By Lisa Rogak

A wine-tasting party gives you a chance to get together with friends, sample some wines you wouldn’t normally try and learn something new. What could be better than that? You can do all the planning for the party, or you can ask your guests to help out by bringing some of the wine or food. The key to the party is deciding what wines to serve. We've come up with eight themes around which to organize a wine tasting:

1. Wines from places not known for winemaking
Andrew J. Stover, a private wine consultant and sommelier at OYA Restaurant and Lounge in Washington, D.C., suggests choosing wines from places not necessarily known for winemaking. "High-quality wines don’t just come from northern California, but from many other regions as well," he says. For one recent tasting, he selected white wines from Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, and reds from Arizona, Colorado and Idaho. You could also vary this by picking wine made from fruit other than grapes, such as blueberries, peaches and apples.

2. Match wine with appetizers
Kathleen Lisson, a certified specialist of wine, teaches wine classes in Albany, N.Y., and likes to invite friends to her home for informal tastings. For one event, she instructed half of the guest list to bring a specific bottle of red wine: a Gewürztraminer, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah or Zinfandel. She asked the others to bring the appetizers: sliced meats, cheese, buffalo chicken wings and chili. "We tasted the wines in order, starting with the lighter wines before moving on to the fuller ones," Lisson says. "I encouraged guests to try the appetizers with each different wine and talk about how they matched each other."

3. Travel far without leaving your home, part 1
Anu Karwa, founder and CEO of Swirl Events, a New York-based wine-tasting events company, says one of her more popular parties is Dream Vacation for a Night. "The economy is tough right now and vacations might have to be put on hold," she says. "But we can dream about them and talk about them with our friends, and one fun way to do that is through wine." Each guest or couple brings a bottle of wine from India, Morocco, Italy or Australia, or another dream destination. Once everyone is seated, Karwa opens one bottle at a time and pours while the one who brought that wine discusses his or her ideal voyage.

4. Travel far without leaving your home, part 2
Whenever Kurt Eickmeyer of Bellingham, Wash., gets homesick for his native Chicago, his wife, Wendy, gets together with fellow Windy City transplants Michael and Cindy Abendhoff to plan a Taste of Chicago party with a blind wine tasting.
The wine has to be hearty enough to stand up to the deep-dish pizza, ribs and Italian beef sandwiches flown in overnight from Chicago; Cabernet Sauvignon was the wine of choice at the last party. They chose five different bottles ranging from $5 to $100 a bottle. The fun begins when everyone starts to rate each wine from best to worst. "We unveil the wines and announce which were the least and most expensive," Wendy Eickmeyer says. "The person who rated the cheapest wine the best wins a bottle of expensive wine, and the person who thought the expensive wine was the best wins a cheap bottle of wine."

5. Go multicultural
Don’t put too much weight into matching the perfect wine with the perfect food. In fact, why not go one step further and mix and match cuisines and wines? Jeremy Wilkinson of 4 Wines Plus More, a distributor in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., recently designed a five-course menu pairing Italian food with Australian wines from Sandalford Estate Reserve Winery. He served Sauvignon Blanc with a salad of arugula and goat cheese, and he matched a spicy Shiraz with duck and risotto, all to great acclaim.

6. Choose unusual commonalities
When Ann Simpson of Seattle throws a wine-tasting party for her friends, she selects five to seven wines using unconventional criteria. One event focused on wines from vineyards where the main winemaker is a woman, while another featured only Pinot Noirs from Oregon. Another party revolved around ice wines, a sweet vintage made from frozen grapes. "Guests are rewarded for their pithy comments, the less serious the better," Simpson says. Her favorites have included "Smells like dirt" and "Has to be Two-Buck Chuck."

7. Get a sugar and wine high
Another of Kathleen Lisson’s favorite tastings was a wine and dessert pairing party. Each guest brought a bottle of wine or dessert (sometimes both) and they proceeded to discover which pairings worked the best. Desserts included a peach tart, gourmet chocolates, chocolate-covered strawberries, cheeses and fig jam. One favorite of the night paired ice wine with vanilla ice cream and pound cake, and a sweet Muscat wine was served with tiny spoonfuls of Roquefort and fig jam on mini-toast squares.

8. Eat, drink and do good
Cindy Scott, a consultant at First Avenue Events in Ottawa, held a fundraising wine tasting at her home to benefit Sole Responsibility, a Canadian charity that ships gently used donated running shoes to Chad. She invited local restaurateur and sommelier Stephen Beckta to lead the wine tasting, and he asked other restaurants to donate food and wait staff. A professional jazz band also volunteered its services. "Stephen guided the guests through a wonderful tasting of 10 different wines and everyone had a wonderful time," Scott says. "Best of all, we raised $5,000."

Related links
10 Great Airport Wine Bars
Be a Vino Pro: Take the Wine IQ
Join the Fine Living Wine Club
Go to the Wine Cellar