Wine tastings typically stick to a format that involves stations, swirling, and sipping, but a recent event in Toronto broke free of any staid formulas. Underscoring its company name, Open Wine hosted an event at 2nd Floor on April 3 that had a "Be Open" theme, and guests were encouraged to open themselves up to more than just new types of vino.
Plenty of the host company's product was on hand, but tasting the wine was just a jumping-off point for a night that included ping-pong tournaments, liquid-nitrogen doughnuts, temporary tattoos, and lots of tweeting. Here's a look at how the night unfolded once guests placed R.F.I.D.-enabled wine glasses down on the so-called "Bird Box," which was created for the event and pre-programmed with sassy, flirtatious tweets.
Narrative PR planned, designed, and executed the forward-thinking function, while partner firm Bensimon Byrne developed the new technology.
![To activate the technology, guests placed their wine glasses—which had R.F.I.D. tags on the bottoms—and their personalized wristbands on the box. The box was pre-programmed with action tweets, which encouraged guests to participate in various activations at the event. The tweets from @Open_Wines included: 'Hey @[user], Damn, you look great. Find our photog @textstyles + pose for a photo so we can remember this FOREVER. #BeOPENparty.'](https://img.bizbash.com/files/base/bizbash/bzb/image/2013/04/4_52.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&q=70&w=400)
