Last weekend I decided it would be fun to get a bunch of friends together and have a sparkling wine tasting night. I had never done one before and thought it could be a fun tasting. So I pulled it all together and invited my friends around. The night was so much fun and filled with laughter, snacks and lots of bubbles! It was such a great time that I decided I would share my tips on how to host a sparkling wine tasting so you can do your own.
You really don’t need much to be able to host a tasting of sparkling wine, nor do you need to be an expert. It’s a great way to explore the flavours in different wines and enjoy learning about wines with friends! This guide will give you everything you need to host a sparkling wine tasting of your own. Below I’ve got tips on what to have on hand, choosing wines, food pairings and how to run it. You can even download the printables that I used! So let’s get started.
What you’ll need
As I mentioned above you don’t need too much to host a sparkling wine tasting. And you can also change it up based on what you want people to bring versus what you want to provide. For mine, I provided all the sparkling wine so that I could guide them through the tasting. I also provided some perfectly paired snacks (but more on that later). But it would also be fun to have everyone bring along a bottle and try them all together.
Here is a guide to what I had on hand for my sparkling wine tasting night:
- Bottles of sparkling wine – I had five but you can do as many as you want
- Tasting glasses – you can use wine glasses for this, in fact, it is encouraged to use wine glasses or tulip glasses to make it easier to smell the aromas in the wine
- An ice bucket – if you don’t have enough fridge space for the bottles to be stored upright I would recommend an ice bucket. It also means that after the tasting everyone can grab another glass when they feel like it
- Some snacks including crackers or bread to cleanse the palate in between tastings. Some napkins and plates would be good too if you have them!
- Something for people to write tasting notes on and score the wines – I have some handy printables that I created that you can use yourself – more on those later. You could also have plain paper if you’d rather.
- Pens for writing tasting notes
- Water and water glasses
- Notes on the wines you’re tasting to compare
Once you have all of this you’re ready to go!
Choosing the wines
As I mentioned above, when hosting a sparkling wine tasting you can choose how you want to run it. You could have everyone bring along their favourite bottle. This is a fun way to get some variety and also keeps the cost down for you. This is a great option if you want to get everyone involved in the wines as well as they can each talk about the wine they brought and why.
However, if you want a more structured tasting, I would recommend choosing your own wines. If you don’t want to pay for them you could ask everyone to bring along a little cash on the night to cover the costs of running the tasting. The great thing about choosing the wines is that you can give the tasting a range of different flavours without running the risk of trying the same thing over and over again. It also means you can read up on the wines beforehand and compare the notes from the winemakers to your tasting notes.
The wines I chose for our sparkling wine tasting
I decided to make our sparkling wine tasting all about Australian wine – so we didn’t try any Champagne. I thought it would be fun to try some of the regions around Australia and see all the breadth of wines we have. Here are the wines I included in our tasting as a guide for you (although you might want to run it differently):
- Prosecco – something light to start off with the Preece Prosecco from the King Valley.
- Non-vintage sparkling – I chose the Croser NV as it was made using the Traditional Method so could be compared to the Vintage sparkling well.
- Vintage sparkling – I had a bottle of Taltarni Blanc de Blancs from 2013 and I figured this was the perfect excuse to open it
- Sparkling Rose – I chose the Clover Hill Sparkling Rosé NV because we had it in Tasmania and it was delicious!
- Sparkling Shiraz – I opted for the Granite Ridge Bello Rosso Sparkling Red which we still had a couple of bottles of, and it is one of our favourites
This list will give you a good amount of variety in methods, grapes and flavours in the wines. But it’s completely up to you what you choose!
Perfect sparkling wine food pairings
Now that you’ve got the sparkling wines, it’s a fun opportunity to pair some perfect foods! What’s a wine tasting without some great snacks after all? I did some research and found some great snacks to go with the tasting. I then put them out with some plates and asked all the guests to grab a plate with each of the foods on it before sitting down. Then when I was describing the wines I suggested the foods to try with the wine. This was a fun way to see the difference that food makes when you are tasting wines!
As a staple, I recommend popping out some crackers and bread. These help to cleanse the palate between tastings so are a great thing to have out on the table prior to the tasting.
Here are some of the snacks I had on hand, but you can really put whatever you want out. Sparkling wine pairs so well with so many foods, especially snacks, so you could really put out anything!
- Brie cheese – pairs well with most vintage, non-vintage and Rosé wines
- Sharp cheddar – pairs well with sparkling shiraz and prosecco
- Nuts – particularly great with vintage sparkling wine
- Popcorn – pairs with everything
- Salty chips – again, you can’t go wrong with pairing this with everything
- Dark almond chocolate – great with Rosé sparkling wine or sparkling shiraz
- Cured meats – these go great with prosecco (we didn’t have these as we had a few vegetarians but is a great addition)
- Strawberries – these go great with non-vintage sparkling and Rosé sparkling
Other options, if you wanted to go fancy, could be some seafood – freshly shucked oysters are a classic pairing or hot smoked salmon! I also popped out some other salty treats like pretzels and corn snacks. But it’s really up to you!
Running the event
So now we’ve covered what you need to host a sparkling wine tasting, how do you actually run it? Depending on whether you are selecting the wines or not you’ll either have a really structured event or something more casual. Either way is totally fine! As I mentioned I opted for something more structured, but doing it where everyone brings their own bottle would also be great fun!
Regardless of how you want to run it, I have some great printables you can use for everyone. One of them is a tasting notes sheet where guests can write the wine details, their tasting notes and their rating. I found this was really fun to use as everyone got talking about their favourites and what they rated everything. The other printable is a bit of a cheat sheet to sparkling wine with a guide on how to taste it, and also some key sparkling wine terms to know. I popped a couple of these on the table throughout the tasting.
What information to have on hand
If you are running a structured event, I recommend writing some notes about the wines before you begin. I wrote out some key things to know about sparkling wine to go through prior to the tasting so everyone knew how it was made and how that impacted flavour. The notes then looked at the difference between each type of sparkling wine, followed by the winemaker notes. I would then explain the wine we were trying while pouring it, and once everyone had chatted about their tasting notes we’d compare it to the winemaker’s notes. If you are doing something more casual you could still have some notes about sparkling wine. You could then look up the winemaker notes after trying each wine!
Before we started, I looked at the wines and decided how we should taste them in terms of style – starting with lighter prosecco and ending with the sparkling shiraz. I then explained the wines while pouring, and gave everyone time to try the wine along with the food pairing. After that, we compared notes before comparing them with the winemaker’s notes. This worked really well and meant everyone had enough time to enjoy the wine. Then afterwards we kept enjoying our favourites!
In summary: how to host a sparkling wine tasting
So there you have it. I hope this guide helps give you some tips on how to host a sparkling wine tasting. We had so much fun trying all the wines. It was a great way to share my love of wine and for everyone to learn more about it. Plus it gave us an opportunity to catch up with a fun activity! The great thing about hosting one of these is that it is actually really easy, and you don’t need to spend a lot to have a fun event. You can really make it your own!