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Start Your Own Wine Tasting Club!

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say “I joined a book club, but I’m really just there for the wine and socializing”. So, why not do just that?

Skip the books and start a Wine Tasting Club instead! My friend Jenny and I did exactly that last year, and it’s turned into something I look forward to every month.

Jenny and I met on our WSET Level 2 course, and quickly realized we lived quite close to each other. We were both starved for social interaction due to the pandemic and became fast friends.

One night, Jenny was over at my place sharing a few bottles of wine. As we started to wind down, she mentioned wanting to start a “wine club”. It was like she had read my mind. I’d been wanting to start a wine club for years, but didn’t know enough wine lovers to really get it going.

Now we are several months in, and our group continues to grow each time as we extend the invite to others who sound interested. We’ve had an impressively positive response!

If you are interested in starting your own, here’s how we run ours:

1. Find your founding members

Start putting out the feelers for who would be interested in participating.

Our group has a whole range of experience levels. Jenny and I are the only two with any proper “wine training”. Everyone else is just a wine lover interested in learning more, and that’s all you need.

Extend your invites to anyone you know who drinks wine – you may be surprised by who takes you up on it. I even roped in my personal trainer!

All you need is two or three people to start. Trust me, it will grow with time.

2. Establish lines of communication

Now you need to link everyone into a method of communication so you can plan dates, themes, who’s bringing what.

We started a group instagram chat. Depending on personal preference for those involved, you could also use facebook, whatsapp, snapchat, or any other group messaging system.

3. Decide on frequency

How often do you want to meet? Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly?

I wouldn’t recommend meeting any less frequently than monthly, simply because you want to develop some level of momentum. Each subsequent meeting needs to be close enough in the future that you can get excited about it.

It’s also much easier for most people to plan their schedules slightly in advance, but not too far. If you ask me what I’m doing in six months time, well I have no idea.

We have been meeting monthly, and it feels like the perfect level of commitment at this stage.

4. Book your first meeting

Get it on the calendar as soon as possible! Again, we want to keep that excitement and momentum up.

Is there a day of the week that consistently works best for everyone? We started out on Fridays but have been finding Saturdays to work much better for everyone.

What about time of day? Is this a casual Sunday afternoon meet-up, or more of a wild weekend evening? Choose your timing to reflect what kind of atmosphere you want to create. We host ours in the evening, but fairly early, as several of our members have children that they need to get home to.

Finally, who is going to host? Sure, it could be the same person every time. But we recommend sharing the workload amongst all members by taking turns.

I think I would lose interest pretty fast if it was always on me to do the prep, hosting and clean-up every time.

(I used to do this for “wine parties” I hosted a few years ago. In addition to hosting, I also paid for all of the wine and snacks, just to encourage people to come. It was a lot.)

5. Choose a theme

A great way to keep things fresh and exciting with each meeting is to choose a theme.

The fun part is, you can choose any theme you want!

For example, we have been selecting different countries for each meeting. We’ve done Spain, France, and Italy. Each member brings their own bottle from that country to share with the group. This allows for a lot of flexibility. Amazingly, we haven’t had a single duplicate yet!

If you wanted to narrow it down even further, you could select a single region as your theme. The downside is that you are more likely to end up with duplicate bottles, but imagine sitting down to taste 5 or 6 different Bordeaux blends all at once. It would be a real challenge for your palates to pick up the differences, while also giving you a really strong frame of reference for what those wines are supposed to taste like.

Alternatively, you could choose a single grape varietal and everyone brings one from a different region. This is great if you want to get more familiar with that grape and see how drastically terroir, climate, and winemaking choices can all influence the final result.

The options are endless. Keep it as broad as requesting everyone bring a “red”, or as specific as asking people to bring only wines with high acidity!

6. Blind or not?

We run our tasting group as a blind tasting event, but it’s totally up to you if that’s the route you want to go.

Personally, I think it’s quite fun taking my notes and trying to put forward my best guess as to what I’m drinking. But if everyone in your group is super new to wine, you may be content with just tasting for fun too.

If you choose to taste blind, everyone should place their wine in a paper bag or other method of concealing the label. They can then be numbered during the tasting process, and the label only revealed once everyone has made their guess.

You could even consider having a prize for the person who gets the most right!

But no cheating – you can’t earn points guessing the wine that you brought 😛

8. Party Prep

Now that you’ve narrowed down all the details, it’s time to prep.

You’ll need these essentials:

• lots of snacks – everyone can contribute, but you will want to make sure there is sufficient food so no one ends up tipsier than they had planned
• proper glassware – tasting red out of red solo cups just ain’t the same. Make sure you have enough glassware for everyone in attendance (I’m a big fan of the Schott Zwiesel sauvignon blanc and burgundy glasses)
• tasting sheets and pens – you gotta have somewhere to take notes. It could be a simple lined sheet of paper, or you can print out some guided sheets to make sure you don’t miss anything (subscribe to this blog to get a free copy of mine!)
• paper bags and elastic bands, or any other means of covering up the labels if you are tasting blind
• small group? You may want to consider investing in a Coravin or vaccuum sealer so any excess wine doesn’t go to waste

This last one is very important:

Ensure everyone has a safe way home. As the host, you are responsible for making sure no one drives drunk following you event.

7. TASTE AWAY!

Priority number one for your tasting event is to have fun! Unless everyone in your group is studying for certifications, keep things as casual as possible.

Chat, snack, share any tasting tips and tricks you’ve learned. (Psst! There are a bunch on my instagram, @quesyrahsarah_wineblog. You can also take a peak at my article How to Taste Wine)

We also like to have resources on hand to give us hints when we are struggling. Wine Folly’s The Master Guide: Magnum Addition is our current go-to.

I also just picked up Wine Wars as a fun post-tasting game if no one wants to go home yet!