Marley the Party Goddess shares six tips to throw a low-cost wine party:
1. Mix it up – Feature different wines from super cheap Two Buck Chuck to pricey. See if your guests really can tell the difference. Make SURE to disguise the labels.
2. Be tricky – Pick four to six wines of varying prices and hide the bottles (in a sock, wine sleeve, whatever). This time though, just put the dollar amount and the type of wine on the tag (ie – chardonnay , $37/bottle). Then ask your guests to describe why they think that wine is more expensive than the other wine labeled “chardonnay $12.” The trick is that you’ve really mixed up the wines. The most expensive are really the cheapest and vice versa.
3. Create a Wine IQ test – Pick four kinds of wines from the bottles your guests have brought, all different: a shiraz, merlot, cabernet, etc and cover the bottles. Then see if the guests can actually tell you which one is which. You’ll be surprised!
4. Make it a potluck – Have everyone bring a dish OR a bottle of wine. At the end of the night, guests get to decide which wine/food pairings tasted the best.
5. Discuss the defaults – During the party ask your guests what their “default” bottle of wine is and why. Makes for good conversation.
6. For wine sophisticates, pick a theme – Decide that you’re going to taste 6 different California chardonnays (or different bottles of another type of wine) and taste and rate them according to a wine wheel that you hand out at the beginning of the evening. Guests write down the characteristics that they taste in the wine and then compare notes.
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
My hubby and I have a wine party every Saturday afternoon at Bev Mo. Their wine tasting time on Saturday is from 12-3 pm.
$3 for wine tasting – they have a good variety of wines. It’s inexpensive and you get to try out some expensive wines along with inexpensive ones.
In fact we now have a group that arrive around the same time each week and we’ve been dubbed the BevMo Wine group! We’ve even gotten together for appetizer potluck and wine outside of BevMo…great fun.
It’s been a nice way to meet new people with a common interest – wine!
We did a fun wine party where each couple brought two bottles of any wine (and it ranged from 2 buck chuck to $30 wine) and we opened one of each bottle and everyone scored the wines on a 1-10 scale. At the end we tallied the scores and the couple that brought the winning wine got to take home the second bottles that everyone brought.
I LOVE the idea of the mix and match game…I will have to try this potluck style soon. Very chic.
Saw this on Twitter, you have (another new follower!
Excellent, thanks for following me! If anyone else wants to check out my “tweets” I’m @bargainbabe on Twitter.com.