It’s been a hectic few days getting ready for last night. My wife and I had our 5th annual wine party. We’ve gone from just a few people, to a dozen to twenty. That’s about 2 1/2 times what is recommended for a wine party, but we don’t care… We’re not trying to do a really formal wine tasting; we’re trying to enjoy the night with friends and finding some wines that we might like that we hadn’t tried before.

It’s almost more fun to try some wines that are the worst wines. But more on that later.

The way our wine party goes is pretty simple, and pretty much against the accepted wine tasting process. We start with the food, which is supposed to be later, after the tasting. I fixed all the food. Then we start tasting wines. Each couple that comes brings 2 wines, a red and a white. The theme this year was French wines, so all the wines were French.

As I’ve said before, I try to do a couple of main dishes with several cheeses and bread. Thursday, I made crepes. Friday, I made dessert and started on French country bread and brioche. I’ll go through all of the dishes separately, to spend the time each deserves.

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