How to Host a Tea Tasting Event

Don't like wine? Always feel like you're missing out when your friends attend wine-tasting parties? With fall settling in and making evenings cooler, why not consider a hot beverage instead? Shake things up and host a tea-tasting party for your friends. They won't need designated drivers and they can get home in time to put the kids to bed. Here's how to plan one.

Step One: Send the Invitations

For a warm, cozy gathering you probably won't need to send your invitations out too far in advance. You can be as formal as you want by using printed, mailed invitations or you can use an electronic service such as Evite.

Schedule the event for early or mid-afternoon so that you and your friends will have a chance to work off all that caffeine before bedtime. If you can arrange for it to rain the day of your event, it'll be all the more special.

Step Two: Make Your Expectations Clear

Decide if you want each guest to bring a tea to sample or if you will provide all the tea. Also, decide if you'll be using a traditional tea set, tea bags, or some combination of the two. Keep in mind that depending on how many guests you have, you probably will not want to have a full serving of each variety unless you're really dragging that day. Inform your guests in a follow-up note or email of what they should bring.

Step Three: Plan Your Menu

If you host an afternoon event, people will probably already have had lunch at home so you can get away with serving hors d'oeuvres, tea cakes, and light desserts. Pick out menu items that will cleanse the palate and eliminate any bitterness from the tongue between tea servings.

Step Four: Decide on Favors

Send your guests home with party favors such as personalized mugs (you can design something on CafePress), small baskets to take home samples of teas they liked, or cookies to accompany their next tea sitting.

Step Five: Set Up

Because people will be holding hot beverages, it is a good idea to have seating for most of your guests. They can rotate in and out of it as they sample teas.

Set your food up on a table that's separate from the tea area and yet another empty table where people can actually eat and drink.

Provide your guests with note pads and writing instruments to remind themselves of what they liked about specific teas.

Keep your water hot (but not boiling), and use multiple tea kettles if necessary. Borrow tea sets from friends and family members to accommodate traditional steeped teas if necessary. Be sure to label any pre-made teas - the ones in tea bags tend to have their own labels.
Provide sugar (or sugar substitute), milk (or half-and-half) for your guests to use.

Step Six: Encourage Feedback

Ask your guests what they enjoyed about your tasting event and ask for suggestions about what can be improved for the next time. If a guest volunteers their home for a future event by all means take them up on it and let them do the work.

You can keep a master log of all the teas you've tried during your tasting events that will be accessible for anyone who attended.