How to Set Up & Serve at a Wine Pairing Event
By Brian Connolly
How to Set Up & Serve at a Wine Pairing Eventthumbnail Wine pairings offer a way to learn more about combining different foods and wines.
Wine pairing events offer a fun, educational approach to the standard wine tasting. While some events focus on pairing wine samples with specific cheeses, more elaborate tastings may involve a variety of side dishes, desserts and h’ors d’ouevres. Wine to Water, a nonprofit organization that hosts wine tasting events to raise money for clean water, recommends setting up an entrance area where guests can sign in and create name tags to help encourage conversation. Depending on your venue, you may either arrange each wine station next to its paired food dish or assign numbers to help guide guests to the appropriate pairings.
Topic To Set Up & Serve at a Wine Pairing Event:
- Party Food
- Food Software
To Set Up & Serve at a Wine Pairing Event Difficulty:
- Moderate
To Set Up & Serve at a Wine Pairing Event You’ll Need:
- Tables
- Table cloth or confetti
- Plastic wine cups, plates and cutlery
- Stools
- Nametags and sharpie pens
- Stereo or sound system
- Wines
- Food pairings
- Recycling bins
To Set Up & Serve at a Wine Pairing Event Instructions:
- Set up your wine and food stations in the desired areas by putting tables around the room. Decorate each table with a cloth and confetti as desired, and put wine and food crates nearby for easy access. Provide plenty of recyclable plastic wine cups, plates and cutlery to prevent delays between servings, and arrange stools for your servers to sit during intervals.
- Designate a welcome station that is staffed with at least two people to check IDs as your guests arrive. Provide nametags and sharpie pens so that each guest can sign their name and wear a tag as they enter.
- Turn on the house sound system or a portable stereo to provide light house music for the wine pairing. Make sure all musicians and performers are in place and ready to perform when the doors open.
- Pair each wine with a specific type of dish that accommodates the palette. Assign sharp cheddar cheeses to complementary wines such as Cabernet, Rioja and Sauvignon Blanc, while pairing brie cheeses with Champagne or Sweet Sherry. Chicken and fish dishes can be paired with Merlot wines, and chocolates and other sweets should be combined with dessert wines such as Banyuls.
- Instruct each wine server to pour roughly two ounces of wine per person, with no more than two samplings of each wine per guest. Introduce your servers to each wine and inform them on the specific qualities of the grape, flavor and suggested pairings. Cheese, dessert and h’ors d’ouerve servers should provide one to three samples per guest. Put a recycling bin next to each wine or food station so that bottles and packages can be periodically removed as needed.
- Check your local police office for information about specific laws and regulations for serving alcohol in your state. Depending on your state’s requirements, you may need to submit a detailed application to your local Alcoholic Beverage Committee within a certain time frame of your event.
- Alcohol can be severely debilitating when taken in excess. Make sure your servers know when to limit a taster’s consumption, and have a bouncer or security guard in the building at all times.