When you enjoy wine and start to acquire or collect it, it’s easy to fill up your space pretty quickly. And if you’re like me, you often save a bottle or two to share with specific people, or a specific occasion. But then those opportunities don’t quite come the way you imagined, or a bottle gets pushed to the back and you forget about it or your tastes start to change and all of a sudden your favorite wine is just meh.
Chances are, that’s happening to your friends, too. So now that shipping season is here (the few months a year when the weather won’t ruin the wine on the back of a delivery truck because it’s too hot or too cold), it’s not unthinkable to admit that you may have gotten a bit carried away and now have nowhere to put your wine, unless you like making cardboard box towers in your living room.
To combat this purely first-world problem, some friends decided to throw a Clear the Cellar Party and invited about a dozen (plus or minus) wino-s to bring a random assortment of wines they wanted to get rid of, but didn’t necessarily just want to pour them down the drain.
We had close to 100 bottles of wine open and probably another 20 that we failed to uncork. The results were nothing short of epic, not so much because the wines were amazing — in fact, many turned out to be just so-so (and there was at least a case of undrinkable wine) yet the diversity of wines and curiosity it provoked made the tasting that much more fun.
Not to mention, there was an absence of stress that often comes with wanting to impress others with the bottles you brought. So, what’s usually a gathering of fun, super laid-back people, was even more relaxed. That translated to more laughs, more fun and an evening to remember.
Want to throw a similar party for your friends? Here are some tips based on what contributed to our success:
* Give guests several weeks notice so they can really dive into their cellars and pull the bottles they want to bring (or maybe locate bottles they are curious about trying — we really had no definition of what “clearing the cellar” should mean).
* Find the right kind of space to throw the party. This is not an event to combine with a restaurant or seated meal. Somebody’s home or backyard will do. My friends reserved the community room in their condo building, pushed several long folding tables together, and it was perfect.
* When the wines arrive, don’t try to organize the bottles too much. Loosely group them in order from light whites to deep, dark, brooding purple. Don’t push the tables against the wall. Having space to walk on either side of the table meant there was never any crowding.
* Plastic utility buckets make wonderful spit and dump buckets. Our host was diligent about dumping the buckets when they were about halfway full, too. That insured no splashing and no accidental spilling. (Oh, and come to grips, you’re going to dump a lot of wine, and that’s perfectly okay! In fact, it’s the responsible thing to do.)
* Food. You need food to ensure your friends don’t over indulge. We had two big plates of cheese and charcuterie to snack on right away. Then, later on in the evening, some other goodies were served: pulled pork, a chicken dish, brisket and a bunch of sides and salads. We did everything pot-luck style. There was room to sit and eat, but it wasn’t a seated dinner.
* Find a corner of shame. It’s inevitable, there will be some duds. And it will be sad. So once a couple people have tasted the offending the wine and agreed, we banished the wine to a far corner of the room. Yes, it’s heartbreaking to see these bottles here — especially the ones with significant age. But it allowed us to pay our respects, and helped others decide what not to taste.
* Be really fabulous hosts. I can’t thank our hosts enough for all the hard work they put into planning and keeping things running smoothly throughout the night.
It's Wine By Me! 