All is mild: If the weather allows, Jerry Rose recommends taking your evening outdoors for the wine and cheese tasting. "I like heights and movement and different shapes," he says of his floral arrangments and candles. "It captures the eye at all different levels." For the tastings, you can put wine and cheese together. Fresh or dried fruit, crackers, and bread help guests cleanse their palates between varieties.
Wine, cheese, chocolate. It’s hard to imagine anyone complaining about that combination. So, rather than the usual “fill ‘er up” heavy dinners and gift swap, what better holiday gift than a tasting party that gives guests an assortment of these three indulgences—and a lesson in how to drink and eat them? ❧ “We see tastings as a whole trend, because people like more selection, more variety,” says Allison Sargent of Allison Sargent Events in Montclair. “It’s a little more interesting than an elaborate meal, and a tasting has a more clever presentation, so people are apt to remember it.” ❧ To make this year’s holiday party memorable, it’s also important to make the décor distinctive. Jerry Rose, a floral and event designer in Maplewood, says it’s essential to capture the time of the year—but best to do so in new ways, minus the flashing colorful twinkle lights. “The atmosphere is key in everything I do, and the change of season is key in everything I create,” he says. “It’s really important to keep everything as natural as possible.”
And what’s more natural than taking things outdoors? If the weather is right, Rose is ready to take advantage. “It’s more of an organic, natural setting for a warm winter evening,” he says of his candlelit table under a backyard tree. There, he used a variety of crimson flowers. The holidays are the time to use a little glitz: “It’s the one time of year you can get away with it," he says. "Love red, lots of red.”
When Rose created the centerpiece for a chocolate-tasting table, he combined branches with bold-colored flowers and hanging crystals. “I wanted to get the feel of a glistening woodland winter wonderland,” he says. In another room, he added sparkle with strings of small mirrors hanging from the ceiling amid an old-English country house theme. “You’re surrounded with a touch of two different eras."
Now it’s time to fill those tables with the edible stuff. For the cheese tasting, Steve Crane of Crane’s Delicatessen and Cheese Shoppe in Maplewood says it’s good to stay within a region where cheese is made. Then, he says, “go around the clock,” including cow, goat, and sheep cheeses, and work from mildest to strongest. “Stay away from the common cheeses." Instead, he says, go for a Humboldt Fog, a Huntsman, and a good Vermont cheddar, and add others you like. As for the size of each tasting, Crane recommends 1 to 1.5 ounces of each cheese per person, and always allow cheese to get to room temperature before serving. Good food accompaniments, he says, are baguettes, plain crackers, and fresh and dried fruits.
For the wine tastings, the rule of thumb is to work from white to red and from light to full-bodied. Gary Fisch of Gary's Wine in Madison and Bernardsville says to aim for no more than five different wines, and he suggests working with your local wine shop owner to come up with a theme, such as serving the same grape from different regions or serving all wine from a specific part of the world. For guests who aren't connoisseurs, Fisch recommends pairing the wine with cheese or other food. "Wine and food are meant to be enjoyed together," he says. And if you don't have a wine expert on site, make sure to get the details on each bottle—Fisch suggests printing the information on cards to place with each wine.
Then it’s chocolate time. Alison Nelson of Alison Nelson Chocolate Bar usually serves six different truffles at tastings, starting with white and working up to dark chocolate, and then she moves on to solid chocolate. If the host wants, she’ll add other chocolate items to the docket, but she recommends only serving water or sparkling water with the chocolates and saving the sweet desserts until afterward.
In the end, a tasting party can leave guests with more than a satisfied stomach. “If people are educated about what they’re eating, it makes the whole experience more interesting,” says Sargent. “More than just another holiday party, it really becomes memorable.”
 SWEET TOOTH
Keep the chocolate simple for the taste test, but feel free to bring out all kinds of chocolate treats afterward. Some local chocolatiers to check out: Sweet Spot Desserts (973-768-3035; sweetspotcc.com), Mangels Homemade Chocolates in Chester (908-879-5640; itsnotsosweet.com), and Alison Nelson Chocolate Bar in Beach Haven (609-492-2577; chocolatebarnyc.com).
Alison Nelson has been hosting chocolate tastings in people’s homes for years. In addition to guiding guests through a dozen or so different chocolates (from white to pate de fruit to dark, and everything in between), she also likes to give a history lesson. Whether the cacao comes from Madagascar, Venezuela, Colombia, or elsewhere, the taste differs—some are nuttier, some are fruiter, and some are more bitter. “There are a lot of nuances, depending on where the cacao comes from,” she says. “And I try to give people a chance to ask questions and learn about the differences and the history.”
 Her tasting sessions usually last about an hour, and she says she’s often impressed by how actively the guests join the discussion. (Maybe the new sugar high has something to do with it?) During her question-and-answer sessions, Nelson gives tips on how to best store chocolate (don’t keep it in the fridge with lots of leftovers—the chocolate will absorb the other smells), cooking techniques, and how to serve chocolate dishes. She also answers questions about what kinds of choclate are actually good for you (dark in particular) and whether chocolate is, in fact, an aphrodesiac (sorry, it’s not).
“It’s funny the number of different aspects of the tasting that grab people’s interest,” she says. “Whether people are interested in the health side of things or history, they're totally mesmerized. And then guests have something in common to talk about afterward.”
 Nice as it would be, you cannot live on wine, cheese, and chocolate alone. So caterer Chris Koch recommends mixing a variety of light hors d’oeuvres into the evening, focusing on a Japanese term called umami, which he describes as “eating something and having your whole mouth go ‘mmmmmm.’” To get that, he says, you need to serve food that has the right combination of hard and soft, sweet and sour, salty and bitter.
“The beauty of hors d’oeuvres is that you can achieve that balance in one bite,” he says. “You want to feel satisfied, but you don’t want to walk out of a party with a Buddha belly.”
Wine expert Gary Fisch says hosts can have a lot of fun weaving the meal into the wine tasting. If you would rather not have a formal wine lesson, Fisch suggests putting trays of specific food in stations around your home, along with a bottle of wine and a place card that describes the wine and says why that particular bottle is paired with the fare—reisling with salmon, for example. "You really just want to make it fun," Fisch says.
Complete the stations with dump pails, a stack of paper and pencils for taking notes, and, of course, plenty of sparkling and still water.
Don’t make the front door or foyer the only decorated entry in your home, Jerry Rose says. Many homes have a perfect entry way indoors that can serve the same purpose—and guests will admire it all evening. For this entry to a hallway off of the livingroom, Rose mixed the traditional holly and ivy with other greenery. “If you can incorporate an archway in your home with natural beauty, you really create an atmosphere that invites a party,” says Rose. “This is all about using architecture.”
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THE HOLLY AND THE IVY: