and host one right now, I would give you the tools so you can host a blind wine tasting!

A blind wine tasting is a really great way to have a bit of fun with wine. I think sometimes they have a bit of a stigma around them that they are only for people who really know wine. You know, the stuffiness of the industry at it again! But I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. Anyone can participate in a blind wine tasting, and you definitely don’t need to know that much about wine to do it.

My aim for this blind wine tasting was to get a group of friends that had a varied knowledge of wine and bring them all along for a fun night of wine. I didn’t want to make it too serious, because wine tasting should be fun! So instead of expecting them to have the knowledge, I used it as an opportunity to learn more about wine, and have a bit of fun while doing it! Wine tastings are where I learnt most of what I know after all!

I’m going to share with you exactly how I ran the night, and I’ve also got some printables that you can download so you can host one yourself!

What is a blind wine tasting?

I am sure there are many ways to host a blind wine tasting out there, but this is what I believe it is. A blind wine tasting event is where a group come together and try a variety of wines without knowing anything about it. The variety, winery, year and region are all hidden from the drinker. So the drinker then has to guess a variety of facts about the wine.

For my blind wine tasting, guests had to guess the variety (pinot vs shiraz), region and provide a score based on personal preference out of five. You can customise this based on how you want to run the event, but at the very least variety tends to be the staple.

Once guests have gone through the wines, you score their answers and declare an overall winner. The main takeaway is that there are plenty of ways to do it, but overall it’s a really fun event that gets everyone talking about wine. What’s better than that?

Organising the event

To host a blind wine tasting the Cheeky Vino way, here these are the main things you’ll need first:

• A group of willing friends who like wine. I recommend picking a group of around 10 people as an ideal number. They should be relatively similar in wine knowledge so you don’t have one person taking home all the prizes! Plus, you don’t want it to become too serious!
• Some wine (duh). I recommend making it one style of wine, whether it’s white or red. Sparkling wine and Rose can be a little tricky as they are harder to detect different varieties with. If you’re doing a tasting just for fun, I recommend sticking with white or red as it’s easier to detect differences in the wine.
• Somewhere to host. I did this at my house, but you can really do it anywhere. All you need is enough space for everyone to sit and then a place where you can hide the wines so no one can see them.
• Invitation. I just used Facebook events but if you want to get fancy you could do a formal invitation!

What you’ll need for the event:

Once you’ve got an event, some wine, and some friends to come along, there are a few things I recommend having ready on the day:

For the table

• Wine glasses. Some sources recommend having a wine glass per wine, but to me, that seems like way too much clean up (plus I don’t own quite that many wine glasses). I think this is overkill. Personally, one wine glass per person is more than adequate!
• 2 buckets. If your blind wine tasting is anything like ours, we had some seriously bad wines. So you should provide the option of a bucket to put any excess wine in, or to put water in after they wash their glass out.
• 2 Water jugs. Make sure people have access to water to wash their glasses out between tastings, or simply rehydrate.
• White paper. This is good to have so people can look at the colour of the wine they are tasting.
• Scorecards and pens. You’ll need a scorecard so that people can mark down what they think the wine is. I made one for our tasting that you can download here. But you’ll also need a lot of pens, so make sure you grab them from around your house and lay them out for everyone.
• Guides. This is optional, but I provided a few handy guides to help my guests choose the wines. More on those below.

Food

• Bread, crackers and general carbs. I didn’t believe this until I saw it, but you need to provide plenty of bread and crackers. These are not only a palate cleanser, but also make sure people have something to snack on that fills them up! When everyone is drinking a lot of wine, you’ll be surprised how quickly they eat you out of bread and home. So make sure you stock up on water crackers, nice crusty baguettes and breadsticks.
• Snacks. This is something that’s optional but highly encouraged, because what is a wine tasting without snacks? Think snacks that go well with wine but are also easy to eat. Examples include olives, chocolate pieces, cubes of cheese, dips and fruit. Anything that you think people will enjoy drinking with the wine! If you’re worried about cost, you can ask people to bring some as a contribution.

For the event

• 2 carafes. This is the easiest way to hide what wine it is, as sometimes wines will have distinct bottles or labelling that can’t be covered up by a bag or cleverly placed label cover. Pouring a little into a carafe and bringing it out really ensures that the wine is unknown to everyone. I recommend using two if you have them, particularly for a large group, as people can try the wine more quickly. It keeps the momentum going!
• Prizes. If you’re giving out prizes at the end of the competition, make sure you have a good range. Personally, I did funny prizes (inflatable crowns, novelty glasses) but you could do proper prizes if you wanted to. You could easily give out wine to the winners! You can also do prizes and certificates (more on that below).

What wines to serve

So you’ve got all the logistics sorted, but now which wines should you serve? Well, as I said above, make sure you stick to one type of wine, so it makes it harder to pick the variety. I chose red wine for this event as I think more people are familiar with the different varieties than with white wine. If you’re doing a blind wine tasting for people who don’t usually do wine tastings, this would be a great starting point.

Ideally, you want 5-8 wines to get a good tasting. Less than this doesn’t give variety, and too many more people have lost their ability to truly taste the wine. We broke this rule with our tasting as we ended up with 10 wines though, so there really are no rules!

The next thing to consider is how to source the wines. So if you’re made of money, which I most certainly am not, you could buy the bottles yourself. This would be ideal as you’d be able to select a good range of wines from different regions to create variety in the tasting. However, if you’re anything like me, you’re not made of money, so you have to opt for a different option. Side note: you could also get everyone to put some money in so you can buy the wines, but I have another solution.

My recommendation

To keep the cost down, I asked that each participant brought their own bottle of red wine to the event. Not only was this the cheaper option, but I actually think it made the event more fun. We ended up with many of the same variety (5 Shiraz wines), but that didn’t matter. I think what it did was give all the guests a sense of ownership of the process. It meant they were involved and could look out for their wine. It also makes revealing the wines much more fun as you tell them the wines that each of them brought! I know at the end we had everyone gathered around the scoresheets discussing the different wines, and I don’t think we would have had this if they hadn’t brought their own!

So my recommendation for a number of reasons is to get everyone to bring a bottle. It is much more exciting, and cost-effective for you. I found no one minded being asked for this either.

How to run it

So you’ve got everything you need, and now your guests are arriving. So how on earth do you run one of these things? Well, luckily I’ve got a bit of a run sheet for you to make it as easy as possible:

1. As you get the wines, on a piece of paper note down the name of the wine, the variety, the region and who brought it. Then, decide the order you will bring the wines out and note this next to the wines. This will become your wine run sheet.
2. Make sure every guest has a scorecard, a pen and a wine glass. Also, lay out any guides you want to provide on the table along with snacks.
3. Get everyone to sit down and introduce the concept of the blind wine tasting. Let them know how it will work, and how to score each wine, including the rating system and what to look for.
4. Let them know the varieties that they will be tasting. This is something I wasn’t going to do but makes it a lot easier for your guests to choose the wines, especially if they haven’t been to one before. It gives them a frame of reference so they know what the wine could be.
5. Head into your secret wine room and pour the first bottle into the carafes. You won’t need much of the bottle as everyone will probably only pour a little bit into their glass. Then take the carafes out and let everyone pour the wine themselves.
6. Allow them some time to try the wine and score before bringing out the next wine. Be on hand to answer any questions about wine tasting, but make sure you don’t give it away!
7. Take that wine away, reserve the rest and then pour the next wine!
8. At the end of the tasting, grab everyone’s scorecards and score them. I found it easiest to tick the ones they got right and give them a score at the end. I then noted the winners on the wine run sheet.
9. Once you have the winners, go out and announce the wines in their order to the group. This is always the fun part when people realise whether they got them right. Then let everyone know the winners of the wine tasting and give out any prizes (and certificates!).
10. Allow your guests some time to check out their scorecards and talk about the result. This is always really fun! Then bring out the rest of the wines for everyone to enjoy over dinner!

Throw in some curveballs

One thing that I did to make the night more fun was to throw in some curveballs. I bought the cheapest cask wine (aka goon) and added it into the wine line up. Then I let everyone know there was a goon in there and told them to put a star next to the wine that they thought was the goon. The hilarious part was, that no one ended up guessing it! They thought so many of the wines were the goon that they were completely thrown off. It was really funny seeing them trying to find the goon, and my partner even gave the goon 4 out of 5!

Another curveball that I threw in without telling anyone was a non-alcoholic wine. It was so hilarious seeing everyone’s reaction when I told them the wine they tried was actually alcohol-free!

These are just two curveballs you could throw in to make the evening more fun. I’m sure there’s plenty more out there though! I think doing this takes the seriousness out of the wine tasting and gets people talking more.

The prizes

I gave out 5 prizes on the night, and each had a certificate and a novelty gift to go along with it. It makes the event a bit more exciting to give out something as people can have a laugh at the end of the tasting. I opted to give out prizes for the worst guessers too so that it wasn’t all about winning!

If you want to give out the same prizes, I’ve got a printable you can download and use here. These are the prizes I gave out:

• Supreme wine taster – for the person who guessed the most wine varieties correctly
• Finder of the red wine – for the person who guessed the least amount of wine varieties correctly
• Guesser of the goon – for the person who guessed which wine was the goon (no one got this at our blind wine tasting)
• The world traveller – for the person who guessed the most regions correctly
• Love all the wines – for the person who had the highest amount of points across all their wines (I just added up the total points they gave across all of them)
• The wine critic – for the person who had the lowest amount of points across all their wines

I think everyone really enjoyed the prizes, and it really rounded out the evening!

Hot tips

Now you know how to host a blind wine tasting, here are some of my hot tips:

• When you’re deciding on the order of the wines, consider what will work best. Start with lighter wines like Pinot Noir, and make sure to spread out double ups of varieties.
• Make sure everyone in the room has similar wine knowledge, and provide them with some handy guides so they don’t feel completely lost.
• Get a funnel to be able to pour any of the wine left over in the carafes back into the bottle. That way you aren’t wasting any precious wine!
• Provide some dinner afterwards and bring out the rest of the wine. It will keep the party going and everyone can re-try the wines that they scored.
•  If you can, try and find a second person to help you with logistics. It makes it a lot easier to run the event with two people!
• Have lots of snacks on hand and make sure they are chopped up beforehand. You’ll be surprised by how quickly everyone eats them, and if you have them ready to go you’ll be able to quickly top up their supplies.
• Don’t be too serious with the prizes. They are more for a laugh, so go to a discount store and get some funny ones!

Some good resources

So now that you’ve got how to host a blind wine tasting, here are some handy resources for you. Firstly, if you’re after my printables from the event, you can download them below:

• Scorecards (double sided with a wine information sheet behind)
• Certificates

I’ve mentioned above that I provided some guides for guests that I printed out and put on the table. Here are the best resources I’ve found:

• My wine tasting guide: I posted this just before the event and had a few guests comment that it was good to read a guide on how to taste wine beforehand.
• Wine Folly: they have so many great guides to choose from. I used their free wine guide which you can get when you sign up to their newsletter. They have a great page on the different types of wines from different regions which really helps guests
• This red wine sweetness chart from Wine Buying Guide: this really helps the guests to figure out which wine it might be
• This Wine Folly wine buying cheat sheet: It talks about the difference between cool and warm climate wines

The final word

So there you have it! I hope this comprehensive guide helps you to host a blind wine tasting of your own! I had so much fun hosting mine, and honestly cannot wait to host another soon! This would be a great full-time job, it was truly rewarding. Something about seeing my friends laughing and talking about wine. It is exactly what I wanted the Cheeky Vino to be about!

Blind wine tastings don’t have to be stuffy, and this guide will hopefully make them a little more accessible for everyone!