How to Build a Wine Menu + Do an At-Home Wine Tasting

Welcome back to Bri Books! When you’re hosting, choosing wine can feel daunting. Whether it’s a dinner party, work event, last-minute gathering, or impromptu holiday shenanigans, here’s the simple framework I rely on that never fails.

In this episode, we’ll cover:

1. The three-bottle wine buying formula (red, white, wildcard)

2. How to taste wine at home: My 4 Pillars of Place: Temperature, Terrain, Soil, and Touch

3. How to build a wine list for parties or dinner

How to Build a Wine Menu: Bri’s 3-Bottle Formula

To avoid overwhelm at the wine shop, use this formula:

1. One white wine

2. One red wine

3. One wildcard.

That’s it. Simple, flexible, and stress free. Let’s dig in:

1. Crisp white as the Opener. This white wine is your opener—the bottle people drink while they arrive, settle in, chat, and snack. White wins are crisp, flexible, and food-friendly. I look for wines with high acidity and good minimality, the kind that leave you gently puckering and refreshed. A crisp white wine creates an immediate sense of ease and joy at the table. My go-to white wine categories:

   1. Chablis

   2. Gruner Vetliner

   3. Albrino

   4. Sauv blanc, from Loire

   Why this works:

   1. These wines pair well with almost anything: cheese, vegetables, oysters, seafood

   2. They don’t overpower food

   3. They make excellent aperitif wines

   4. They set the tone for the meal by brightening flavors and waking up the palette

2. Red wine as the main event. Your red wine is your main event. You’re looking for a crowd-pleaser that’s food friendly, adaptable, and easy to drink. it can be tempting to bring a big, heavy, dramatic, oak-driven red-but gatherings call for something more communal. Look for reds with:

   1. Medium body

   2. moderate tannins

   3. high drinkability

   Red wines I recommend:

   1. Boujulais

   2. Tempranillo (especially rioja joven)

   3. Etna Rosso reds

   4. Cotes du Rhone

   These red wines shine with soups and stews, tomato based dishes, roasted vegetables, poultry, and cozy winter meals.

3. The wildcard: the personality hire wine. Go for an orange wine, a sparkling red like Lambrusco, a pet-nat, or a liter bottle of something fabulous and weird like a Madiera dessert wine. Bubbles are always a win. A dessert wine course moves your guests through the final stages of the evening, and a liter bottle keeps things flowing. Use the wildcard to spark conversation about what there wine comes from, how it’s made, and why it tastes the way it does.

 

How to Do an At-Home Wine Tasting Using the 4 Pillars of Place

My 4 pillars framework helps you understand where your wine comes from, even without the label.

1. Temperature: Look at the wine. Color intensity can give you climate clues.

2. Terroir: Smell the wine. Aromas reflect whether grapes grew near the sea, mountains, forests, or plains

   1. ltitude = floral, lifted flavors

   2. Warm climate = ripe, deeply drinkable

   3. Coastal = salty, breezy, fresh finish

   4. Mountain = Sharp, linear, mineral

   5. Valley floor = lush, smooth

   6. Volcanic = smoky, stony, earthy flavors

3. Soil: Taste the wine. Texture reveals the soil type. As a reminder:

   1. limestone = chalky, saline wine

   2. Volcanic = smoky, ashy flavors in the wine

   3. Granite = crunchy, bright, often ‘cool’ flavors in the wine

   4. Clay = smooth, plush, slightly pucker-y in flavor

   5. High a

4. Touch: Notice winemaking styl. Is it bright? Clean? Raw? Heavy sediment? Is it sharp? Does it grip? Touch is the easiest pillar to learn and the quickest path to understanding what you like.

 

You can always find Bri Books on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and at bribookspod.com.