At Home Wine Tasting Date Night Idea
One of my 23 for 2023 goals this year was to go on monthly dates with my husband. In January we went on zero dates…not off to a good start!! We quickly realized that since our kids are young and we don’t have a consistent babysitter that we better make at least some of them at home date nights. We decided to each plan one at home date each month (so two a month!) and if we got the opportunity to actually leave the house- great! But if not, at least we were still having some quality time together.
We also decided that an “at home date” needed to consist of something more than just watching a movie/show together. We wanted something that felt less typical and more intentional.
After making those distinctions, I’m happy to report that we successfully had two (fun!) at home dates in February. And one down in March. On a roll!
I wanted to share the at home wine tasting date that I planned (we actually did this in both February and March!) because we both enjoyed it so much. I spent a fair amount of time looking for ideas to execute this but wasn’t able to find much- so here is what we did in case you want to try it too!
Disclaimer: Drink responsibly and do this on a night when you are staying home and do not need to drive.
At Home Wine Tasting Date Night Supplies:
Wine: Since there were only the two of us, I didn’t want to purchase and open several full size bottles of wine. I ended up finding small 187 ml bottles to purchase here. I was going to buy one of their wine flights, but I happened to see that they had their advent calendar on sale. It was a little more spendy initially, BUT we could do FOUR (or more!) wine tastings with it, averaging out to ~$25 a date night. But like I mentioned, if you don’t want to spend that much, you could buy one of their more inexpensive wine flights! I’ve also seen split bottles of wine at World Market, Target and Total Wine & More. (Not at all sponsored or even affiliate links-just sharing what we used! 🙂
Labels: The first time I just DIYed this by cutting paper into thirds lengthwise and taping it on the bottle. It worked totally fine, but this time I decided to make printable labels so that I could easily print them out whenever we wanted to have an at home wine tasting date! (Printables are linked at the bottom of the post!)
Rating cards: Again, I DIYed this the first time, but you can download the free printable version so you don’t have to handwrite the same thing a dozen times like I did 😉
List of wines: I jotted down the six wines that we tried so that we had some idea of what to choose from. The second time we did this, we also read a little more about each wine and jotted down the notes. This helped give us some guidance of what to look for.
How to Have an At Home Wine Tasting Date Night:
Before the date, print out the labels and tape them to the bottles so the original label is not visible (make sure you write a list of the types of wine to guess from before covering them up!). I used colorful paper so you couldn’t see through it. Then, print out a set of rating cards for each person participating & cut along the lines.
Open a bottle, split it between you and your partner and fill out the rating card after you are done with each one!
We either played a board game or did an at home paint night activity while we sipped. A charcuterie board or some good snacks are also a good additon.
After all the wines were tasted, we ripped off the labels and compared notes. The first time we did this, we got zero right (definitely not wine connoisseurs lol). The next time we each got a few right! But correct, or not, it was still fun to guess!
(You obviously don’t have to guess- but it made it a little more fun, in our opinions!)
I think that is it- let me know if I missed something!
Have fun 🙂
