Hosting a Perfect Virtual Wine Tasting at Home

Many of us have missed different occasions, such as meeting with friends and enjoying other outdoor activities. COVID-19 has left us to stay at home and taught us to do the things we love while staying safe at home. One of the many outdoor activities you might miss is visiting wine bars and enjoying wine with friends. Didn’t you know that you can host your perfect virtual tasting at home? It may be slightly different from face-to-face wine tasting, but you will discover its advantages when you start your virtual wine tasting at home.  

NAPA at Crosswinds 

Brittany knows your dilemma. That’s why they established a restaurant that is inspired by the NAPA valley in California. While Crosswinds Tagaytay is known for its Swiss-inspired residences, a newly-opened place in the area will transport you and will give you a glimpse of another side of the world. With its rustic wooden décor, calm environment, and stunning outside dining area, this new café, inspired by rural residences in Napa Valley, California, will make you feel like a vineyard owner. 

Why Should You Visit NAPA at Crosswinds? 

People from every place want to visit this newly-opened café at Crosswinds. The ambiance will get you into the other side of the world with a taste of luxury and relaxation. With wooden floors, rustic décor, and a fantastic view of the surrounding hills, the café seems like a home. Everyone wants to see this new fashionable establishment, and it becomes crowded quickly. If you’re going to enjoy the place, its food, and take photos, arrive early. 

Feel the Tagaytay breeze as you sip your wine at NAPA.

NAPA at Crosswinds welcomes its guest with a huge parking lot where customers coming from a long ride can park their bicycles. A unique NAPA will greet the customers at Crosswinds gate. Around the place, there are wooden benches that will invite you to enjoy the scenery. Some barrels surround the area that can be used as tables and unique chairs. 

Enjoy al fresco dining with tasteful, quirky decor only at NAPA.

You can choose from their wide range of food, including coffee, cheese, meat, and wine. The whole place is instagrammable. That’s why people are going crazy about NAPA at Crosswinds. Although it’s hard to get a good seat, the best seats would be near the windows and outside the balcony because the scenery will welcome you. Tourists like to sit upstairs to get a good view of the whole Crosswinds and take some good photos.  

The café provides excellent food and drinks and a pet-friendly café that caters to your pet and pet parents’ need for relaxation. Pets are allowed outside but not inside the café. The café also offers free WI-FI, which you can request from the staff at the counter and have it get done in your gadget. 

NAPA at Crosswinds gets more attractive at night. It gives out a romantic ambiance perfect for couples who want to spend time together and families who want to sit down and talk about life. Fairy lights are beautifully spread in the area that adds to the serenity mood of the place. Aside from the scenery, NAPA provides delectable food in an alfresco setting perfectly paired with Tagaytay’s chilly weather at night and glasses of wine. 

Still haven’t experienced the NAPA Valley-inspired experience? Don’t forget to add NAPA at Crosswinds in your next adventure.  

If you are likely to stay at home because of the pandemic, you don’t need to worry because you can still experience a beautiful wine tasting at home and enjoy it with the rest of your family. This blog, we will give you some tips on hosting a perfect virtual tasting at home. 

What is a Virtual Wine Tasting?  

Some other outdoor activities can’t be adapted to our homes, and there are plenty of things we can still do in the comfort of our homes. It may not be as perfect and as enjoyable as what it offers in the natural setting, but what’s beautiful about it is that we can always try and tweak it to our liking and preference. Sound exciting? Keep on reading as we go ahead and list down tips on how to host a perfect virtual wine tasting at home. 

Have your virtual wine tasting at NAPA in Crosswinds Tagaytay. | Photo by WineDirect

Before going into hosting a virtual wine tasting, let’s start by identifying this new concept. The pandemic has brought several changes to the way we live our life even with some of the activities we enjoy. Virtual wine tasting is similar to a regular tasting where participants taste and learn about different wine selections from a winery. Both regular and virtual wine tasting has the same purpose except how they will perform the wine tasting. Rather than going to a winery, the winery comes to you. Wineries handle the entire experience in both circumstances. It is their responsibility to manage the wine shipment and ensure that it arrives on time. The organizers will then provide additional information on how to participate in the virtual wine tasting and platform capabilities for a better experience. 

How to Host a Virtual Wine Tasting at Home 

Set Date and Time 

In every activity, the first thing you need to consider is the availability of your virtual wine tasting participants. Ask each participant if when is the perfect time to enjoy and taste their wines. Instead of selecting a day and time for yourself, allow your audience to do so. Nowadays, there are so many online platforms today that can be used to your advantage. Consider utilizing a tool that will enable you to choose a date and time that works for everyone to prevent the back-and-forth texting from seeing when everyone is available. 

Choose a tasting theme. 

Choosing and deciding what wines you want to taste in your virtual wine tasting is also a top priority.  

1. The regional Wine tasting theme means participants are only going to taste wines from a particular region. 

2. A vertical tasting necessitates a little more work because it contains a producer’s wine from different years. The most important aspect of a proper vertical tasting is to ensure that the wine bottles have been appropriately preserved. However, suppose you successfully put together this type of tasting. In that case, the results may be fantastic, as your audience will learn about a winemaker’s style while also being familiar with several vintage types and how they have developed over time. 

3. Horizontal tasting is a popular concept in both virtual and real-life wine tastings. It includes wines from several producers that were produced in the same year. Because all new releases can be added, it provides additional flexibility. 

4. When evaluating different varieties of grapes, such as Pinot Grigio, Shiraz, Chardonnay, or Pinot Noir, blind tasting works best. It can be used as an icebreaker for large-group virtual wine tastings. The wine labels are hidden, and participants must estimate the nation, grape, and even price range based on the wine’s flavor. 

There are different types of wine to choose from when doing a virtual wine tasting. | Photo by Napa Valley

Custom shipments for your participants 

All of the essential supplies are provided for an in-person wine tasting. Why not customized shipments for your participants? Allow your audience to pre-order their wine supplies to make things easier. You can add a variety of wines to try, meal combinations, and possibly some wine glasses in each bundle. You can have it posted on your website and make your audience choose. Use a tool that can view their choices in real-time.  

Decide what platform to use. 

Deciding on what platform to use is also a priority. There are a lot of platforms which depends on how large your participants you are going to host. Choosing the best platform for your audience should be well taken care of because this is where your audience will interact and exchange their thoughts.  

Adapting to new normal experiences can sometimes be challenging. But as time goes by, little by little, we’ll get used to it. We will be surprised that it’s no longer new to us one day because we have already embraced it and have come to live through it. Who said that regular wine tasting and other regular outdoor activities couldn’t be replicated in a virtual environment? The pandemic may have hindered some of our plans, but people are also taught to respond and act differently. Many physical locations, including wineries and other stores, remained closed due to the pandemic; virtual events have been on the rise and busy. The virtual environment is a new way of interaction and a unique place of growth and learning. It won’t be perfect on the first try, but we can continuously improve. 

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