Setting Up a Wine Tasting Like a Pro

What are the most important things to set up for a wine tasting? Sommelier, Madeline Puckette walks through what she does for Wine Folly Club.

1. Chill wines to proper temperature
2. Clean / polish glassware
3. Decant full-bodied red wines
4. Pour remaining wines right before tasting

Serve wine at the right temperature

You wouldn't serve lukewarm coffee so why serve lukewarm wine? As it happens, different types of wine have different serving temperature preferences.

Of course, when you're hosting a comparative tasting with many wines it's hard to get all your wines to the perfect temperature. So, a good rule of thumb is to chill all wines down to about 50 ºF (10 ºC) – it's better to be too cool than too warm.

Prepare and polish your wine glasses

Ideally, you'll want to use identical wine glasses for a comparative wine tasting.

It's easy to polish away water spots and finger smudges with a polishing cloth.

Decant your bold red wines

Decanting helps soften tannins and remove off aromas after a bottle is just opened. Here's a best practices guide on decanting if you want to know the nitty gritty details.

However, for a multi-wine tasting with lots of moving parts, just remember to pour the bold red wines into their glasses about an hour before the tasting begins.

Have fun!

Hosting a wine tasting has a lot of details! That being said, the goal is to have fun and share in aroma, taste, and experience.

We hope this shows how easy a wine tasting can be so that you can host your own!