Planning and Hosting a Wine Tasting Dinner - Part 3

OK, now that we have covered everything associated with planning the perfect wine tasting dinner for friends and family in my last two blogs, next up is actually preparing and hosting the dinner. Here are my secrets for hosting a wine tasting dinner that’s guaranteed to go off without a hitch (or without any big hitches)!

The selections for our FL tasting dinner - photo by Laurie Geis

Now the fun part is here – actually preparing and hosting the wine tasting dinner! With all the preliminary planning completed, it’s time to pull everything together and actually start the party! In this post, I’ll cover my secrets for pulling off a fun and relaxing wine tasting dinner. Let’s get started!

• Make a timeline for the evening so you can keep track of everything that needs to be done. Preparing a detailed timeline is critical to keeping the dinner on schedule and ensuring you don’t forget anything as you work your way through the courses. As a general planning factor, I assume 30 minutes for each course (that includes time for you to pour and talk about the wine, assemble the dish, and then serve and enjoy it with your guests). In between, you will need to take things out of the refrigerator and put dishes in the oven at the right time, and also do the same with your wine so it’s served at the right temperature. Here’s a copy of the timeline I created for our FL wine tasting.

5:30 pm Heat oven to 400 degrees for pinwheels

5:40 pm Put pinwheels in oven

6:00 pm Serve pinwheels & sparkling wine

6:20 pm Prepare amuse bouche & toasts

6:30 pm Serve amuse bouche

6:30 pm Take gazpacho out of refrigerator

6:35 pm Serve toasts & Riesling

6:50 pm Prepare gazpacho

7:00 pm Serve gazpacho

7:00 pm Take salad dressing and mustard sauce out of refrigerator

7:00 pm Heat oven to 500 degrees & take potatoes out of refrigerator

7:15 am Put tenderloin in oven

7:20 pm Prepare salad

7:30 pm Serve salad & Chardonnay

7:45 pm Take tenderloin out of oven and put potatoes in oven

7:45 pm Turn oven temperature down to 350 degrees

7:50 pm Sauté asparagus

7:55 pm Plate tenderloin, potatoes and asparagus

8:00 pm Serve tenderloin & Merlot blend

8:00 pm Take cheese out of refrigerator

8:25 pm Prepare cheese plates

8:30 pm Serve cheese plate & Pinot Noir

8:55 pm Prepare chocolate mousse

9:00 pm Serve chocolate mousse & Syrah

• Select your glasses and dishes for serving each course and set the table. Don’t fret too much about this one. While Laurie and I have collected a lot of wine glasses and dishes/plates over the years that we use for these wine tasting dinners, any regular plates and wine glasses will do – they don’t all have to match! But it is good to have enough for multiple courses so you don’t have to wash the dishes after each course. Also, I’d recommend having at least two wine glasses for each guest, one for white and one for red wine. Finally, make sure you have water glasses and plenty of water pitchers to keep everyone hydrated throughout the meal.

• Make your music playlist for the evening. Music is essential for a great dinner, so create a playlist that will get you through the evening. Laurie and I make this easy by creating an eclectic playlist of our favorite songs (we don’t really try to guess what everyone else will like – too hard!). But you usually can’t go wrong with greatest hits from the 60’s and 70’s, or a playlist that showcases your favorite new or largely unknown artists that you can introduce to your guests. We make our playlists 4-5 hours long so we can “select and forget” once our guests arrive.

• Manage your portions for each course. It’s easy to go overboard with the size of the wine pours as well as the size of the dishes you serve, so plan this out beforehand as well. We usually do 2-3 oz. pours of wine for each course – for a 7-course tasting menu, that equates to about 2 ½ to 3 ½ glasses of wine for each guest over the course of the dinner. Also, we make sure each course consists of only a few bites to ensure everyone stays hungry throughout the meal. The exception is the main course, which we make a bit bigger. At the end of the evening, your guests should be full but not stuffed (and confession here, we are still refining our serving portions to ensure that outcome – I tend to still go bigger than I should at times with both the wine pours and the food portions, although no one seems to complain when I do!).

• Give your guests (and yourselves as the hosts) a break every so often during the dinner. If you plan on 30 minutes for each course, a 7-course wine tasting dinner will last 3 ½ hours which is a long time to sit at a table. So, Laurie and I like to serve guests their food and wine courses in a few different locations throughout the evening. For example, we’ll start by serving the first two courses at our kitchen island, then move to the next few courses at our dining room table, and then finish the evening with the final two courses in our great room or outside on our lanai. If you don’t have a space that allows for that, you can ask each guest to help with final assembly and plating of a particular course – this is a fun way to get your guests more involved in the dinner, and also gets them up and moving throughout the evening.

So, how did our first FL wine tasting dinner turn out? Laurie and I had a blast, and we think our guests had a pretty good time as well! Everyone enjoyed sipping wine from their “home states” and discovering both value wines and premium wines that they hadn’t had the opportunity to taste before. We also had some great conversation about the food, wine, and pairings themselves, and what everyone liked (and in a few cases, didn’t like!) about them. Here are a few pics along with the wine tasting menu from the evening. We’re already looking forward to hosting our next wine tasting dinner, and I hope this blog series motivates you to do the same!

Taking a break to watch the sunset during our FL wine tasting dinner

Main course – roasted beef tenderloin w/ potato galette’s and sauteed asparagus

Amuse Bouche – brie with aged balsamic, speck, and arugula

Salad course – arugula, mint, and apple salad with buttermilk dressing

Wine Tasting Dinner Menu – A Tour of Wines Across America

1st Course

Prosciutto and Gruyere Pastry Pinwheels

Gruet Brut Sparkling Wine (New Mexico)

2nd Course

Roasted Cherry Tomato and Ricotta Toasts

2019 Forge Cellars Dry Riesling Classique (New York – Seneca Lake)

3rd Course

Gazpacho

2021 Early Mountain Quaker Run Vineyard Rose (Virginia)

4th Course

Arugula, Mint & Apple Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

2019 Fess Parker Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay (California – Sta. Rita Hills)

5th Course

Beef Tenderloin w/ Yukon Gold Gruyere Galette, Sautéed Asparagus and Mustard/Horseradish Sauce

2015 Force Majeure Epinette (Washington – Red Mountain)

6th Course

Cheese Plate

2018 Domaine Serene Pinot Noir Evenstad Reserve (Oregon – Willamette Valley)

7th Course

Dark Chocolate Mousse with Whipped Cream

2016 Shafer Relentless (California – Napa)