Hosting a Wine Crawl

Author:  Spring (Jordan)

When we moved to Syracuse a year ago, we decided to rent a furnished place and take our time buying our first house.  We didn’t want to feel rushed, and we had no idea about the different areas of the city and where we wanted to be.  After a couple months of learning about the city, we narrowed down our search and found the perfect home for us.  The thing is, you never truly know what your neighborhood and neighbors will be like.  Let’s just say we lucked out with both.

Months later we were asked if our house wanted to participate in a neighborhood wine crawl. Each house would host a different region.  We said yes, and we would love to host one of the stops.  So it all began.  The first ever wine crawl in our neighborhood.

Here is the front of the invitation with a map to all the house stops.  Each house was hosting a different region.  We had everything from Spain, New Zealand, Chile, France, California, and we hosted  New York.

Here were our guidelines that each host was provided.

The inside of the invitation was the itinerary, but it also had space if we wanted to write descriptions about the wines you were tasting at each house.

The coordinators also ordered custom wine glasses for each person.  This was a great idea! We just took our glass from house to house.  There was no need for the house to provide 25 glasses, and we each had a memento from the evening.

We were thrilled to have New York as the wine selection for our house.  Within an hour’s drive from our house, we have over 100 wineries.  It is one of the places we take guests when they come to visit.

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Once we selected our wines, I did some searching on Pinterest and found this great idea to set up our table.  This is chalkboard contact paper.  You could use chalk or chalk markers and write all over this runner.

The pictures below are more of my setup process.  We had a mix up in the time, and our house was switched to the second tasting house at the last moment.  Our original plan was to leave house #2  a little early so Mr. Spring and I could set up the food and take pictures.  Since we didn’t have that extra time, everyone was in our house and we were busy getting the food set up.  Therefore, we have a limited amount of shots from party.

Here is the start of our runner.  We had a Riesling (which NY is known for) paired with gouda cheese and granny smith apples, a dessert wine paired with New York cheesecake, and a red wine with New York style pulled pork barbeque sandwiches.

Here you can see the start of our set up.  We have grape vines growing on our property, so I cut some down and used them as greenery on the table.  It was an inexpensive way to have something besides a floral centerpiece.

With each wine I typed up a description.

To label the wines, I sliced a cork on the top and cut off the bottom so it would sit on the table.

I used chalk markers on a charger that I painted with chalk paint.

I wanted to incorporated the New York theme into more than just the wine.  Here I made little flags for the toothpicks. Our background music were songs that were all related to New York.

If someone didn’t like a wine they tasted, we were sure to have a pour out bucket.  Water in the pitcher was used to rinse out the glasses when someone went from a white wine to red.  I also included some plain crackers to clean the palate.

We decided to be cheesy and throw on our I Heart NY shirts when we were hosting at our house.  Here I am with Mr. Spring.  I think this was the only time I paused while at our house.  I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an empty glass.

It was actually great to be house #2 on the crawl because we were finished hosting and enjoyed tasting the other wines and the company of our neighbors.  This is a great fun way to socialize in your neighborhood, and there is no driving involved. Hopefully you will host a wine crawl!