Category Archives: Party Ideas

So You’re Having a Party? Amounts of Wine, Beer, or Liquor to Have

Amounts of Wine, Beer, and Liquor to buy for a party

Having a party? Ever wonder how much wine, beer, or liquor to supply your guests with? With the arrival of the holiday season, many of us are hosting parties, and drinks are a must. But, it doesn’t have to be a mystery when it comes to getting the right amount of drinks; just follow our party planning math guide!

Tips & Tricks for Entertaining

  • Survey your glassware situation. How many wine glasses have survived the summer?
  • Chill those drinks! Take white wine out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving, and have 1lb. of ice per person. Are you attending a party? Be a champion and bring ice!
  • Always serve food along with drinks.
  • Have a pitcher or two of water available for guests, and keep them filled!

Stop by our shop, we’re here to help you with your celebration!


Bottles Fine Wine
(401) 372-2030

3 Delicious Amari for Thanksgiving

 

Since Thanksgiving is a day that our stomachs get a full workout, I wanted to share some of my favorite Amari from our selection here at Bottles. Amaro is a digestif; an herbal liqueur invented by doctors, chemists, pharmacists, laymen hundreds of years ago to serve one purpose – settle the stomach.

These pragmatic folks chose to preserve medicinal herbs in a tincture of alcohol because, after all, a spoon full of sugar does help the medicine go down. And since a bit of sugar is usually added to balanced the bitter herb flavors, Amari can be enjoyed on the rocks after a meal, or used in place of sweet vermouth in Manhattans. Here are a few of my favorite Amari to sample after a feast: Amaro Montenegro, Cardamaro, and Bigallet China-China.

You may notice that I left Fernet Branca, a popular amaro off this list. Fernet is a wonderfully bitter and bracing amari but after all that pumpkin pie, I prefer a more mellow spirit to enjoy next to the fire before I fall into a glorious food coma nap.

Amaro Montenegro 

Oranges and coriander meld together in a wonderfully warm way that intersects perfectly with a bitter, vegetal undertone. Rosewater and cherry are also present in this delightfully smooth and complex Amari.

Cardamaro 

Cardamaro is an Amari that is breaking all the rules. Instead of a spirit base, winemaker Gionvanni Bosca infuses Moscato wine with blessed thistle and ages the wine in oak for six months. This Amari is a great introduction because it has more of a sweet note rather than a bitter, herbal tone. Don’t be mislead, though, this is not a super sweet spirit. Ginger and artichoke are kicking around in this bottle to help right your senses.

Bigallet China-China 

What can I say? A perfect balance of sweet and sour, this Amari uses both sweet and bitter orange peels to form a holy union of citrus in your glass. Dark and rich with the addition of caramel, the warmth radiating from this Amari is life changing. My new favorite winter accessory! Move over electric blanket, you’ve been replaced.

Cheers & Happy Thanksgiving!

– Joanna
Bottles Fine Wine
www.bottlesfinewine.com

Great Kosher Wines for Hanukkah

kosher wines for hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah from Bottles! We love to help pair holiday meals with wines that perfectly compliment the herbs, spices and love you put into your family’s feast. Here are four wonderful Kosher wines that will make your holiday memorable.

Alfasi Chardonnay
pairs with Matso Ball Soup
Hints of apple and lemon make this Chilean Chardonnay a great pairing for piping hot soup.

Ariel Cabernet Sauvignon
pairs with  Herb Roasted Turkey Breast
This soft Israeli Cabernet Sauvignon has a nice cedar note that will complement roasted turkey perfectly.
Don Guillermo de Mendoza Malbec
pairs with Red wine glazed Brisket
Hints of cherry and figs with a nice spicy finish, medium-bodied will stand up to a slow cooked brisket.
Cantina ‘Gabriele’ Vino
pairs with Chocolate Ganache Cake
What better way to finish off a great meal than a glass of sweet red wine that is both smooth and light!

Our neighbors at Whole Foods Waterman Street in Providence have a great Hanukkah and Thanksgiving dinner menu, where you can find these food pairings and place an order!

We have a great Kosher Wine Selection!

Visit our wine store today >

 

Self-Serve Cocktail Bar for Thanksgiving, Free Printable Signs Included!

self serve cocktail Thanksgiving bar bourbon free printable recipe signs

If you’re hosting a Thanksgiving party, it can be a challenge to balance cooking times, the arrival of guests, and drinks. That’s why we love the idea of offering a self-serve cocktail bar, complete with a few easy cocktail recipe signs, ice, and liquors so your guests can have fun playing bartender. (Check out the self-serve bar & printable cocktail signs we made for Superbowl). This particular bar set-up idea includes bourbon whiskey and Laird’s Applejack as the base spirits, and a few classic fall flavors.

Fall is full of so many wonderful flavors – apple, maple, pumpkin – our taste buds appreciate a sensory overload of sweetness to measure oneself against the brisk winds. As the temperature drops, gin gets places towards the back of the liquor cabinet and bourbon comes to the front of the lineup.

FREE PRINTABLE SHOPPING LIST >

Everything you need to pull together this self-serve bar. Ingredients & supplies available at Bottles.

how to self serve cocktail bar for Thanksgiving idea
 
 

FREE PRINTABLE COCKTAIL SIGNS>
Download, print, and cut out each of these signs, and place them around the cocktail bar.

 
free printable cocktail recipe signs
 
free printable cocktail signs for a self serve bar

Jack Rose

Ingredients
1 ½ oz Laird’s Applejack
3/4 oz simple syrup
3/4 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz grenadine
apple slice garnish 

Directions
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into a martini glass.

 
jack rose cocktail recipe
bourbon cocktail | Maple Leaf drink recipe sign

Maple Leaf

Ingredients
2 oz Breaking & Entering Bourbon Whiskey
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz maple syrup

Directions
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake and strain, into a rocks glass with ice.

whiskey daisy cocktail recipe

Whiskey Daisy

Ingredients
1 ¼ oz Breaking & Entering Bourbon Whiskey
3/4 oz lemon juice
1/2 triple sec
1/4 oz grenadine 

Directions
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake and strain.

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving from Bottles!
www.bottlesfinewine.com

 

A Guide to Choosing Thanksgiving Wines

Hosting a Thanksgiving Dinner is a big deal and picking the wines to be served can be a nerve-racking challenge. To take some of the difficulty out of it, we’ve come up with this handy guide to help navigate the choppy seas of choosing wine for Turkey Day.
  • Serve wines that you like. Thanksgiving Dinner isn’t the best time to serve wines that you’re not familiar with. We recommend serving wines or at least varietals that are tried and true. For example, though Beaujolais and Gewürztraminer are widely considered to be perfect Thanksgiving pairings, it’s best not to serve them unless you know that you and your guests will like them. Also, if there’s wine left over from your dinner, you want to make sure that you like the wines because you’ll be the one drinking them the days following your Feast. Remember: if you’re a rewards member, we can look in your purchase history and tell you exactly when and what that bottle of wine was that you loved.
Every day I’m hustlin’!
  • Do some research a few weeks before your dinner. So it’s been decided that you’re hosting – Great! Hopefully you’ve been given a few weeks notice so you have some time to try out potential wines for your Thanksgiving Dinner. You will see special orange tags all around the store with wines that we have chosen especially for the big dinner and we have a giant wine display that features wines that we feel are perfect pairings for Thanksgiving. Lastly, if you have any questions, ask any of us, we are really good at making wine and food pairing recommendations.
  • How much wine will you need? The short answer is more than you think. Let’s break it down: One bottle = four glasses — Each guest will have at least two glasses of wine (even if there will be cocktails and/or beer available), so at a bare minimum you will need one bottle for every two people attending. So for example, if you’re having 10 people over you’ll need 5 bottles of wine. Remember, this is a feast and while Aunt Mary insists that she’ll only have one glass, chances are high that this is the one time of the year that she’ll get crazy and have two.
  • How many different wines should you get? At the bare minimum two: one white and one red. However, there is a world of wine out there and this is the time to enjoy all of your favorites. We are big fans of starting with Sparkling, even an inexpensive one is great to share while you’re watching the game, standing around the kitchen or with pre-dinner snacks. When you finally sit down to dinner, we like recommend having a couple of different styles of whites and reds open – wines that are of contrasting styles, for example a light Pinot Grigio and a rich Chardonnay or an elegant Pinot Noir and a robust Rhone.
  • What pairs with Turkey? The best answer is “What ever you like to drink!” We think Turkey is pretty easy to pair wine with because the flavors are not super strong or pronounced. However, pressed to choose wines to pair with just Turkey, we’d recommend (in no particular order): Beaujolais Nouveau, White Burgundies, Pinot Noir from Oregon, Gewürztraminer, Red Rhones (Cote du Rhone, Chateauneuf du Pape, etc.)
Feel free to visit us, call, or email us for help with wine for Thanksgiving. We’re all here to help!
Cheers!
General Manager
Bottles Fine Wine, 141 Pitman Street, Providence, RI
(401) 372-2030
info@blog.bottlesfinewine.com

 

Happy Halloween! Try Our Spoooky Cocktails!

This Halloween we’re showcasing our most chilling concoctions with free downloadable printables–perfect for your next self-serve bar! Feeling a little Lovecraft-inspired? Try The Lurking Fear. Taking a nice walk through walls? Phantasma may be more your speed. Completely brain drained? Mix up the Re-Animator. All with just 3 ingredients in each!

printables, lurking fear, phantasma, re animator, cocktails, halloween, free

Download Cocktail Signs PDF here!

SELF SERVE BAR SET-UP
– Have an ice bucket with tongs, a cocktail shaker, bottle opener, bar spoon, and rocks glasses.
– For mixers, have Angostura bitters, simple syrup, ginger ale, club soda, tonic water, and ginger beer.
– Include handles of a few staple liquors like Bourbon, Vodka, and Rum.
– Pre-slice a bowl of garnishes (oranges, lemons, limes)

Let your guests play bartender! Everyone has variations on how they like their drink mixed. A self serve bar with helpful cocktail recipe signs lets them make the perfect drink to their own taste.

Ready for something with more than 3 ingredients? Check out this month’s Halloween cocktails below!

The Last Word

Ingredients
3/4 oz gin – Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin
3/4 oz green Chartreuse
3/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur – Luxardo
3/4 Fresh Lime Juice

Directions
Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Pour ingredients over ice. Shake and strain, serve on the rocks.

Corpse Reviver #2

Ingredients
1 oz gin – Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin
1 oz Cointreau
1 oz Lillet Blanc
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1-3 drops absinthe – Mata Hari

Directions
First, “rinse” your glass with a few drops of absinthe by swirling and coating the inside of the glass, discarding the extra. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Pour the rest of the ingredients over ice. Shake and strain, serve on the rocks. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Blood & Sand

Ingredients
1 oz blended scotch
1 oz blood orange juice or Stirring’s Blood Orange Martini
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz Cherry Heering brandy

Directions
Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Pour ingredients over ice. Shake and strain, serve on the rocks. Garnish with an orange peel.

Find more videos and cocktail ideas on our YouTube channel and our Cocktail Recipe Page.

How to Make a Carved Pumpkin Drink Garnish with an Orange Peel

How to Make a Pumpkin Cocktail Garnish with an Orange Peel

A Halloween party is a great excuse to make creative garnishes for your cocktails. If you love pumpkin carving, you’ll love this idea to carve these mini pumpkins to decorate your drinks. All you’ll need are an orange, a knife, and a channel knife. Once you’re finished, add them to your favorite cocktail and enjoy!

How to Make an Orange Peel Carved Pumpkin Garnish

SUPPLIES
*Orange
*Knife
*Channel Knife

*Stop by our liquor store in Providence if you’re looking for bartender tools. www.bottlesfinewine.com

STEP 1
Slice off a round shape from just the orange peel surface. Anywhere from 1.5″ to 2″ in diameter is a good size.

STEP 2
Carve a pumpkin face! Use a channel knife to make this step a little easier. Finally, cut a small slit on the bottom right of the orange peel and place on the rim of your glass.

Cheers!


How to Make a Pineapple Cup for Tiki Drinks!

how to make a pineapple cup instructions

With Tiki drinks in revival, you’ll probably need a great tiki cup to go with your concoctions. What better way to celebrate summer than with a real pineapple cup in hand? Watch our instructional video tutorial showing an easy way to core a pineapple. All you need is a pineapple corer tool, a little technique, and a Tiki party to celebrate! You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is.

pineapple corer slicer
Pineapple Corer

How to Make a Pineapple Cup

Directions:

  1. Slice off the pineapple top
  2. Center the pineapple corer
  3. Twist. Go almost to the bottom of the pineapple
  4. Lift out pineapple slices with corer
  5. Fill with your favorite tiki cocktail
Use the pineapple slices as garnishes or for a tasty snack.
and pick up your pineapple corer!
Pineapple cups are perfect for Tiki drinks!
Need some Tiki drink recipes?
Click below to download & print this classic tiki recipe card!
 
 

Tiki is Back! Basic Bar & Drink Ideas for Summer Parties

vintage tiki drinks party idea

What’s old is new again…and tiki is back! There’s really no better way to enjoy summer outdoors and in the backyard than relaxing with a deliciously smooth tiki drink to sip. All you need are some funky tiki decorations like leis, mugs, and tiki torches, and of course, great tiki cocktails. Keep reading to learn how to create a basic home tiki bar that will last all summer long.

tiki cocktail ideas

A Basic Tiki Bar – Rum is essential! Since rums age very quickly in heat and humidity, even a 3 year old rum is comparable to a whiskey aged 6 years, resulting in a more mellow taste at an affordable price (pictured above are El Dorado rums).Beside a dark, gold, and white rum, you’ll also need some syrups. Below are 5 that make up many classic tiki recipes. Stock up on these for a solid start onto making your own delicious drinks at home!

*”Way back when, grenadine was made from freshly crushed pomegranate seeds…But over the years, this bold concoction has devolved into a cloying, artificial taste. Naturally, our version is the exception. Our Authentic Grenadine uses only pomegranate and pure cane sugar – no high fructose corn syrup – to produce the originally intended result: a pleasantly sweet pomegranate flavor as bold and potent as its distinctive red color.” – Stirrings 

Why All the Syrups? Well, in tiki drinks you are using several types of rum to create a cocktail with many dimensions of flavor. The syrups bind the sometimes disparate tastes in tiki drinks together, to create a smooth and sometimes deceptively strong cocktail. Yes, you will have to invest in a few new ingredients for your bar to recreate these vintage concoctions, yet the magic and fanfare you create by serving a Mai Tai in a festive tiki mug make a little bar stockage worth the while.

Basic Bartender Tools – Having a few basic bar tools will not only make you look like a pro, but help you construct great cocktails with ease. We first recommend investing in a cocktail shaker. Good cocktails are cold cocktails! Another great investment are ounce measuring cups, like these pictured in the photo below, to the right of the tiki statue.

vintage tiki party bar
Tiki statues add to the tropical party atmosphere!
Pineapple Corer
Easy, quick, and does all the hard work for you! Make an amazing edible punch bowl, create garnishes from the perfectly round pineapple slices, and add some extra fun to your Tiki party! What better way to celebrate the return of sunny, summer days than a glass of grog served in a pineapple?
pineapple corer edible punch bowl

Handheld Citrus Reamer

Nothing better in a cocktail than freshly squeezed juice! This handheld reamer gets every last drop out of your limes for a perfect Mai Tai. 

citrus reamer for tiki bar
 

Tiki Party Decor

Having a tiki party is pretty easy! Now that you have a basic bar, you’ll just need fun decorations to match the cocktails. Pick up variety of tiki mugs in which to serve your fabulous drinks, and choose colorful garnishes or straws. Leis can be party favors and an accessory for guests to wear.

making a tiki bar at home

Whether your tiki party is in the backyard, patio, or porch, luau themed decorations will set the celebratory atmosphere. Add grass luau skirts to the tables, get tiki torches for lighting, and sprinkle in fun accents like wooden tiki statues, hula girls, tropical flowers, and foliage.

summer tiki bar party

Classic Tiki Recipes

Have the recipe for a Mai Tai, Zombie, and Iuka Grogg on hand! We’ve made a free printable tiki drink recipe card to make home bar-tending a little easier. Click below to download the PDF file, and then print it on your home printer. For extra vintage flair, print it on ivory card-stock!

If you are having trouble opening the recipe card, make sure you have a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader, available here for free.

DOWNLOAD >
A free printable tiki recipe card! 

Tiki Cocktail Recipes

A World of Tiki Drinks

The Tiki + App

Though we’ve helped you out by picking classic tiki drinks to start out with, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry also has a extensive library of recipes. Download Jeff’s app, Tiki +, if you’re looking to expand your tiki drink repertoire. Take a simple backyard cocktail hour to the next level with over 150 recipes in the palm of your hand!

Visit Our Store
Pay us a visit at our Providence, Rhode Island store and stock up on your grenadine, orgeat, demerara rum, and tiki bar essentials. Once you have these basic building blocks for a quality tiki bar, the possibilities for different tiki drinks are deliciously endless. Just look for the large tiki display, we’ll have everything you need! Cheers!
    
(401) 372-2030
info@blog.bottlesfinewine.com

 

Easter Beer Hunt Party Idea & Photo Contest

What’s an Easter Beer Hunt? Well, Easter fun doesn’t have to be just for kids with this party idea. Simply replace the eggs with beer, and bring back the joy and excitement of Easter for those over 21!

How to Hold an Easter Beer Hunt
  1. Buy beer. Variety is the spice of life, so try mixing up your beer choices. This will be especially pleasing for avid beer enthusiasts. If you know some of their favorite beers, get those to heighten the competition. You’ll probably see some trading after the hunt is over.
  2. Hide the beer in your yard. Be creative, but don’t choose impossible places. Lost beer is no fun.
  3. Let the beer hunt begin! Use six-pack beer holders filled with some pink plastic grass.

We highly recommend hiding the beers after the kids have their Easter egg hunt. And as always, please be responsible.

An Easter Beer Hunt Photo Contest
WIN a FREE BEER TASTING!!!
  1. Get the Bottles 6-pack holders & plastic shred (for free, and as seen in the above photo) at our store at 141 Pitman St., Providence, RI. Don’t forget some delicious beer!
  2. Hold an Easter Beer Hunt (directions are above).
  3. Take an awesome photo that has the Bottles 6-pack holder in it somewhere. Be creative! Let the champion show off, take a photo of the hunt in progress, etc.
  4. Post ONLY ONE photo on our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/bottlesprovidence
  5. If your photo has the most likes, you WIN a FREE BEER TASTING for you and 15 of your friends!

The Easter Beer Hunt Photo Contest ends April 10th at 1:00pm. That’s right, you only have a little over a week to share your photo on our Facebook page and get as many likes as you can. At 1:00pm on Wednesday, April 10th, 2013 we will start counting the likes and announce the winner shortly.

IMPORTANT:
Your photo must have the Bottles 6-pack holder in it somewhere.

FACEBOOK POSTING TIPS:

  • We have to manually approve your photo for it to appear prominently on our timeline and not just in the ‘Recent Posts by Others’ area on our timeline. When you first share and upload your photo on our Facebook page, it should show up in the ‘Recent Posts by Others’ area automatically. We will try to manually approve contest photos several times a day.
  • Make sure you set your photo privacy settings to ‘Public’, so that everyone can see it & vote.
  • Make sure you are going to our Facebook page, selecting ‘share a photo,’ and uploading it.
  • Still having trouble? Make sure you and your friends ‘like’ our page, so that they can ‘like’ your photo.
Our Facebook Page
 
GOOD LUCK & HAPPY EASTER!!!
 
Cheers,
The folks at Bottles