WINE NIGHT!

My friends are scattered all over and around New York state. Since it can be hard to find the time to see one another, we basically formed "clubs" to have an excuse to get together at least every other month.  These clubs are fondly referred to as book club and wine night.  They serve similar purposes: excuses to get together with friends and talk about things we love, namely wine and books. But both clubs are sooo much more! For now let's discuss wine night.

I can't take the credit for this, but I believe one of my good friends can.  It started with her and another friend going to a wine tasting at a wine store and saying "we can do this at home and have a lot more fun with it". And thus, wine night was born.

The idea is preetty simple. Basically, one girl throws the party. She picks either a type of wine or uses some other basis for her night (so far we've done Reisling, New York wines, sparkling wines, and Pinot Noir - next month we are actually doing beer!) The hostess does her research and picks six different bottles each under $20. The point is to keep this somewhat cheap and hopefully you'll find a favorite at the end of the night and you'll know what to order the next time you are out. When we arrive we usually have some appetizers and some other "warm me up" drink and catch up. Then the fun starts.

As we gather around the table to start each person has a guess list in front of them (see my answer sheet example below from sparkling wine night). The hostess cleverly covers the bottles and we go through the tasting of each wine, each time guessing where its from, how much it cost, etc. At the end, we find out the answers, tally the scores, pick a winner and finish the bottles!  The winner usually receives some sort of gift basket with a different bottle of wine that can be a suggestion for the next party.  So far tradition has been that the night gets a little crazy and the winner usually forgets the gift basket so its really a prize for the hostess herself for all of her hard work :-)

We all love to get together and have a couple drinks and who doesn't like a little friendly competition?? It's also a great excuse to try out some new recipes on your friends and hopefully you learn a little about wine too! My boyfriend has gotten jealous of these nights so I've promised him I'll throw one for some of of our local friends some time soon. Definitely try this one at home!