Step 1: Decide your theme
A theme gives the tasting structure and gives your guests something to compare. Without one, you're just drinking wine — which is fine, but not a tasting. Pick one of these:
- Single grape, multiple regions. Six Pinot Noirs from Burgundy, Oregon, New Zealand, Tasmania, Sonoma, and Germany. You'll be amazed how different the same grape can taste.
- Single region, multiple grapes. All Tuscan, all Barossa, all Marlborough. Lets you taste a region's "house style."
- Vertical. Same wine, different vintages. Hard to organise but illuminating if you can pull it off.
- Price ladder. Six bottles ranging from $15 to $100. Excellent for proving (or disproving) that price = quality.
- Old world vs new world. Three classic European wines vs three from Australia / California / NZ. Always sparks debate.
Step 2: Pick the right number of wines
Six is the sweet spot. Fewer than four feels thin. More than eight and palate fatigue ruins the back half of the night — you literally can't taste accurately after eight wines, regardless of how many you spit.
Step 3: Buy the wines
Budget around $30-40 per bottle as a midpoint, unless you're doing a price ladder theme. Cheap wines often taste similar to each other in a tasting context. Buy from a real wine merchant if you can — they'll happily build your selection if you tell them your theme. Allow one bottle per six guests for actual tasting plus a backup if anyone wants more.
Step 4: Set up the room
Glassware
You don't need 36 fancy glasses. You need one proper wine glass per guest. Riedel, Schott Zwiesel, or even a basic burgundy bowl-style glass — anything with a tulip shape and enough volume to swirl. Guests rinse with water between wines. Skip flute champagne glasses; they're useless for tasting.
Spittoons
One per two guests. A solid plastic cup with an opaque lining works fine. Spitting is not optional in a serious tasting — it's how you stay sharp through six wines and remember anything afterward. Tell your guests in advance so they're not weirded out.
Water + crackers
Plain water (still, room temperature) and unsalted plain crackers. No flavoured chips, no cheese during the actual tasting. Cheese after, please.
Lighting
Bright enough to see colour clearly. White tablecloth or a sheet of white paper under each glass helps you assess the wine's appearance, which is the first scoring category for a reason.
Step 5: Open and pour
Whites and rosés: chill to 8-10°C. Lights reds: 14-16°C (slightly cool). Full-bodied reds: 16-18°C (room temp in winter, slightly cool in summer). Open big reds 30-60 minutes ahead. Wines that have been sealed under cork for a long time benefit from decanting.
Pour 50ml per wine per guest. That's about three good sips. Resist the urge to pour more — you've got six to get through.
Step 6: Run the order
Light to heavy. White before red. Dry before sweet. Young before old. Lower alcohol before higher. There's no perfect rule but those five guidelines will get you 90% of the way.
Suggested 6-wine order: sparkling → light white (Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling) → fuller white (oaked Chardonnay) → light red (Pinot Noir) → medium red (Sangiovese, Tempranillo) → full red (Shiraz, Cabernet).
Step 7: Score honestly
This is where most home tastings go off the rails. People score everything 90+ to be polite. Use a structured system: appearance, aroma, palate, label, finish. Wine Night does this for you on a weighted 100-point scale — see our scoring guide for details.
Two practical tips:
- Score before you discuss. Otherwise the loudest voice anchors the room.
- Write tasting notes in plain language. "Tastes like green apples and a tennis ball" is more useful than "minerality with secondary aromas." If you can describe it without sounding like a wine column, you actually noticed something.
Step 8: Reveal and discuss
If you ran a blind tasting, this is the magic moment. Reveal each wine after scoring closes. Watch people gasp when the cheapest bottle wins. Watch the wine snob in your group be mortified that they rated the $80 bottle 6/10. This is genuinely the best part of the night.
Step 9: Eat real food after
End the structured tasting after wine six. Bring out cheese, charcuterie, bread, olives, whatever you've prepared. Re-pour anyone's favourite. The structured part is over — now it's a dinner party.
Step 10: Save the results
If you used Wine Night, your group's scores are saved automatically and accessible from your past tastings later. Download a PNG of the night's results and tag everyone on Instagram if they're game. People love seeing where their picks ranked.