How to host a dinner party with your good wine

If you are a wine enthusiast, you probably have a few bottles you are only willing to share with friends who will really appreciate it. A dinner party is a great way to open a few good bottles, do a tasting, and have a great dinner to go with it.

Here’s how we like to do it.

Step 1: Pick a theme
A theme can create a bit of fun anticipation and give your party some focus. Last weekend, we hosted a “Que Syrah Syrah” party because had some terrific Syrahs we wanted to share. (Last year, we hosted a similar “Pinot Palooza” party.)

Step 2: Invite some friends who love wine
We prefer to keep the total to eight. A group this size is large enough to stimulate a lot of conversation, but small enough to comfortably fit around our dining table. We invited three other couples to Que Syrah Syrah that we knew would enjoy the wine and would mix well with each other.

Step 3: Select your bottles
We selected bottles we had purchased at wineries in 2010. This provided two advantages. First, we didn’t have to buy any extra wine for our tasting. Second, we could talk about our experiences tasting each one. Stories generally make wine taste even better.

Our Que Syrah Syrah menu:

Starter Wine
2006 Wattle Creek Triple Play (Syrah blend)

Wines for Blind Tasting & Dinner
2007 Wattle Creek Shiraz
2007 Cuvaison Diablo Syrah
2006 Domaine Serene Rockblock Reserve Syrah

Step 4: Create your menu
Sticking with one varietal makes it a little easier to come up with a menu that pairs well with the wine. Don’t worry if you aren't a wine pairing pro. Pick up a copy of What to Drink with What You Eat and you’ll always be right on the money. Que Syrah Syrah featured food that was perfect with Syrah.

Appetizer
Stuffed mushrooms
Gouda and Dubliner cheeses

Main Course
Marinated flank steak
Whipped potatoes and parsnips
White corn and zucchini fritters
Grilled eggplant

Dessert
Dark chocolate brownies with white chocolate shavings, raspberries, and whipped cream

Step 5: Set up a blind tasting
We like to do a blind tasting so we can discuss the wine and have a little fun. We were blind tasting three bottles, so each person was served in three glasses. The wine was poured from carafes to prevent our guests from seeing the bottles.

Informal works best for us. We like to sip each of the wines, discuss them with our friends, and ask everyone to pick their favorite. The wines are then revealed after a winner emerges.

Dinner is served once the wines are revealed. Our friends are free to pour themselves a glass of whichever wine they prefer.

Our Que Syrah Syrah winner
The ’07 Cuvaison Diablo took the Que Syrah Syrah title. It was silky smooth with a rich, earthy flavor that was outstanding by itself and paired well with our food.

The other two wines were no slouches, and each got at least one first place vote. Several of our friends noted the '07 Wattle Creek complimented the food very nicely while others appreciated the '06 Domaine Serene Rockblock's delicate flavors.

Let's taste two! A fun side by side tasting

It can be a lot of fun to taste two wines side by side to compare their flavors and pick your favorite. A great way to do this is when they are from the same wine maker but of different vintages or from different vineyards.

We recently had a chance to taste two bottles of Pinot Noir when we dined with Sally's parents and Jeff's parents at the Beach House Restaurant in Laguna Beach. Both bottles were from Barrel Fence Cellars, a small winery in Dundee Hills, Oregon. One, called 45 North, was from their Oregon vineyard. The other, called 45 South, was from their vineyard in New Zealand. We had acquired them by chance on a November trip to Willamette Valley, Oregon.

A lot of people might open one bottle and then the other, but tasting them at the same time allows you to appreciate their subtle differences and pick a favorite. Our server brought each of us two wine glasses and poured a taste in each one.

The table ended up split over which was the best. When you do a side by side tasting over dinner, people generally pick their favorite and continue drinking that wine with their meal. A split is a fortunate result since the wine can be more evenly divided.

Our challenge with these wines was they both kept getting better and better the longer they were open. We all ended up pouring a little more from each bottle over the course of our dinner. Good thing we had a third bottle (another 45 South) on hand when our glasses got low!

The next time you have two great bottles of wine, try sharing them with friends or family by doing a side by side tasting. Don't be afraid to bring them with you to a favorite restaurant if their corkage policy (and local liquor laws) will allow. It's a great way to have a fun night out and you won't have to pay wine list prices!

HalloWine Party 2010

Sally and I had a few friends over for a "HalloWine" party last Saturday night. The wine theme was "favorites under $20" and Sally was able to pair each one with a finger food, a cheese, and even a Halloween candy! The tasting was blind, so our guests also got to decide whether each wine was a trick or a treat.

1st Place - 2008 Cycles Gladiator Pinot Noir (100% Treat)
This was the only wine to get 100% "Treat" votes. Cycles Gladiator makes an outstanding Pinot Noir, and it tastes even better when you know how inexpensive it is! It has a nice balance of earthiness with fruit and went very well with all our pairings.

• Finger food: mixed veggie tray, pigs in a blanket
• Cheese: smoked Gouda, Camembert
• Candy: Hot Tamales

2nd Place (tie) - 2009 Ferrari Carano Fume Blanc (78% Treat)
This is probably the wine we recommend to friends and family most often, so it was good to see it do well in our tasting. It's a dry Sauvignon Blanc (hence, "Fume Blanc") that is a very smooth drinker and goes well with a wide variety of food.

• Finger food: cranberry feta pinwheels with ham
• Cheese: lemon feta spread
• Candy: candy corn

2nd Place (tie) - 2007 Ravenswood Napa Valley Old Vine Zinfandel (78% Treat)
I've got nuthin' to say about this one because I voted "Trick". It wasn't my favorite, but many of our guests said the wine grew on you, especially with food.

• Finger food: pepperoni pizza bites
• Cheese: aged cheddar, Dubliner
• Candy: Skittles

4th Place - 2008 Blackstone Winemaker's Select Cabernet Sauvignon (75% Treat)
This wine was exactly what a good, inexpensive bottle of wine should be. An easy drinker that's light on flavors, tannins, and alcohol taste so it goes well with a wide variety of food.

• Finger food: open-face London broil sandwiches (mmmmm, soooo good!)
• Cheese: blue Stilton, brie
• Candy: Hershey's Miniatures

5th Place - 2008 Hess Chardonnay (56% Treat)
Hard to believe a Hess didn't fair well, but it drew mixed reviews from our guests. Some really enjoyed its neutral Chardonnay flavors - not too much butter and not too much tart fruit. Others felt the flavor was a little 'off' and they didn't like it with their food.

• Finger food: vegetable egg rolls
• Cheese: Monterey jack, double cream Gouda
• Candy: Reece's Peanut Butter Cups

Wattle Creek's tasting room in San Francisco

Sally and I visited Wattle Creek's tasting room in San Francisco last weekend. It was a great time as always, and our new friend Brandy shared a lot of great Wattle Creek wine. Free tastings are one of the perks of being a wine club member, though we bought a few bottles on our way out so I don't know how 'free' it really was!

Here are some highlights.

2009 Sauvignon Blanc. One of the few Wattle Creek wines you can get outside of the winery. This is 100% Sauvignon Blanc fermented in stainless steel -- not our usual style but this one is light on grapefruit with a very refreshing taste.  It's perfect to sip on the patio on a warm summer evening.

2006 Malbec. One of our favorite wines - it's 92% Malbec and 8% Cabernet Sauvignon. Deep fruit with complex, well-structured flavors, it goes well with many types of foods. It's also only available to wine club members -- another perk of being 'in'.

2007 Shiraz. Great tobacco smell and bold flavors with that smooth fruit finish you expect from a Shiraz.

2007 Petite Sirah. Lots of dense fruit up front with light tannins and alcohol on the finish.

2006 Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a very solid Cab. Let's this one breathe for at least an hour and you'll be rewarded with stick to your teeth deliciousness. Lighter fruit to start and then a smooth but bold finish.

Pinot-palooza

Last weekend, we hosted a dinner party, all about Pinot's. We started the night with an '06 Chalone Pinot Blanc (Chalone Appellation) ~ delicate yet crisp ~ a nice way to start a night of pinots.

Before dinner, we did a blind tasting of four pinots we purchased in our '09 travels:

'06 Wattle Creek (Yorkville Highlands)
'06 Cuvaison (Carneros, Napa Valley)
'06 Sokol Blosser (Dundee Hills, OR)
'04 Chateau Souverain (Russian River Valley)

After enjoying a few tastes with a selection of soft cheeses, we each selected our favorites. No surprises that the Cuvaison and Sokol Blosser were at the top of everyone's list, followed by Wattle Creek, and a distant 4th was Souverain. The Cuvaison was very smooth, easy to drink, with well balanced flavors. The Sokol Blosser had similar characteristics, with a more 'earthy' taste than the fruitier Cuvaison. Wattle Creek was quite enjoyable as well. The Souverain, while a solid wine, just didn't measure up to the others.

Dinner was a very pinot-friendly menu: beef brisket, roasted root vegetables, and mixed wild mushroom rice. We all enjoyed the rest of the wine with dinner and noted how the characteristics of each wine seemed to change a bit when paired with the meal. The Souverain Pinot Noir even rose to the top of one of our guest's lists!
After the meal, we finished the night with an '08 Erath Sweet Harvest Pinot Blanc (Dundee Hills, OR) ~ super delicious ~ sweet (but not too sweet), with an almost smokey finish. A definite repeat purchase!

A fun night ~ and a great way to clear out some inventory!