I vote for the multiple glass idea. I once found an article in an ancient issue of Sunset Magazine. They suggested drawing five circles on a sheet of photocopy paper and then marking the circles A, B, C, D, and E. Then copies of the page are made for each person and placed above their plate at the dinner table and five gasses were placed on the page. Then five bottles are marked with the same letters and poured before the guests arrive. The empty bottles are then hidden. Everyone gets to enjoy all five glasses blind throughout the entire dinner, and everyone gets to rate or rank each glass. The bottles are revealed at the end of dinner. Works great.
Phil Jones
Personally, I find that if you are trying to do really fine wine and fine multi course food, it gets to be too much and too confusing. The highest end wine group that I participate in really doesn’t care much what we eat while we are drinking wine–could be granola for all that most of us care (well, maybe not, but we’ve had plenty of tastings with pizza, preceded perhaps by bread and a bit of cheese.) the eating part of the evening is perhaps 20-30 minutes, the rest is wine, with snacks.
Sure, wine and food are great matches, but when you are focused on the wine, anything but simple food is a distraction, and a bit of a pain for the host. A Pate, bread, some finger foods are fine with me.
What a number of folks are describing here are more dinner groups than wine tasting groups, which is great if that’s what you are aiming for.
Buy some glasses, or have everyone buy some glasses so you can have more than one glass per person!
If you take turns hosting, then everyone gets to put together the dinner/wine they want.
One thing you may consider is collecting a kitty at the beginning of your year - say everyone kicks in $500 or so and then figure out what wines you’re interested in doing tastings with and then reimburse the cost of the wine from the kitty. Some tastings will cost more than others but everyone kicked in already. And let the host of the event provide the food.
If one person is vegetarian, that doesn’t mean everyone has to be, but you can always provide something for that person.
No need to bring a hostess gift if it’s a regular thing and everyone is rotating.
I’m rather delighted to see that so many others participate in groups like this. I have as well for the last 4-5 years. It started as a themed dinner club, but the emphasis on wine has grown significantly. In our case, a few are more interested in the wine than the rest, so we typically select wine that fits the theme and budget of the other members of our group. i.e. We’ll tell the others more or less what they ought to bring.
There’s a lot of good feedback here, and I’ve benefitted from the same previously on WB. My .02 is that you should thoughtfully consider and solicit the desires of each couple. I like the idea of letting the host choose the venue. Maybe only one couple picks a restaurant, but that could be a respite for them. Choosing what months at the beginning of the year goes a long way to ensure everyone plans around the event. We DONT do that at our dates routinely get pushed back.
The other difference with my group is that we all participate in the food production. Seems like a big burden to host if you are paying for and cooking for 10-12. We all show up relatively early to the host’s home, start with a cocktail, and work together to prepare a meal. The joy of all of this is in shared experience, right? I could ponder the wines alone but what I really crave is the camaraderie of prep work alongside good friends and mutual discussion and enjoyment on special wines I’m far less likely to open alone.
I hope your group finds its sweet spot and goes for many years. Preserve the lost art! This was our last one, themed “steakhouse”:
My wife and I have been doing our supper club every month for forty years, except in December. There are eight members, four couples. We have made it through one death and one divorce, so the membership has not been 100% the same, but six of the eight are still going strong, with two newcomers arriving by way of marriages. Which is just about the only way a newcomer can get in. We are not really a wine tasting club, but we bring wine every month. It has been a constant in my life for forty years. A joy.
Phil Jones
Most of our events are blind; my wife sews seasonal-themed wine bags for everyone several times per year.
We always do BYOStems.
I think your plan of dividing the cost of the wines will work great until someone has to pay a few times.
good ideas, I didn’t get what you meant by 5 into 12 not going?
I think for now we are going to stick with rotating homes as it will keep the cost down and we don’t have the time pressure to leave so the restaurant can turn over the table.
I believe with some communication and fine adjustments we can improve our event.
thanks for the thoughtful reply
our group feels that there are some good advantages for the host buying all the wine. First a huge educational experience to choose a theme and then select the bottles. Give buyer latitute to but a $15 bottle and a $45 bottle. All the bottles are already at the home, can decant properly if needed, saves everyone a trip to the store, avoids duplicate bottles, and avoids who brought the best / leave favorite / expensive/ cheap wine. Not concerned others will bring junk.
The food topic needs to be discussed and I don’t think it is a big deal.
agree
we need to communicate and do some fine tuning.
I know of a group that members have to pay even if they don’t show up, we are not going there with our group but understand why some groups do it. What happens if two of the five couples cancel last minute, should the host be stuck with the bill or others pay more… we are not going there
agree, I believe our differences are minor they have just not been communicated… with some minor adjustments I think we will be fine.
am totally onboard with your response…
Since I posted I was thinking how with some communication and fine tuning things will be for the better.
most of the people are also foodies and enjoy cooking.
we currently are not splitting food cost, just the wine cost.
I’ve thought about ones that might just be wine provides, as once couple aren’t good at cooking nor do they seem to want to entertain in their home.
good ideas - I’d like to solicit the desires of each couple, was thinking of doing this through email. Should I have the group respond just to me or to the entire group. I want to get candid unfiltered feedback. Or email couple individually?
That’s just it though…it isn’t about who brought the best/least favorite or expensive wine…and since there is no concern about people bringing poor wines, there shouldn’t be any consideration about price. I’ll be honest, none of the other reasons matter…People will want to learn more about a region to bring a wine…they’ll go through the effort of getting it…Duplicates across a theme are incredibly rare unless you’re all shopping at the same store (in which case your group will need to start looking online and other sources). Decanting can all be done by the person bringing the bottle and is actually easier for a person to care for their own wine than one person care for 6 different wines. Mostly though, in making it a group buy each time you’re severely limiting what you will drink because not everyone will be able to afford upping that range…it doesn’t sound like it to you but that is what is happening…which ultimately limits the growth and learning of the participants…
While it would be educational for the person picking a theme and buying all of the wines…the rest of the group misses out…it isn’t nearly the same…it can’t be…you’re not invested you’re just trying the wines…
In general the times the host provides all of the wines is if it is some very unusual theme or if they happen to have lots of wine in theme and would be better suited to doing that…like a vertical of a specific producer for example…
You can of course do whatever you think is best…I will say, how you’re starting off, I’ve seen lots of people start off a tasting group that way because everyone is concerned about equality across the bottles brought and staying within a budget for each person…
thanks for the insight and ideas
the rest of the group doesn’t miss out, it is a rotating event and everyone gets a turn. I think there is something to be said for one person doing research and getting a good representations on the theme compared to people buy random bottles within the (theme).
For example I did a Sauvignon Blanc tasting, I picked bottles form Napa, a Sincere, Bordeaux, New Zealand and Italy. If it was everyone bring a Sauvignon Blanc we could have easily ended up will all California bottles.
This was very educational for me as well as the attendees as they got to taste Sauvignon Blanc from several different countries.
I don’t understand your comment about the group buy being limited, if we set the contribution limit around $50 per couple we have $250 to buy 6 bottles, that is $41.66 per bottle average, which gives us tons of latitude where for every $20 bottle that is bought a $60 bottle could be bought (for example).
Our monthly blind tasting group is somewhat similar, in that the host for the month supplies all the wines. That allows for someone to design a coherent set of flights whether across the board or simply moving from lighter to heavier.
This works best when the members have cellars which they are happy to be opening bottles from and really don’t care if one person is opening less expensive bottles than someone else. If not then your contribution model seems like a good idea.
If that’s the case then they’re all being lazy and goes against what you just said. Why would it be different when you’re hosting for you to find bottles from different areas than if you were to bringing a bottle to a theme? Wouldn’t you put in the same type of effort looking for an interesting bottle if you were bringing a bottle? Probably…
That’s the part you’re missing though…people aren’t supposed to buy random bottles they’re supposed to actually look for something interesting for the group.
So if you consider that every theme people are putting in time thinking about the theme and selecting a bottle (because the themes are selected ahead of time) then people are educating themselves on the theme…then when it comes to the actual dinner, they’ll learn more and they can relate because they’ve actually educated themselves a bit beforehand. Given your group hasn’t done this before, I can understand why you don’t quite understand what I’m trying to say…
Except without the investment in time…they’ll have learned very little…I’m not saying these types of events where someone hosts is not valuable…they are…but when 6 people are educating themselves on a region and doing research, you’ll get more than just one person which means you’ll get different opinions, different exposures…people will find different things and have different things or be interested in different styles…
Please don’t take this the wrong way…but it is because you haven’t experienced it the other way that you don’t understand this comment…
Generally a wine group is made up of different demographics, with varying income levels and varying degrees of what they’d be willing to spend on wine. You also have varying degrees of experience and varying depths of their wine cellars. In allowing people to bring a wine they think will be interesting, you’re not blocking someone who wants to bring that 400 dollar bottle or that rare hard to find bottle that goes for 500…at the same time, people with maybe lesser means economically will spend more time trying to find something hard to get or interesting that may not fall into that same category but can be just as loved if not more so than the more expensive bottle. Since you’ve already declared that no one is just going to bring junk (although what you said about everyone just bringing CA Sauvignon Blanc suggests people might) then this is not an issue. Again, setting a limit is there because people are worried others will just drop by their local BevMo and pick up some random junk…no effort, no thought and it might just be cheap to boot…IMO, spending 30 dollars on just some random thing at your local chain wine store completely defeats the purpose of these types of things and to that I’d classify that as “junk”. Also, even if everyone earns about the same…the level of interest and how much people will be willing to spend will eventually vary…
I will say, a successful wine group will tend to have people that want to share a lot more so than anything else…and they’ll be interested in the wines and actually try to learn a lot about them both through tasting and educating themselves outside of the group…
5 couples, 12 months.
Hence if planning for a calendar year, some would do 3 and others 2 as hosts. No problem though if it merely rotates through into the next year.
I got it. My vision is 5 gatherings a year, each one hosts once. So a gathering close to every other month, and omitting busy months like July and December.
Hello
So we held 5 get togethers in the past year. Each couple hosted dinner / win at their home. There was never any guidelines or structure mentioned.
Most everyone was able to attend all however several times they were announced only 1-2 weeks in advance. And two of the get togethers were close to being back to back.
I was thinking of reaching out to the group to see if they still wanted to continue to have them. And to ask them for feedback on how things went last year and if there was anything that they felt could be improved. Basically open it up for discussion.
The biggest thing I would like improved is the scheduling. I was thinking of suggesting the following. For a get together in June the hosting couple would send out a poll in early May with two dates they could host in June. Others participate in the poll and the date with the most attendees is the date of the event. How does this sound? Is a month or a little bit more enough time?
I forgot to mention the makeup of our group. We all have kids that range from ages 5-11. The get togethers are adult only so the people get their own babysitters for the evening. The get togethers are usually on Saturdays with a start time of 7pm. All our kids are active so there are lots of other activities to schedule around and these dinner get togethers tend to fall lower on the priority as our kids come first. Because this is a lower priority its might not be wise to plan too far in advance. The other dynamic I sense is that for some it is less or a priority so they may not be able to commit too far in advance.
Looking for thoughts, ideas and suggestions on how far in advance to plan and also how to come up with the date.
I would like to find a reasonable balanced approach.
Our group of 4 couples would set the date for the next event at the end of the evening. Usually 1-2 months out, so most conflicts are already known. And with everyone face to face it gets done faster than by email or online poll.