Making a memorable impression with your event or party is no small task. But we think it's safe to say that not having enough for your guests to drink (our preference, wine!) and eat is a sure sign you won't be remembered for the right reasons. While the "rule" for ordering food is less scientific (so we'll spare you), we do have just the formula to guide your wine purchasing decisions. Here’s how it works:
While your guest are likely to drink less as your festivities progress, some people will become even more enthusiastic. The good news is: taperers always mitigate imbibers. So if you assume one drink per person per hour* you’ll have more than enough to go around.
Now, how does this translate to bottles of wine?
There are (conservatively) 5 glasses of wine in every bottle, 6 when it comes to a sparkling wine toast.
If you have 100 guests and a three hour event figure 300 total drinks.* Divide 300 by 5 to figure out how many bottles are needed (60). (To find out the total number of cases needed, divide that figure by 12 (bottles in a case) = 5cases of wine.)
Or:
Naturally you’ll want to select a few different wine options – e.g. a red, a white and a sparkling wine. You can decide how many bottles (or cases) of each of these styles of wine you’d like to have on hand based on the season in which you are celebrating and the venue set-up (e.g. hot summer day under a tent vs. cold and wintry indoors). For example, if you are celebrating the holidays around Boston, you’ll probably want more red than white, plus a splash of sparkling on hand to at least toast the occasion – or using the above example, something like 2.5 cases of red, 1.5 cases of white, and 1 case of sparkling wine.
Yep, that's it! Some parts of planning can be this simple - say, cheers!
(*) NOTE: This is the total number of drinks consumed, not just wine. If you are serving beer, wine and liquor, estimate the number of probable wine drinkers and go from there to gauge your actual wine purchase. Alternatively, you can adjust the number of hours people will be drinking wine based on the format or style of the event, e.g. cocktail hour (1.5 glasses) + dinner hour (1.5 glasses) + dancing (1 glass) = 4 wine drinks per person, or 400 total glasses = 80 bottles of wine = 7 cases (always round up).