Time To Play Some Wine Games

For those of us who enjoy a little fun and folly, here are several intriguing games all centered around the topic of wine.

INFO: Product links go to stores where games are available for sale.

Trivia

Wine Wars: Wine Wars covers the gamut, with categories including, “Vine to Vino” (viticulture and vinification), the “Wine Cellar” (buying, storing and tasting), and Cork Culture (wineries, business and art). Questions like “Which famous French wine is typically made from a blend of Sémillion, Sauvignon and Muscadelle grapes?” are an example of the level of difficulty.

Who’s it For? Wine trivia games have questions of a moderate to high degree of difficulty, but should be doable if you’re keeping up with your Wine Folly blogs. They often level the playing field by including a luck/strategy component or team play if you just happen to be gaming with a Master Sommelier in your midst.

 

Classic Games

It seems like every classic game has a wine-themed version. The only one we couldn’t find was wine Twister. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

Wine-O Of course someone has created a Bingo for oenophiles, and it’s aptly named. Wine-O features grape varietals in place of numbers and wine corks to mark your wooden scorecard. As an alternative, Wine-Opoloy plays on the most classic of all board games, Monopoly, swapping properties and railroads for grapes and wine regions.

Who’s it For? You and your friends. And if you’re playing wine Bingo, don’t forget your grandma too.

 

Murder Mystery

A Taste for Wine and Murder A wine-based murder mystery game where the premise is described as “A body was discovered at a California vineyard, and you must solve the murder before the killer strikes again.” Tantalizing. Calling itself “a dinner party in a box,” the kit includes character booklets and crime scene clues, along with party invitations and a party planning booklet with things like menu and costume suggestions.

Who’s it For? For those of us who like to go all-out for dinner parties. On the other hand, if you want to solve a wine-themed murder without the dinner party fuss, grab Cabernet and Foul Play instead. In this game, “a mystery is fermenting” when a rival winemaker goes missing. The only hope to find him resides with clues found in the accompanying 1000-piece puzzle.

 

Puzzles

Puzzles might just be one of the best wine-sipping activities ever. We found so many puzzles of wine-related scenes that we may never have to look at a pile of corks ever again!

3D Wine Puzzles If working in two dimensions (relatively speaking) bores you, grab a 3D version. You can find wooden puzzles in the shape of a wine bottle or glass that double as decorative pieces once you’ve completed the challenge.

Who’s it For? You’re either a puzzle person, or you’re not. With a wide range of difficulty levels, it’s easy to find one that fits your needs. As a bonus, if you happen to spill your glass all over the table, with the right 2D scene, it might just blend in.

 

Brain Teasers

These contraptions wrap securely around a real bottle of wine (that you supply), preventing its access unless you break a code. They usually require creativity, thought, patience and finesse to remove.

Vino Vault Wine Cryptex and Don’t Break The Bottle Wine Caddy Vino Vault Wine Cryptex involves letter combinations that you set, not unlike a suitcase lock. If you’re ready to get a bit wilder, wrap your bottle in a more complex metal (or wooden) multi-step, mind bending apparatus, like Don’t Break the Bottle, instead.

Who’s it For? If you like delayed gratification, want to up the stakes on your quest for puzzle domination, or simply make your friends work a little harder for their hostess gift, you’ll love bottle vaults. Personally, the phrase “don’t break the bottle” is just the kind of foreshadowing that I like to avoid.

 

Grand Cru Board Game Geek

Strategy Board Games

If you are good at strategy-based games, you’re already smarter than us. These games take you right into vineyards and wineries, tasking you to buy grapes, invest in regions, pray for good weather, price distributions, trade wines and even pay off loans. We found an awesome forum fueled by obsessed gamers that’s worth perusing for advice on strategy-based wine games.

Grand Cru Grand Cru challenges you to manage the economic process of making wine. You must first buy the right grapes for the best wines for your own vineyard. Next you are tasked with navigating all aspects from harvest to vinification to the selling of the final product to pay off your business loans, all the while competing with your opponents who must do the same. The player who is left with the most money after their wine is sold and loans paid off is the winner.

Who’s it For? The hardcore gamer, or “strategery” lover. If you played Risk day and night as a kid, and are ready to swap wine for your go-to childhood beverage, you’ll love Grand Cru and other such strategy games.

 

Blind Tasting Party Games

A bounty of blind tasting games exist. Unfortunately most are filled with extraneous items like invites, bottle cover bags and cheesy CD music. The most interesting game we found in our research also happened to be the least serious.

Read Between the Wines! Read Between the Wines! is not necessarily blind tasting, but will help you connect your senses of smell and taste to descriptive vocabulary, albeit in comical ways. The idea is to creatively describe the various wines you’re sampling according to one of 54 themes such as, “Compare This Wine to a Celebrity [or friend],” To which you might respond, “This rose is pink, fruity, high in alcohol, pleasantly dry and faintly bitter, like Madeline after a day of too much fun in the sun.”

Who’s it For? Anyone who wants to challenge their senses and explore new varietals or regions would benefit from (blind) tasting games. For a do it yourself version, grab some brown lunch bags and a Wine Folly tasting mat kit, complete with guided tasting placemats and a handy wine aroma wheel.

The 9 Best Tabletop Games to Play in a Bar | VinePair

Tabletop games can make or break a bar. Not all bar games are created equal, however. Here are the nine best tabletop bar games, ranked.

Πηγή: The 9 Best Tabletop Games to Play in a Bar | VinePair

6 Deadly Drinking Games

by Emily Bell

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A while back we told you about some bizarre, and possibly deadly, drinking games from ancient times. You know, games where you have to try to knock a target off its base with the dregs of your drink while also lying down, probably in a toga. (Then there’s also that fun southern Italian game where a “boss” and his second in command elect people to drink while the whole crew insults each other. Fun times.)

Well, the world of drinking games is rich and generous, so we’ve got six more games for you to learn— though, yeah, we never actually play almost all of them.

Bear Paw

Quite possibly the most insane drinking game in the world. Totally frills-free, totally brutal. The rules are pretty simple: sit around with a bunch of your bravest and/or most reckless friends with a cup of beer and a cup of vodka, plus extra supplies (you’ll be drinking a lot.) The cup of beer is passed around the circle and everyone takes a sip, so if you’re squeamish about sharing or don’t hate your liver, this game isn’t for you. After each sip of beer, the cup is refilled — with vodka. After a while, the cup should become mostly vodka, plus a bit of backwash. At that point, you do the same damn thing backwards: everyone takes a sip of vodka, topping the cup off with beer. It goes around in a circle like this until the cup is once more filled with beer, everyone passes out, or reason sets in.

Pon/Toma

The Pon/Toma dreidel, photo courtesy of FoodandOtherThings.com

Pretty sure this game was invented when some resourceful, and possibly bored, people happened upon a children’s toy and decided to do the right thing: use it for drinking. The game originated in Mexico and centers around a dreidel with six sides. Each side bears a different command: “pon uno” (give one), “pon dos” (give two), “pon todo” (give all), “toma uno” (take one), “toma dos” (take two), “toma todo” (take all). In the kids’ version, you spin the dreidel and surrender either one, two, or all of whatever adorable tokens you’re using to play. (You run out, you lose.) In the adult version, you spin the dreidel and either fill up or drink the contents of a cup, typically filled with beer. (You pass out, you lose.)

Sumbel

Less a drinking “game” than a lot of wordy, drunken toasting. So yeah, you’ve probably inadvertently played this game at pretty much every wedding you’ve gone to. An ancient Nordic ritual, the “sumbel” was actually an occasion during which attendees would take turns drinking from a horn (because that’s how Vikings roll) and giving elaborate, often poetic or musical toasts. Since the horn in question would typically be filled with mead (ancient honey wine), we’re guessing the toasting got a lot less eloquent as the night went on.

Sapo

Sapo Frog board, photo courtesy of TravelTalesofaLife.com

Sapo is a drinking game the way Cornhole is a drinking game. You don’t have to drink when you miss, but you probably will. Another difference: Sapo has roots in ancient Incan folklore. Pretty sure Cornhole doesn’t. Though like Cornhole, Sapo involves a specific board, almost like a wooden throne, with a metal frog or toad at its center, its mouth open in perpetual “ribbet.” There are also holes around the metal frog. The object of the game is to toss coins into the frog’s mouth. In the drinking game version, if and when you miss (it’s ridiculously hard to feed this frog), you take a drink.

Buffalo

Not as ancient as some of the other games, since it (probably) originated in the American Wild West. Though unlike the other games here, this one lasts a lifetime. The rules of Buffalo are incredibly simple: once you become a member of the Buffalo club, you must always drink with your non-dominant hand. If another Buffalo member catches you doing otherwise, you have to chug the rest of your drink. (We’re guessing ambidextrous people are automatically disqualified from membership.) The origin story of Buffalo involves cowboy gunslingers, who theoretically wanted to keep their shootin’ hands free and would drink and lasso things with the opposite hand.

Tiger Has Come!

Another Russian drinking game, and another Russian drinking game that requires seriously high tolerance. The name of the game is actually what’s announced at each round, but we’ll get to that. First you get a bunch of friends (and a bunch of designated drivers) and they bring cash and you provide vodka. One person is elected leader, and that lucky bastard only has to drink every other round since one thing we all require in a leader is moderate sobriety. Everybody “buys in” each round, kind of like poker, tossing some money into a collective pot. As everybody takes a shot of vodka, the leader shouts “tiger has come!” and everyone (reasonably) ducks under the table. The challenge — and how the winner and losers are determined—is getting back up from under the table as the game goes on.

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