Go wine tasting from your couch. Or your dining room table. With friends & family. Or solo. Dressed to the nines. Or Just wearing sweatpants.
When you wine taste from home, you get to the decide the experience.
With travel feeling uncertain and trips being put on hold, more and more wineries are offering “Virtual Tasting Experiences” — an opportunity to bring the #winelifestyle to you. I love the way these new digital experiences make wine country so much more accessible, eliminating not only time and travel but also the often hefty prices tags that come with a wine country vacation.
Below are some of my favorite experiences that I’ve had the privilege of testing out for you.
Gary Farrell
Gary Farrell is one of my absolute favorite wineries ever. Seriously. Ever. They’ve put together a beautiful at-home virtual wine tasting experience: the “Sunday Supper Dinner Series”. During Sunday Supper guests receive several recipes, prepare them ahead of time, then join a Zoom Tasting with a representative from Gary Farrell Winery’s Sommelier team for a seated dinner.
While definitely the most involved virtual tasting experience I’ve attended, it was also one of the absolute best. Adding in food preparation makes the evening feel like an event. It’s the perfect romantic date at-home date night or girls’ night in activity. They make the grocery shopping and recipe prep easy by organizing everything to a T. They also remind you to take sips of wine during preparation, which I much appreciate. 😉
You can find out more about their Sunday Supper Dinner series here (scheduled to run July-August) as well as their other virtual experiences.
Modus Operandi
Modus Operandi claims to have been doing virtual tastings before they were cool. With limited capacity in their tasting room, they stared offering this experience pre-Covid as a way to reach more of their members and make their wines more accessible. As such, they have a beautiful, well-thought out process that makes for a relaxing evening in.
With their experience, you receive 4 wines, links to recommended glassware and cheese pairings, and a small-group virtual tasting with their winemaker, Jason Moore or their Director of Sales, Caitlyn McCormick.
Because Modus Operandi limits the group size for each tasting, it’s an intimate experience that allows for a lot of back-and-forth. During my experience, Caitlyn was incredibly charismatic and kept the tasting interesting while answering every single one of my questions. No zoning out in front of the screen here!
You can find out more about the virtual tasting experience and purchase the wines here.
Far Niente
Delivering monthly experiences, the Far Niente Hosted at Home subscription is the first of its kind. Each month you receive 2-3 bottles from their outstanding portfolio and are connected directly with their wine experts, winemakers and culinary pros for a deeper dive into their wines. The virtual tasting experiences are usually offered at 2 different pre-scheduled times through the month and provide an opportunity to connect with their wine experts as well as wine enthusiasts from all over the country.
As part of the experience, you receive access to Monthly Virtual Happy Hours, digital print outs for tasting notes, and recipes suggestions. They also allow you to pre-pay for one to 2, 4, 6, 8 or even 12 months of wine shipments — making it a perfect gift idea!
You can find out more about Far Niente’s Hosted at Home here.
