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Host a Blind Tasting

Blind tastings are a great way to expand your knowledge of wine with family and friends. The beauty of these events is that they can be tailored to your personal style. The gathering can be formal or casual, large or intimate, and geared to the experience level of your guests. Blind tastings are also easy to organize and can come together quickly.

At Silver Oak, we use a 20 point system that requires tasters to rate each wine on a scale of 0 to 2 in each of the following areas:

• Clarity/Appearance
• Color
• Aroma/Bouquet
• Total Acidity
• Sweetness
• Body/Texture
• Taste/Flavor
• Bitterness
• Finish/Astringency
• General Quality

Start your planning by choosing a theme for your tasting. For example, will you taste only Cabernet Sauvignon? Or will you taste a range of wines from a specific appellation, such as the Napa Valley or Sonoma County? Themes could also include countries, Old World versus New World styles, or wines within a certain price range – the possibilities are endless.

A flight of six to eight wines is ideal for a blind tasting. Choose wines with a range of characteristics, and determine a tasting order that progresses from dry to sweet with white wines or from light to full-bodied with red wines. Conceal the identities of the wines by wrapping each in aluminum foil or a brown paper bag, and number them to indicate the tasting order. You should plan to have enough stemware for a side-by-side comparison. To keep track of the wines, have your guests label the base of each glass with a wet erase pen.

To make sure guests use the same criteria to judge each wine, decide ahead of time which rating system you will use. Provide a score sheet that will assist your guests in their evaluation.

Once guests have tasted and discussed all of the wines, calculate the scores and determine the winning wine. Then unwrap the bottle to reveal its label.

Since great wine is meant to be enjoyed with food, consider following your blind tasting with a dinner, featuring foods that complement your selected wines. Take note of the first bottle to be emptied and see if it matches the groups’ top selection. Spend the rest of the evening enjoying all the wines and discussing possible themes for your next blind tasting!