Virtual Wine Tasting

A world-class sommelier leads a 60-minute live tasting. A kit reaches every guest's own door beforehand, so a team spread across nine cities opens the same wine at the same moment. The bottles are minis — a quarter the size of a full bottle, which is one proper serving each and the reason a flight of five or six is a tasting rather than an evening nobody remembers.

There are three kits and you pick one for the group. The California Wine Mixer runs whites, reds and rosé from up and down the California coast, the sunny slopes of San Luis Obispo through to Sonoma County. Winemaker's Select is Matt Smith's own top six of the year, crisp whites through to bold reds. Wine + Chocolate pairs five mini wines with five chocolate truffles and a Stag Head aerator.

Your sommelier covers where each wine came from, what to look for and how to taste it properly, then keeps the group comparing notes as they go. A dedicated event planner, a Zoom host, delivery and gratuities are all in the rate.

All three cost the same, so pick on the room rather than the budget.

The California Wine Mixer is the safest choice for a general team — whites, reds and rosé mean everyone finds something they already like, and the contrast between them is the easiest thing to taste for people who have never done this before. Winemaker's Select is the better session for a group that already drinks wine and wants to go deeper: six wines chosen by the person who made them, with thirty years of decisions behind the picks.

Wine + Chocolate is the one to pick when the tasting IS the event rather than an item on the agenda. Five wines, five truffles and an aerator, and pairing two things against each other gives a quieter room more to talk about than wine alone does.

Every guest gets their own kit at their own address, so a remote team gets the same box as the people in the office. Standard shipping is free within the United States, and shipping is insured — a lost, delayed or damaged box is replaced.

International delivery is available to most countries at additional cost, and those addresses are due earlier. We send each guest a form to fill in themselves rather than asking you to collect addresses, and the deadline is 10 days before the event.

Flag any address you think might be awkward as early as you can. Overseas ones are the ones worth planning around.

Tell your planner and they will build around it — free customization is part of the rate rather than an upsell, and this is one of the more common things they are asked for.

It is worth saying that a tasting is a guided sensory session rather than a drinking session. The pours are small and the point is comparing and describing what is in the glass, so a non-drinker following along with the cheese or charcuterie add-on is genuinely taking part rather than sitting it out. If you would rather the whole event were alcohol-free, ask about a mocktail happy hour instead.

It gives everyone the same thing to react to at the same time, which is the whole trick. A tasting is one of the few work formats where a quiet engineer and a VP have equal standing, because nobody is an expert and everyone's palate is an equally valid instrument.

The session is structured — compare these two, describe what you get, disagree about it — so it does not collapse into an awkward video call with a glass of wine. Your sommelier keeps it moving, and there is no skill barrier at all: nothing to cook, nothing to burn, nothing to go wrong in front of colleagues.

Yes, both. A guided cheese flight can run alongside the wines, and a charcuterie selection can go into every tasting kit. Either one turns a 60-minute tasting into something closer to an evening, which is worth knowing if this is the whole event rather than one item on an agenda.

Ask your planner when you book — they go in the kits, so they are decided before the boxes ship rather than on the day.

The rate is $645 for groups under five, then $129 per person for 5 to 30, $119 for 31 to 50, and $109 for larger groups — the same for all three kits. It covers a world-class sommelier, a dedicated event planner, a Zoom host, wine delivery, gratuities and all service fees. US shipping is free.

Give us about three weeks so every kit lands before the session, and ask anyway if your date is tighter — rush events are sometimes possible depending on sommelier availability. Fill in the form on this page, write to events@rockoly.com or call (617) 939-9732, and a planner comes back with open dates, a kit recommendation and a full quote.

Every event carries the Love Your Event Guarantee: if your Rockoly event doesn't live up to expectations, we'll make it right.