Wine tastings and pairings are very popular, and can be an elegant addition to meetings. Incorporating some enlightening wine demonstrations inspires group interaction and adds a memorable activity to a weekend retreat or a full-fledged conference. And with so many states around the country now promoting their wineries, you’ll most likely be able to offer a wine tour as well as give local flavor to your event.

While a wine tasting isn’t exactly rocket science, to be successful it requires leadership and thorough planning. The basics are stemware, a diverse selection of wines and workable tasting programs all blended with some joie de vivre. More than one master sommelier is on record as stating that if it’s not fun, it’s not really about wine. Early on, toss out the albatross of wine—pompousness.

Wine without food, said Pulitzer Prize winner Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, is “like a man without a woman.” Pairing, the most important part of the wine enjoyment journey, incorporates both and demonstrates the sensory rewards when everything is balanced.

There is no particular formula for a successful wine event, but a wine savvy emcee is required. The role might be filled by the hotel food and beverage staff, local wine journalists or wine educators. For teambuilding, here are a few programs worth thinking about.

Champagne for Breakfast

Starting a day this way breeds magic. For those who’ve made New Orleans a regular stop, this is no surprise. A Champagne tasting is nowhere near as expensive as it sounds. Many sparkling wines from France, Italy, Spain and the U.S. are very affordable. Gruet Brut Blanc de Noirs, a heralded sparkler from New Mexico, is an excellent choice. The excitement level peaks as these are paired with pastries, bagels, Eggs Benedict, cheese grits, bacon or country ham.

The lesson from this exercise is that Champagne and its sparkling wine cousins go with any food. A pianist playing Broadway show tunes, adding in some Chopin and Mozart, adds a touch of class.

The Opening Shot

Tastings can be in segments or in one event. Ideally, the environment should be informal and relaxed, where interaction is encouraged. Begin with a presentation about the language of wine: terroir, Old World wines and New World wines, and the noble grapes of the wine culture. Information about stemware, how to properly hold a glass, tasting etiquette and bottle storage will enhance the experience and help demystify it. After all, wine is actually made by farmers and has been around for thousands of years.

Have some demonstration wines poured in advance with a flyer explaining the glass, origin, style, etc. Taste each wine guided by the emcee’s commentary. The emcee proposes a toast—there are many easily found on Google.

Wine Comparisons

Turn a wine tasting into a competition. One option is to ask attendees, after tasting a selection of reds and whites, to write down the varieties they’d like to take home and why on small pieces of paper. Pull winners from a hat. Another competition is “The Name Game.” Participants use guessing skills to describe words like appellation, terroir, microclimate, reserve, corked, oaked, hot and, one of the most colorful, fruit-bomb. A handout connects facts with some PowerPoint maps and illustrations, and  glasses of wine illustrate the meaning of the words. What was strange is quickly understood.

Maps work well for gaming. France has the Bordeaux, Italy the Piedmont, Spain the Rioja, America has Napa, Oregon has Willamette Valley, and so on. Pour wines into glasses for participants to contrast Old World and New World wines. The grapes that became these wines have the same DNA, but participants can be quizzed on which ones are which. Make them guess, after a series of educational segments, which one is a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon or a white Burgundy? Because you use all the taste senses, this is better than blind tastings because it encourages good repartee and dialogue.

The finale: Four wines are poured, and participants are asked to match them by country. Australia or America? Italy or Chile? Competition is always fun, particularly when there are collectible bottles of wine for the lucky winners. At the end, offer one final prize for the most accomplished wine “student.” Remember, many of your attendees may be flying home or to another destination after the event, so offer to ship awarded wines home for them.

Doc Lawrence is a noted travel, wine and food writer/consultant, and television producer who has served as a judge for many well-known wine and food festivals. You can read more of his travels and recommendations at docnews.com.

Oddly enough, audiovisual and catering do have some things in common, mainly the need for floor space and room access. Unfortunately, this little detail is often overlooked, causing logistical problems and frustration between both food servers and AV crews. So here are some rules to live by:

• First, always let your AV provider know if there is going to be any catering in a room. This includes buffets and serving stations, bars and especially served meals. Here’s the kicker: Give your AV company this tasty morsel of information before they set up the AV. Here’s why: AV setups often block access doors, usually on the wall where the stage is located. If that happens to be where catering needs to enter and exit, guess what? You’ve got a conflict.

• In addition to obstacles such as screens, drapery, scenery, projection towers, speaker stands, equipment racks and ground-supported equipment, there is also a string of cables and power cords that hook everything together, which can be trip hazards for servers. AV crews also need to have a place for their empty road cases, which most often are stored behind the stage, drape or screens. It can be a major undertaking to reposition all this stuff to make access for catering after it is already set up (which, by the way, usually comes with added cost to you). An AV company can usually work around catering needs, even though a solution may not make either party completely happy.

• Plan on space for catering and set some ground rules. Speaker stacks, equipment racks, camera platforms and stage pieces are completely off limits for use as serving platforms. Serving stations that are setup near or in front of technical positions can also cause some unraveling of nerves. Believe it or not, these things are common problems.

• Create an appropriate schedule: Catering needs time in the room to set tables and prep food and drinks. This can be a problem if AV gear is being set-up and dialed in, or if there is a scheduled rehearsal or equipment check going on. Also, let your AV provider know of any changes to the room in advance, such as closing or opening of air walls, any changes in seating configuration, or anything else that will affect room space.

• Finally, remember AV gear such as cameras and technical positions always require cabling, which usually is run along the floor and taped down. These cables might need to traverse open floor space as well as doorways. AV companies will do their best, but often have few options when it comes to cable paths.

By Liz Mitchell

The route to sweet memories is following the well-traveled path to local seasonal cuisine. Think about your memorable trips, whether family outings or group gatherings. Do you remember where you ate or something unique that was served? Of course, you remember at least one of the highlights, and sometimes you will recall an eatery or food choice for years. If returning to that destination, would you choose one of the same menus? Do you ever go back hoping to recreate just one terrific experience with a meal?

Let’s face it…you cannot plan any meeting or gathering without paying attention to the meals. Reunions and social events are often geared around the meals themselves, which provide the primary time for the attendees to enjoy personal interaction.

Every destination or venue has its own specialty, sometimes synonymous with the season, the local growers, manufacturers or producers, or maybe a chef who is noted for a contribution to the cuisine. When it’s a plentiful local product, hotel chefs and caterers will be happy to match your theme, or you can begin with their specialty menu items and create your theme accordingly. It also will be cost effective to use readily available ingredients.

Here’s a look at a few of the obvious cuisine and theme choices presented by popular group destinations, just to get you started:

Fishing for ideas
How about a trip to a Florida destination? Coastal cities are especially well known for fresh seafood, which varies with the seasons, while other sections of the state may be better remembered for their fruit and vegetable crops. It’s easy to use the special item and build the design of marketing materials and event titling around it.

Meeting for a rich, sweet experience
Chocolate invokes thoughts of a great little town in Pennsylvania. Hershey calls itself the sweetest place on earth, and you can use the famous kiss or any of its cousins in all of your event titles, the promotional art and, of course, the menu creations. Beans, cocoa, hot-to-go and many other terms invite a playful theme. You can use the confectionery of colors as well.

Spice up your life
Creole and Cajun flavors are predominant in New Orleans and neighboring parishes of southeastern Louisiana along the Gulf of Mexico. Your meeting theme can reflect hot and spicy or the wonderful mix of gumbo. Or it’s easy to single out one of the specific ingredients such as crawfish. Along with art and titles playing off the little critters sometimes called mudbugs, you certainly want to have a crawfish boil and a taste of crawfish with every meal. Agri-tours in Lafayette feature the history of the crawfish along with manufacturing of hot sauces and seasonings in this heart of the Cajun and Creole country.

Chef John Folse’s manufacturing plant tours in Baton Rouge showcase products used by caterers around the country and offer tastings. Ask for recipes available from his “Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine.” Magnolia Mound Plantation, also in the Baton Rouge parish, offers open-hearth cooking demonstrations. Seeing the authentic age-old process and then tasting the creations will lend a new touch to an event.

Shrimply delicious agenda
Gatherings along the South Carolina coast can easily feature shrimp during the fall season when it’s plentiful, and oysters during the winter when they are traditionally in season. Fresh vegetables may be chosen during the spring growing season with farm tours or picking excursions as featured elements or venues.

Food and wine festivals
Beyond centerpieces of local specialties, think of scheduling an event to coincide with a festival. Many destinations have set their festivals during an otherwise slow season when lodging is readily available or special packages are offered. Your meal planning or after hours free time could be arranged merely by placing your attendees at the site of an existing celebration. Your event won’t be forgotten when it’s tied to something larger, which is a newsmaker in itself.

Any of these event experiences will remain in recipe collections or kitchens along with memories that will bring participants back for another taste at your next event.

Liz Mitchell has years of experience with meeting and special event planning and loves to write about great people and places. She directed festivals and tourism marketing for the Beaufort (S.C.) Regional Chamber of Commerce for the past six years.

Attrition: “Once you’ve come up with a minimum that both parties can live with,” says Foster, “ask for allowable attrition in food and beverage that’s equal to allowable attrition of the guest rooms.”

What’s Included: Make sure you have a clear understanding of what goes toward that minimum. While coffee breaks, receptions, and meals should all be included, try to include such things as hospitality suites and F&B functions from sponsor organizations (who wouldn’t be there if not for your function).

Your Responsibilities: Make sure you are very clear on what your responsibilities are in different time frames if you fall below your guarantee (after allowable attrition). If you cancel something before the food is bought, you should be liable for less than after the food is purchased.

“Let’s say the profit margin on food is generally about 30 percent,” says Foster. “The other 70 percent is the cost of the food and labor. If a group books $10,000 worth of F&B and cancels it six months in advance, the hotel has not lost the full $10,000, but only $3,000—that’s the money that would have gone into their pockets. The other $7,000 would have been used to buy the food and pay for labor. So the hotel should only be entitled to the $3,000—what’s called the loss of profit.”

On the other hand, once the food has been purchased, it can’t be returned and if it can’t be used for another group, the hotel should be entitled to the full 100 percent that’s been lost, in this case the full $10,000.

Replacement Business: Make sure that the group damages are reduced if the facility is able to book replacement business after a cancellation. The difficulty is in defining replacement business. “It should be defined as any business that the hotel would not have been able to book if your event took place as scheduled,” Foster explains.

Why the clarification? Consider these circumstances: Your group has to move from a large room to a smaller room because of attrition. But now the hotel has moved another group that was already booked into that larger room. You should not be fully liable since the business has been replaced.

In today’s market, you are in the driver’s seat—but be fair. And pay special attention to changing attrition clauses and hidden costs.  Source: Rejuvenate, the resource for planners of faith-based meetings