A wine and cheese party can be a terrific way to get together with friends or for a special bridal or wedding shower, birthday party or other celebration. It be easy to put together with a minimum of work even if you don’t know much about wine or cheese! You can throw together a simple but elegant celebration without a lot of fuss and have an interesting theme to boot.
You can setup your room in a couple different ways that really depends on how much room you have and the shape of your room or rooms. One way is to use a long buffet table against one wall with different sections. Another is to have several”stations” around the space by using little tables each with specific wines and their complimentary cheeses. You’ll want to add a few other foods also as man can’t live on cheese and wine alone!
Decorations
A wine and cheese party should be somewhat elegant but not too gaudy. You could have simple white tablecloths with white candles. Perhaps decorating the table with grapes and grape leaves or something seasonal like autumn leaves if the party is in the fall or holly, pine boughs and decorations if it’s at the holidays. A summer party might be cute with light floral bouquets. Fruit – especially grapes go great with cheese and wine so that you might have a 3 tiered centerpiece or large antique bowl filled with grapes and other fruit on the tables also. If you choose one large table a significant centerpiece would be a wonderful focus, you might even use and old-fashioned urn filled with ice and wine bottles or a large tiered platter with various tidbits on it.
You will want to have labels for every cheese which states the name and basic flavor – you can expand on that by adding the origin and possibly some history if you are feeling ambitious. Each section of cheese could have it’s own cutting board and cutter – A cute idea is to use the cheese boards which are made from flattened wine bottles to reduce the cheese on.
Glasses and Plates
You will want to be sure to use the perfect kind of wine glass with each wine. Red wine should be poured into a round ball shaped glass and white wine is more fluted but not as narrow as a champagne flute. Keep a whole lot of every kind of glass out so your visitors can be sure to have the right glass at all times. For dishes you could get wine themed plates or go with an eclectic mix of small antique plates. Ensure you have plenty of small plates around to encourage quests to try small samples of cheese with every wine.
What To Serve
A wine and cheese party needs more than just wine and cheese! You’ll also want to provide lots of interesting breads and crackers. Maybe some caviar? And do not forget dessert – a cheesecake would be in keeping with the theme but any dessert will do! And finally, some java may be in order after all that wine and please make sure that no one drives after having too much wine.
Needless to say, you’ll want to make sure you serve the perfect wine with the right cheese and in fact complimentary cheese and wine pairings can create interesting and unusual tastes. Half the pleasure of a wine and cheese party is experimenting for yourself to see what new combinations you can come up with, but heres some suggestions to start you off:
Wine And Cheese Party Pairing Tips
- Wines usually go well with cheese That’s from the same state or region
- An acidic cheese usually goes well with acidic wines
- Roquefort goes nicely with Port
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- Cream Cheese and White Zinfandel make a nice pair
- Mix muenster with Beaujolais
- Colby and Gouda go great with Reisling
- Pair provolone with Chardonnay