Late one evening last November, after my wife’s book club had finally cleared out of the living room, I walked into the kitchen and found myself staring down a logistics failure. There were four bottles of wine on the counter, all of them about half-finished. One was a region in France I couldn’t pronounce, another was a Napa Cabernet that probably cost about as much as a decent steakhouse dinner for two, and they were all sitting there oxidizing. I tried to recap that Napa Cab with a generic rubber stopper I found in the junk drawer, only to realize the next morning it tasted less like dark fruit and more like a copper penny. It felt like throwing money into the Ohio River.
Before you keep reading, a quick heads-up: a few of the bourbon retailers, wine tasting calendars, gift-basket sites, and non-alcoholic brands linked below send me a commission when a reader orders through one of my links. Your price stays the same. The shelf over my kitchen pass-through came together over eight years of regular-person spending, and I keep the bottles I keep because they earned their spot—not because of a kickback. If a bottle didn’t survive a Tuesday night tasting with my neighbors, I’m going to tell you. I’m just a guy who pays attention to what’s in the glass, not a professional. Drink reasonably, and check your state’s shipping rules before you buy.
The Flight Mentality: Why 750ml Isn’t Always the Answer
In Louisville, we’re used to the flight mentality. If you go to a decent bar downtown, you aren’t committing to a full bottle of hard-to-find bourbon right off the bat. You get three or four 1.5-ounce pours to see what the mash bill is doing before you invest a tank of gas worth of money into a single bottle. But with wine, the industry expects you to commit to the full 750ml every time. That works if you have six people who all agree on one grape, but that’s rarely how my Tuesday nights go.
I realized I needed to stop treating wine like a major commitment and start treating it like a logistics problem. A standard bottle gives you about five 5-ounce pours. If only two people want the red and three people want the white, you’re either forcing someone to drink something they don't like or you're pouring leftovers down the drain the next day. I started looking into the 187ml "split" bottle—which is exactly one-fourth of a standard bottle—to see if we could recreate the bourbon flight experience without the waste.
Testing the 24-Bottle Strategy with In Good Taste
One Tuesday evening in March, when the Ohio River fog was rolling in thick over downtown and the damp cold was settling into the porch furniture, I brought out the In Good Taste tasting calendar. I’d seen it online and figured it was a better bet than the dusty 187ml bottles you see sitting under the fluorescent lights at the gas station. This box comes with 24 individual mini bottles, which is a lot of glass to have on the table at once.
What I actually noticed first wasn't the smell or the color, but the sound. There is something incredibly satisfying about the sound of twenty-four tiny screw caps clicking open across the table. It sounded more like a fleet of sodas being opened at a Little League game than a formal wine tasting, which immediately took the pressure off the guys. Nobody felt like they had to use words like "structured" or "tannic" if they didn't want to. We just poured. For some of us, these smaller formats are the best wine tasting kits for beginners because they remove the fear of "ruining" an expensive bottle by not liking it.
The Unexpected Win: Tasting Cards
The In Good Taste box comes with these little cards that walk you through what you’re supposed to be smelling. Now, I’ve spent years trying to figure out if a bourbon smells like toasted oak or just... bourbon. Having a block-8137c7 tell me that a certain white wine from Italy might smell like green apples gave me a baseline. Even the guys who usually stick to light beer were pointing out that they actually could smell the fruit once someone pointed it out. It turned the night into an activity rather than just a drinking session.
The Contrarian Angle: The Truth About Small Bottles
I’m going to tell you something the marketing for these minis won't: single-serve bottles can actually ruin the tasting experience if you aren't careful. There is a technical reason why wine collectors usually prefer the big 1.5-liter magnums for aging—it's the surface-to-volume ratio. In these tiny 187ml bottles, the wine is much closer to the air trapped under the cap. This accelerates oxidation. While it's great for a Tuesday night, these aren't bottles you buy to keep on the shelf for a year.
I noticed that some of the more delicate reds in the 24-pack lost their aromatic complexity faster than the same wine would have from a full 750ml bottle. If you let a mini bottle sit open for even twenty minutes, it starts to flatten out. My advice? Pour it, swirl it, and drink it. These are designed for discovery, not for lingering over for three hours while you argue about college basketball. If you're looking for a slower experience, you might be better off joining a bourbon of the month club where the spirit can handle being open for a few months without flinching.
Mixing the Rotation: Bourbon, Wine, and the "Sober" Friend
By the time early this summer rolled around, my kitchen pass-through had a dedicated corner for these minis. But the real breakthrough happened when one of my regulars started getting serious about cutting back on the heavy stuff. He started bringing Sober Carpenter to the Tuesday night rotation. It’s a non-alcoholic craft beer that actually tastes like a beer, not like bread-flavored water.
Because I had the In Good Taste minis, we could do this weird, hybrid tasting. I could have a 187ml pour of a French Rose, he could have a Sober Carpenter IPA, and another guy could have a 1.5-ounce pour of something I found through the Bourbon Concierge. Nobody was over-served, and more importantly, nothing was wasted. We didn't have to open three full bottles of wine just to satisfy three different palates. It’s about the logistics of the evening—keeping the variety high but the volume low. For more on this transition, I actually wrote about the best red wines for bourbon drinkers who are trying to branch out without losing that bold flavor profile they love.
What to Avoid: The Gift Basket Trap
I should mention one miss. A coworker sent me a basket from one of those big national brands—similar to what you’d find at Wine Country Gift Baskets, though those are usually better put together. This one had two mini bottles of wine and a block of pink cheese. The wine was fine, but it was clearly the supporting act to the ribbon and the wicker. If you’re hosting a tasting, don't buy the gift baskets for the wine. Buy the wine for the wine. If you want something fancy for a gift, look at Mano's Wine for a custom label, but for a tasting party, stick to the curated flights.
Setting Up Your Own Pass-Through Tasting
If you want to try this without it feeling like a science experiment, here is how I set it up now. I keep a stack of clean glasses on the pass-through and a bowl of ice nearby—not for the bourbon, but to keep the white wine minis chilled. I’ve learned that people are much more likely to try something new if the "cost of entry" is just a small glass they can finish in ten minutes.
I’m not a doctor or a health professional, so I can’t tell you that drinking less volume is going to change your life, but I can tell you my head feels a lot clearer on Wednesday mornings. If you’re making big changes to your habits, you should talk to your own doctor. But for me, the 187ml format is just common sense. It’s the same reason I learned how to host a casual bourbon tasting using small pours—it’s about the conversation and the discovery, not about how much juice you can put away before the sun goes down.
The next time you find yourself looking at four half-empty bottles on your counter, wondering if they’ll survive until Friday, consider the mini. It might cost a steakhouse appetizer more per ounce, but the lack of waste makes up for it by the time you've finished the box. If you want to start your own discovery flight, I’d suggest grabbing the In Good Taste Tasting Kit and seeing which of your neighbors actually finishes their glass. That’s the only score that really matters anyway.