How much wine?

[WashAsDelicates]

I'm hosting a dinner for 7 people aged between 16 and 60. One of the adults will contentedly make one glass last the whole evening. At the other extreme is the one who will drink every drink you give them. Both are generous hosts.

How many bottles of wine should I buy?

Yy 3 glasses per bottle

I would also buy a case - half red half white

When calculating for a function the 'norm' is to allow half a bottle of wine per person with food. You should also allow extra or other for pre and post dinner drinks (fizz, gin, sherry, etc).

Are they your friends? Ask them what they like to
drink. All whites aren’t the same just as all reds aren’t the same. If you only offered me Chardonny all night, I’d have wished I’d bought my own.

@UnashameLabelHo I agree about being a guest at an under-catered party, or one where it's fairly catered but one or two big drinkers (or eaters!) decimate supplies quicker than expected and everyone ends up awkwardly 'no you have the last of that one, I insist' while quietly dying inside

See, I'm oblivious to this. It's a far greater anxiety to me that I might run out of food - whether as host or as a guest.

I suppose the idea of running out of food is to me what the idea of running out of booze is to others.

And I really don't like having wine left over. There are still 2 bottles on the kitchen counter, unfinished from when we had friends over about a month ago. I might s as well just have poured them away the following day.

@WashAsDelicates wine will keep for ages you could use it in cooking or you can freeze wine for using in cooking.

Nothing worse than being under served wine at a dinner party. I would aim to have 1.5 bottles per person, and yes I would probably drink that easily over the course of an evening

Wine will keep for ages if it's not open - over cater for sure. Minimum 2 bottles per person and a mix of red, white, rosé.

Fizz would be a nice touch, 10ish bottles?

I have friends who cook like this but luckily they’re generous with the wine! Nightmare for hangovers tho 🤣

The thing is op, it’s not about you. It’s about your guests. You said your guests were generous hosts, which indicates you’ve partaken of and enjoyed that generosity. So if you invite them over to return that hospitality you need to accept that wine with dinner is the norm.

it’s not the idea of running out of food is to you what booze is to others, for others it’s both, we neither wish to run out of either. Or be stingy hosts, giving small glasses or small portions and nothing spare.

for me if you’re going to host, do it with a good grace and a generosity of spirit, if you don’t wish to or canr afford to then don’t host or host something different Ie lunch or just coffee and cake. But if you invite folks for a dinner party then do it properly. Not to your tastes but to your guests.

I hope you do throw out the old wine as if the bottles are open that would be vile now sitting out on a counter.

I would always go one and a half bottles of wine per person. I would be mortified to run out. If you have some full unopened ones leftover you can regift them.

And yes, the wine is off now. You need to bin it, it lasts a few days max uncorked. Please don’t serve it at your dinner party.

My first thought was 8 and you may not get through all of it!

I am now wondering how torturous it would be to feel like you’re running out of food! I don’t know what’s worse. This thread is a window into another world!

I now think I probably massively overcater…

So give the leftover bottles (opened and unopened) to your guests to take home.

It might not be Cork top

I usually just make sure the wine rack is full on shopping day (it takes 36 bottles) so usually buy 2-3 bottles to make up the gaps but if we have a gathering obviously we have more to replenish. But if I didn't have that I'd buy 3 bubbly, 3 red and 3 white. Most likely some left over but that's fine.

Screw top white wine after opening will last about 3 days and red wine 4 days, after opening, the first with the top back on in the fridge, the latter wirh rhe top back on and stored in a cool dark place. After that the oxidisation due to increased exposure to oxygen means it starts spoiling.

I would say 10

You can freeze unused wine form an open bottle in ice cubes to use for cooking (white for risotto etc and red for stews).

Me too. I massively over cater on food and drinks, I can’t fathom inviting people to my home for a meal and then working out how little I could get away with giving them. Three small glasses of wine each over the course of an evening, is really tight, even if you don’t drink, it’s no different to saying you can have three small soft drinks over the course of rhe evening.

i was brought up though where hosting was an act of love. So for us it’s big serving dishes, help yourself, extras available. If going quite formal I’d serve fish or the meat plated initially, but only the meat or fish, and the sides on the table in big serving dishes and extra portions of the fish or meat available on the table too, large glasses for rhe wine, bottles on the table again.

i do have a friend who under caters the food, she cooks just enough for a small recommended portion each, but she puts in small serving bowls so everyone takes a little portion and makes sure there is enough left. She chucks the booze down your neck though, I think she just can’t work it out as she’s the most generous person I know. It’s like she can’t get her head round how much 10 folks will eat.😂

however some will do it deliberately. Like here’s a small bit of fish , three little potatoes and some vegetables. Nah, go big or go home.

worse , come to think of it… to be a guest thinking you’re going to run out of drink! I have a friend who just gets four bottles of wine for dinner when we go over and it’s drinks and snacks before dinner for quite a while, then a looong dinner and I feel VERY anxious when we’re on the last bottle

i didn't realise normal people got this anxiety, I thought it was just us alcoholics!

I would go for 2 fizz, 2 red, 2 rosè, 4 white. Your menu doesn't lend itself to red, but I have one friend who only drinks red. Include the bottles you have left from last time, it won't have gone off (unless it's open in which case use it for cooking).
You may well end up with wine left over, but better that than run dry halfway through the main course, especially when your friends are such generous hosts. I also think 3-4 glasses per bottle is more likely than 4.5 unless you have quite small wine glasses. 175ml in ours would look a bit mean

But you don't know what people would pick. I would be thinking 18.

3 glasses per bottle.

I am not stingy. I am not trying to work out how little I can get away with. Just because wine is not important to me and I rarely drink it and rarely drink more than one or two glasses of I do, does not mean that I expect others to be like that. I pay minimal attention to wine, I genuinely do not know how much wine to prepare. Hence this thread.

We will buy more wine. The question is merely how much.