Let’s discuss several ideas on wine tasting parties, but first let’s get set up with the right tools.
Wine placemats help organize the flow of a hosted tasting and will help your friends understand what to do (without having to ask). We’ve included two wine placemat designs below – one that is better for learning and the other one that is plain.
Planning on hosting your own wine tasting? Download these free wine placemats to make your tasting party more interactive.
Grab our handy downloadable PDF and print these to a normal sheet of paper.
The wine placemats are pretty straightforward, but just in case, here are a few tips and tricks that will improve your wine tastings. First, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out: Learn How to Taste Wine and Develop Your Palate.
Besides picking out the fruit flavors and other flavors you taste in a wine, you can also identify the intensity of the fruitiness vs. earthiness in a wine. Put a dot where you think the wine lies on the flavor profile line graph.
Once you’ve determined how bold the wine tastes and what its fruit level is (see above) you can place each of the 4 wines on the comparative graph. Find out more about where wines fit on the Comparative Graph.
Would you drink this wine again or are you indifferent? Forget numbers and focus on what really matters. Does this wine make you: happy? angry? disappointed? randy? You’d be surprised how many professionals just draw a smiley face at a large professional wine tasting.
For those of you in the trade who just want barebones tasting placemats, we haven’t forgotten about you. Feel free to download the plain wine tasting placemat to use however you see fit. We highly recommend printing and laminating them for multiple uses.
Learn to taste like a pro! This tasting mat set uses the same 4-step tasting method used by wine professionals. It includes a flavor chart and detailed instructions to help you select wines and choose a theme for your next wine tasting.
James Beard Award-winning author and Wine Communicator of the Year. I co-founded Wine Folly to help people learn about wine. @WineFolly
