Hosting a tasting

So that means you have to buy your wine, beer & liquor at a separate government controlled store, eh? I've got tons of family in Toronto; I know all about it & would be doooomed if they ever cut us off out here in California. It's bad enough bars close at 2am (last call...1:15...makes no sense).

Anyhoo....great thread, I threw a wine tasting boat outing for my wife in July for her birthday. The gal, God love her, drinks Chardonnay like a fish. That'd be a sight. So I thought what better way to celebrate her birthday than to bring friends out on the open water and drink fine wines with relentless abandon.

We headed down to Newport Beach where you can rent little 'Duffy' boats. Picture the boat at Disneyland's Jungle River Adventure. They hold 12 and have tables and we spent 4 hours tasting wines brought by each participating couple and bar hopping. Bars lining the marina have pull-up slips where you can hop out, grab a shot & go back on board. Needless to say, after 4 hours, we were pretty sloshed but it was an excellent time.

The wine tasting was blind but we didn't require too much from our participants, just a 'is this a merlot grape, is this a cabernet, is this a sauvignon blanc', etc. We wrote down our picks and compared the notes we took on each wine, which we liked best, which we thought was the most expensive, etc.