Hosting a Sommelier Wine Tasting in your Home is More Affordable Than you Think

Take the somewhat pioneering price of many UAE bars and restaurants and add in the mandatory Uber-ride between them all, and it can sometimes feel like there’s an angry, goblin-like creature living in your bank account feeding on your hard-earned dirhams. For the record, mine’s called Justin and he gets particularly snacky around Friday lunchtime. Throw in the déjà vu of yet another night in the pub and you’ve got a good reason to try something a little different. Right?

 

Enter, the home wine tasting

At one of our tastings, a professional sommelier with years of global experience comes to your home and hosts a night of wine and chat. Tastings last for around an hour-and-a-half, during which you’ll try a selection of awesome wine, beer or whisky/whiskey (usually around six), learn about key regions, styles and discover easy to use tips for choosing bottles that you can put into practice the next time you’re in a restaurant or liquor store. 

 

As well as one of our sommeliers, we also provide the best glassware available – Riedel for wine, Schott Zwiesel for beer and Glencairn for whisky – Our wine glasses are variety specific to bring your wine choices fully to life. We also bring big, beautiful Riedel decanters that border on works of art, tasting wheels and learning aids to help make it all fun and easy to understand. Because of the UAE’s unique rules on buying alcohol (see our article here) we, unfortunately, can’t supply the wine direct, but our sommeliers will guide your selection and then work directly with your chosen liquor store to have it all boxed up ready for collection. If you already have your own wine collection, we can even use that.

 

Best of all, every home wine tasting is personalised to your interests. If you’re a beginner we can teach you the basics. If you love New Zealand wine then that’s what we’ll taste. If you have an interest in classic French wine regions, we’ll take you there (mentally at least.) South America? South Africa? Australia? Spain? Bubbly? It’s completely up to you and the lesson can be as broad or specific as required for you and your guests’ knowledge level.

 

If you want we can even combine it with a tasty artisanal cheese pairing – and who doesn’t love that combination? Whatever you choose it will be fun, educational and all about you and your friends. 

 

Tastings cost 150 AED per person, with a minimum spend of 1000 AED. We generally taste six beverages. For the wine, we’d recommend a minimum budget of around 100 AED per bottle, with each serving up to ten people. Really interesting international beer, meanwhile, costs around 20 AED a bottle and serves two, whilst a bottle of decent whisky/whiskey serves 30 people with a recommended total minimum budget for all six bottles of around 1,200 AED. Though, again, if you already have a collection we can simply use that. 

 

Combined, this makes a sommelier tasting fun, unique, unusual and super budget-friendly, without the kind of venue mark-ups that leaves you gripping the bar for support when the bill comes – less than a third of the cost in a bar or restaurant in fact. 

 

We even take all the washing up away afterwards, leaving you free to finish-up any leftover beverages and chat the night away with your mates. 

 

For more information on our home tastings, check out www.thetastingclass.com/tasting/

 

The Wines we tasted