Now that we’ve come to the end of our bachelorette party drinks recap for Jaime’s bachelorette, I wanted to put together one master post with links to all the recipes, to make it easy for anyone planning their bachelorette menus. As you’ll see, these drinks all share ingredients in common, which makes it easy to put together an in-home bar for your party. All but 1 of these drinks fit perfectly with a “Pink” theme, so they’re great for any girl’s night in – and you can also adjust the sweetness to your taste.

Jaime’s Bachelorette Party Drinks Menu:

• Skinny Raspberry Cosmo
• Pomegranate & Raspberry Martini
• Sparkling Raspberry Drop
• Raspberry Lemonade And Tequila
• Lemon Drop Martini

How to Host a Wine Tasting Party

One of the activities I arranged for Jaime’s bachelorette party last month was a wine tasting. I think it turned out well and would be a great activity for any bachelorette, since it covers a lot of bases and can be as involved or casual as the atmosphere dictates. Here’s how I put together mine!

Compile Your Wine List

I talked about this briefly in my article on tips for selecting bachelorette wine. I asked the bride for her preferences in wines, and then asked my friends at Banfi what they would suggest based on that. This is what they recommended:

Le Rime Pinot Grigio

Centine Bianco

Principessa Gavia Gavi

Rainstorm Pinot Gris

Rainstorm Pinot Noir

Centine Rosso

Bolla Bardolino

Rosa Regale Brachetto d’Acqui

I also printed out a copy of the wine list to display on the table, so guests could easily see what was available.

Choose Your Food Pairings

With my wine list in hand, I then created a menu for the party that included food pairings for the wines:

• The Rosa Regale Brachetto d’Acqui was paired with a selection of Merci Chocolates.
• I paired the Centine Bianco with Aceitunas a la Sevillana, which I was making for a Tapas competition. I just made a double batch: One for the party, and one for the competition!
• Since the Centine Rosso, Rosa Regale, and Rainstorm Pinot Gris go particularly well with cheese, I created an entire end table dedicated just to cheese. I served Brie, Havarti, Gouda, Cheddar, Goat, and Mini Baybel cheeses, along with a couple of loaves of homemade bread and grapes.
• The Bolla Bardolino pairs nicely with pizza, so I picked up a few varieties of pizza to serve as our main course.

Decorate Your Table

I printed out the tech sheets for each wine and placed them on the table underneath the corresponding bottle. These sheets told guests all about each variety of wine, so they would know where each wine was produced as well as its characteristics. The tech sheets for all Banfi Wines are all available on the wine product pages I linked to above, if you end up doing a similar wine tasting and want to know where to find them.

I also included a pretty, decorative handpainted wine glass on the table as an accent, as I talked about in an earlier post. As you may have noticed in the photos above, I put small plastic stemware on the table for the wine tasting. I actually found them at Dollar Tree – I got one package of plastic wine glasses and one package of plastic champagne flutes, for variety. I wanted a cute way to serve the wine without having to mess around with transporting and washing over a dozen wine glasses!

Prepare Wine Tasting Cards

I made up a set of custom wine tasting cards for the party and set them on the table along with a stack of pencils. This way, guests could record which wines they liked (Or didn’t!), and take a card home to remember which ones were their favorites. I wanted to share the printable I made, in case anyone would like to use it at their next party:

How Our Party Turned Out

Banfi provided me with some tips on determining how much wine I might need – click here to read those if you missed it! – which was really helpful. There was a generous amount of wine to begin with – the guests were impressed by the variety of wines I had available! – and since I was also serving other cocktails and beverages, we had wine left over for dinner the next day and for the bride to keep as a gift. It worked out great!

The most popular wine of the night seemed to the Le Rime Pinot Grigio. I actually reviewed this wine last year, if you’re interested in reading more about it!

Everyone had fun, and the combination of foods paired with the wines seemed to go over really well. I would absolutely serve this same menu again, since it seemed to be such a big hit!

Have you ever hosted a wine tasting party?

Today, I’m sharing the last of the “Pink Cocktails” that I served at Jaime’s bachelorette party. This one is a light and tasty Sparkling Raspberry Drop using Sobieski Vodka:

Although I served cocktails at the bachelorette party I hosted last month, I always make sure to have a variety of non-alcoholic options on hand for guests to enjoy as well. As I kicked around a few non-alcoholic bachelorette party drink ideas in my head, I heard from my friends over at Good Earth Tea that they’d like to send over a box of samples for the party. A lightbulb went off in my head: I could have a “Tea Bar” at the party!

Party Idea: Create Your Own Tea Bar

To make my tea bar, I printed a little menu sign and placed it on the buffet table along with 5 boxes of tea: Superfruit Green Tea Pomegranate & Cherry, Sweetly Twisted, Caffeine-Free Sweet & Spicy, Cocoa Tango, and Chai Tea Cocoa.

Because it was such a hot day, we thought it would be really refreshing to serve the tea iced. Since I had such a variety of teas, this posed a slight logistical problem for me since I didn’t have 5 pitchers available. Here’s the solution I came up with: I decided to pre-make one pitcher of iced tea ahead of time, and then, when guests wanted to try a different variety, I could just brew a single cup and pour it over ice, adding a little cold water as needed.

I asked the bride which of the varieties she’d like to start with, and she thought a pitcher of the Sweet & Spicy sounded really good! She was excited when she saw all the Good Earth teas on the table – as it turns out, Good Earth Tea is actually one of her favorites to buy for herself, so it all worked out pretty perfectly!

To create the pitcher of tea, I brought water to a boil in a small pot over the stove, tied together 4 teabags and dunked them in the water to brew for a few minutes. Taking the pot off the heat, I allowed the tea to cool, then poured it into the pitcher. I kept the pitcher in the fridge until about an hour before the party when I started setting out food. I had a chest for ice underneath the buffet table, so I could easily prepare a nice cold glass of tea for the guests!

After the party, I left the remaining boxes of tea with the bride – she was excited to have these because she drinks a lot of tea at work! Having a tea bar at the party was easy to do, really fun and added good variety to the beverages we had available.