Top Wine Games to Try

Wine can be a great ice-breaker but sometimes, you need something a little bit extra. Certain occasions just call for wine-related games. Think along the lines of a Christmas gathering. A wine-tasting party, where everybody is just a little uptight. Housewarming parties, birthdays, or even just gathering with family and friends. In this article, we’re going to explore some of the best wine games that can inject a little extra fun into your evening.

What are Wine Games?

When we’re talking about wine games, we aren’t just talking exclusively about drinking games. Drinking games usually conjure up an image of a messy party involving beer and strong spirits, often with them all being mixed together - and wine doesn’t necessarily fit into that image.

However, there are a lot of things you can do with wine, and historically speaking, wine may have more of a precedent for being used in games than other types of alcohol. 

The Romans played a game called “passatella”, which was essentially based on teasing and insulting each other, and often ended with knives being drawn. In Ancient Greece, they played a game called “kottabos”, where contestants would flick the ends of their wine from their shallow drinking cups, towards a small disc which was balanced on top of a pole. The aim of the game is to knock the disc, thus causing a loud clatter when it falls onto a second, wider disc that is situated halfway down the pole. The winner was rewarded with cakes, kisses, and occasionally, a new servant. 

Kottabos probably won’t make a revival any time soon, thanks to the invention of carpets and a lack of servants to clean them, but there are a heap of other ways that you can incorporate wine into an evening. Many of these games focus on the wine itself, instead of the act of drinking heavily.

Wine Tasting Games

Whether it’s a family Christmas or a gathering with other wine lovers, tasting is an activity you can do at any gathering that has a lot of wine. However, just sitting around a table sipping and discussing can get a bit boring, leading many people to ask “How can I make my wine tasting more fun?”

One of the best ways is to make it a blind tasting. Judging purely by taste is a challenge and a game in itself. It also makes the taste of the wine an important part of the evening, rather than the quantity. You can buy some pre-packaged games that lay out blind tasting for you, but it’s incredibly easy to organise it yourself.

How do you make a wine tasting game?

• Start by getting a few bottles of wine from different varietals and countries. Whether you stick to red or white is up to you. 

• Find some sort of blindfold, a scarf or a hat will suffice. 

• With your family or friends, take turns tasting the wine while blindfolded. Try to guess the varietal and country the wine was made in. For a more advanced version, you can try to guess the specific region or appellation. 

• Whoever gives the most accurate guess wins. There doesn’t necessarily have to be a winner in a blind wine-tasting, it’s just a fun activity for all of the family - or at least the adult members.

Guess the Price Wine Tasting Games

This is another twist on a blind tasting that will test any wine connoisseurs in your group. What you reward them with is up to you. If you’re playing at Christmas time, perhaps they can be rewarded with an early present. Here is how you can set up a “Guess the Price” wine game:

• Gather a selection of wines from various price points. If you’re looking for good quality wines that are relatively low in price to throw the experts off, we have a couple of recommendations. Portuguese blends from Dao or Douro that contain Touriga Nacional are a great choice, as are Primitivos from Puglia, like this one. 

• Pour each wine into a decanter, so there is no way to guess the price from the label. 

• Have each contestant taste the wine, and guess the price. 

• You can reveal the price after each round of tasting, or after all of the wines have been tasted. Whoever gets the most correct guesses wins!

Wine Board Games

Aside from wine games that you can organise yourself, there is a whole world of wine-related board games. These are perfect for Christmas time - because nothing screams Christmas like getting drunk and competitive over a board game. These are our top three wine board games, perfect for a cosy evening with your family or friends.

Our first pick is Sommify, which meshes the spirit of Cluedo (also known as Clue) with a wine tasting. Contestants must use the skill of deductive reasoning to identify mystery wines while rolling dice and advancing their pawns towards “The Grape Divide”, where they must ultimately decide whether the wine is from the New or Old World. It’s very easy to play, and fun for everybody, even if they aren’t a wine expert. 

Our next choice will also seem familiar because it’s simply a wine spin on a Christmas classic. Wine-Opoly is essentially Monopoly with wine. The “Go” square becomes “Cheers”, “Jail” becomes “Wine Cellar”, and the most expensive property on the board is “Champagne”. While drinking wine is not a part of the game itself, it is presumed that you’ll be sipping while playing. 

Our third option is something slightly different. Viticulture is a complex, well-structured wine - I mean, wine board game - set in antiquated Tuscany. There are a lot of moving parts in this game, seasons change, workers are hired and vineyards are expanded. A game can last around 45-90 minutes, and up to 6 players can join in. The goal is to build the best winery in Tuscany. Due to its complexity, it might be difficult to kickstart a game of Viticulture after a Christmas dinner, but it would be great for a wine game night with some friends. It would also make a fantastic gift for a board game fan.

Wine Tasting Party Bingo Game

In the world of wine games, there are several variations of wine bingo that you can purchase. One is produced by The Big Dot of Happiness but doesn’t incorporate any wine drinking into the game. Another option is Wine-O, which provides a beautiful rustic-looking bingo set. However, it isn’t too difficult to set up your own bingo game at home. This is great for parties, where everybody has brought their own booze, and there are a lot of bottles to choose from. 

How does wine bingo work?

• First, you need a bingo card for every player. This is just a grid, usually 5x5 with the names of all of the different wines that you have gathered. If you don’t have 25 wines, you can create a charcuterie board too, and write the names of the foods in the remaining grid squares. It will be difficult to blind-taste these, but they can just be an easier point. 

• In place of a bingo caller, one person will fill everybody’s glasses with a mystery wine.

• Contestants then taste the wine, and place a marker on the bingo card, over the name of the wine that they believe they have just tasted. 

• When a contestant completes a row of markers, they shout “Bingo!”, and the bingo caller verifies whether they guessed the wines correctly. If they are incorrect, the game continues without them. If they are correct, they win a prize. Perhaps a bottle of wine.

Wine Card Games

Apart from games that require an actual board, or some preparation beforehand, there are also some card-based wine games that require little more than just pulling out a deck of cards and playing. There is The Wine Game, which is a “go-fish” style card game, with beautiful illustrations. 

However, we believe you can’t go wrong with a classic. Kings is played all over the world and is also known as king’s cup, ring of fire, circle of death, or donut. It’s a favourite among students and is fundamentally a drinking game, rather than a wine-tasting game, but there’s no reason why you can’t play kings at a relaxed wine-sipping evening too. 

This is how you play kings: 

• Spread a standard deck of cards out, face down, so that everybody who is playing can reach them. 
• One by one, players pick a card and read it aloud. Each card has a different rule associated with it, often initiating some kind of drinking. That’s all there is to it. 

These are the usual rules associated with each card. Of course, you can change them as you see fit - perhaps you can even add some wine-related rules. 

Ace: Waterfall. All players start drinking at the same time, and can only stop once the player to their left stops. This can often end up with people finishing their glasses, so if you want a more relaxed evening, you can replace this rule with something more civilised. 

Two: You. The player who picks the card points at somebody else in the group, who has to drink. 

Three: Me. The player who picks the card must take a sip.  

Four: Floor. All players have to touch the floor. Whoever touches it last has to take a sip.  

Five: Guys. All players that identify as a “guy” have to drink.  

Six: Chicks. All players that identify as a “chick” have to drink. 

Seven: Heaven. All players have to reach their hands towards the sky. Whoever does it last has to take a sip. 

Eight: Mate. The player who picks the card has to choose a “mate”. The “mate” now has to drink whenever the card picker drinks. 

Nine: Rhyme. The player who picks the card has to say a word. The player to their left has to come up with a rhyming word. It continues clockwise around the group until somebody can't think of a rhyme, and that person has to drink. 

Ten: Categories. Similarly to “rhyme”, the player who picks the card comes up with a category. For example - red wines from Italy. Whichever player fails to think of an Italian red wine on their turn, has to drink. 

Jack: Never have I ever. The player who picks the card says something along the lines of, “Never have I ever broken a bone”. Anybody in the group that has broken a bone, takes a drink. Many secrets have been revealed this way.

Queen: Question master. The player who picks the card becomes the question master. Whoever answers their questions has to drink. 

King: Make a rule. The player who picks the card comes up with a rule that must be obeyed for the rest of the game. For example - no holding your wine glass in your right hand. Whoever breaks the rule has to drink.

Alternatively, in king’s cup, a large cup is placed in the centre of the room. Whenever a king is drawn from the deck, all players must deposit some of their drink into the cup. Whoever draws the final king has to drink the cup. 

This is one example of why playing king’s cup at a wine evening might be preferable to a party. Rather than a disgusting mixture of beer and spirits, the cup will be a new, experimental wine blend! 

Seriously though, many of these rules are designed to get people very drunk, so there is no harm in changing some of them to suit the crowd, as you see fit.

Wine Games Q&A

• Can you play drinking games with wine?

  Yes, you can play several wine-drinking games. Kings, arguably the most popular drinking game in the world, can be played with wine. You can also play games like wine bingo, guess the price, and wine tasting games.

• What does it mean to slap a wine bag?

  Slapping a wine bag refers to a wine-drinking game called “Slap the Bag”, and frankly, it’s lucky to be called a game. It’s played with the bag of wine from boxed wine. You or somebody else holds the bag of wine above your head as you drink from the spigot. When you’re done, you slap the bag.

• How do you spice up a wine night?

  It depends on what you mean by “spice up”, but a boring wine night can easily be improved by introducing some wine games. If you have a crowd of wine enjoyers, you could start things off with a game based around wine tasting, before moving on to something more raucous.

• What’s a fun drinking game for two?

  When it’s just the two of you, the best possible wine games are usually either competitive or prompt deep conversations. “Never Have I Ever” can be easily played with two people, and can reveal some things that you never knew about the person, especially if there is wine involved. “Categories” is also a good option, for getting competitive, and showing off your wine or geography knowledge.

As you can see, wine isn’t the be-all and end-all of your evening. It can be used in a variety of ways: as a gastronomic bingo experience, a projectile, a prize, or simply a beverage to enjoy while playing Monopoly. Whatever you decide, we hope this article has given you some inspiration for your next cosy gathering.