Wine Tasting Games for a Dinner Party with Friends
Seven wine tasting games for a dinner party with friends: blind tastings, price guessing, aromas and food pairing. A winner, not a hangover. Pick one.
The best wine tasting games test your nose, not your stamina: a scored blind tasting, guessing which wine is the most expensive, spotting the odd one out among three glasses, identifying aromas with your eyes closed, or matching wines to food. With three or four wines and a sheet of paper, there's a game for the whole dinner.
Before you start: here, whoever loses doesn't drink
A quick word, because searching for "wine games" brings up plenty of drinking games. These aren't. In every one you taste a little, write a lot and win by being right, not by finishing your glass. Whoever gets it wrong writes down their mistake and takes the teasing. That's punishment enough.
What you need for nearly all of them: glasses, water, tin foil or bags to cover bottles, pens and some nibbles for afterwards.
1. The scored blind tasting
The mother of all wine games. Cover three or four bottles, number them and hand out a sheet with questions for each wine: young or oak-aged? Which grape? Which country? What does the bottle cost?
Give more points for the hard ones (the grape) than the easy ones (the country), and don't deduct points for wrong answers: that way everyone takes a punt instead of leaving it blank. Unwrap at the end, add up the points and crown a winner.
Tip: nobody speaks until they've written their answer down. As soon as someone says "this is a Rioja", half the table writes it down.
2. The price is right
Four covered wines at very different prices: say, one cheap, one mid-range, one expensive and one very expensive. The game is to put them in order from cheapest to dearest.
It's the game that sparks the most debate, because nobody is quite as good at spotting an expensive wine as they think. Score a point for each wine in exactly the right place, plus a bonus point for getting the whole order right.
3. Odd one out
Three glasses each: two of the same wine and one of a similar wine (two young reds from the same grape, for example). Find the odd one out.
Sounds easy. It isn't. It's the perfect game for finding out who really has a good nose, and you can play several rounds by changing the pair of wines.
4. The aroma game
No wine needed for this one. Fill opaque cups or jars with things that turn up in tasting notes: cinnamon, cloves, lemon zest, strawberry, black pepper, coffee, vanilla, freshly cut grass, leather if you have an old wallet. Cover them with a thin cloth or paper with holes in it.
Everyone sniffs and writes down what they think it is. Most correct answers wins. And afterwards, when you taste, suddenly everyone finds cinnamon in the red. It works.
5. Blind food pairing
Three wines and three small plates: something salty (ham or a mature cheese), something rich (anything fried) and something sweet (dark chocolate, say). Each player has to match each wine with the dish it works best with.
There's no single right answer, so you vote: everyone defends their choice and the table decides who argued it best. It's the most fun for people who know nothing about wine, because the best talker wins.
6. Around the world
Put a big map on the table and three or four covered wines from different countries. Each player places a counter (a coin, a cork) on the country they think each wine comes from.
Score a point for the right country and, if you want to make it harder, an extra one for getting close to the region. It's harder than it looks: a red from a warm climate could come from almost anywhere.
7. The Winegang scoresheet
If you fancy something more serious, this is the full game. At Winegang each wine is scored out of 40, stage by stage:
| Stage | What you guess | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Sight | Intensity and colour | 3 |
| Smell | Intensity and primary, secondary and tertiary aromas | 8 |
| Taste | Sweetness, acidity, tannin, body and finish | 5 |
| Final | Grape, region, price and country | 24 |
Wrong answers don't lose points, so it pays to take a risk. Every month a box arrives with four samples of different wines, covered and marked with a letter, and everyone answers on their phone. Scoring is automatic, so nobody has to referee.
How to pick the game for your group
| If your group… | Play… |
|---|---|
| Knows nothing about wine | The aroma game or blind food pairing |
| Has a know-it-all | Odd one out: it puts everyone in their place |
| Argues about everything | The price is right |
| Is very competitive | The scored blind tasting |
| Wants to do it every month | The Winegang scoresheet, as a gang |
The rematch is the best part
What turns a dinner into a tradition isn't that night's winner; it's the loser demanding a rematch. If someone is already suggesting a date for the next one while you clear the table, the game has worked. From there, all that's left is deciding who brings the wine and who keeps score. And that can take care of itself too.
FAQ
How many wines do you need for a tasting game?
Three or four wines are enough for a game. For price guessing or a scored blind tasting, four is ideal: enough to produce a winner, not so many that noses get tired.
Can you play wine games if someone doesn't drink?
Yes. The aroma game needs no tasting at all, and at any tasting you can smell and spit. Non-drinkers also make excellent referees or quizmasters.
What prize should the winner of a wine game get?
Something symbolic they can brag about: choosing the wine for the next dinner, an engraved glass or the right to skip the washing-up. What matters is holding the title until the rematch.