How Many Bottles of Wine per Person at a Dinner

The question that comes first is how many bottles of wine per person. For a seated dinner of about three hours, allow about half a bottle per guest in total, spread across every wine you pour, plus one reserve bottle of each wine. The reserve covers a corked bottle or a second pour of the favourite; if neither happens, it goes back in the rack.

The arithmetic is the easy part. What makes a wine dinner work is the order of the bottles, the timing of the pours against the kitchen and a host who has settled all of it in advance, so that on the night the only job left is pouring.

The running order

Five rules cover most dinners.

Sparkling to start. It wakes the palate, suits the first bites and gives arriving guests something to hold.
Whites before reds. A delicate white seems thin after a tannic red.
Young before old. A mature wine's quieter, more developed flavours show best after simpler, younger ones.
Light before powerful. Each wine should seem bigger than the last, never smaller.
Dry before sweet. After a sweet wine, a dry one tastes thin and sour. With dessert, the wine should be at least as sweet as the dish, for the same reason.

As an example, a five-wine dinner might run like this: Champagne with the canapés, a crisp white with the fish, a lighter red such as Pinot Noir with the duck, the most structured red with the main course and a sweet wine with dessert.

The rules sometimes collide, usually over an old, fragile bottle. When they do, weight wins: a delicate wine should not follow a powerful one, whatever their ages. So the best bottle is not always the last. A great old Burgundy poured after a young Syrah, three hours in, is wasted. Poured earlier, before the powerful wines and while the table is still paying attention, it can be the high point of the evening.

At a Cantonese banquet the kitchen sets the order and the steamed fish often arrives after the roast meats, so the rules bend further; pairing wine with Cantonese food shows how to handle it.

How many bottles of wine per person you need

Start from the size of the pour.

Figure 1 What one 750 ml bottle gives at four common pour sizes.

A 750 ml bottle gives five glasses of 150 ml, six of 125 ml, ten tasting pours of 75 ml or fifteen pours of 50 ml. A magnum doubles every figure. The small pours have their place: 50 ml is the natural measure for a sweet wine or a Port at the end of the meal.

At a dinner for ten with five wines, a 75 ml pour of each wine uses exactly one bottle per wine: five bottles for the table, which is half a bottle per guest. With a reserve of each, you would have ten bottles in the room. At twelve guests the same pour needs 900 ml per wine, so pour a little less, open a second bottle or serve a magnum, which gives twenty pours of 75 ml with some left in hand. Magnums suit a table like this for other reasons too: they chill and warm slowly and they make an occasion of the pour.

The half-bottle rule assumes food throughout and about three hours at the table. It is a plan for pouring, not a target for drinking. Some guests will take less or nothing at all, so put a good alcohol-free option on the table as well. Nobody should feel obliged to keep up.

Allow about half a bottle per guest over three hours, plus a reserve bottle of every wine.

Glasses, water and the printed list

Glasses. The ideal is one glass per wine per guest, left in place so people can go back and compare. Five wines for ten guests is fifty glasses, so hire them if you need to. The fallback is two or three glasses each, rinsed with a splash of the next wine rather than water. One good all-purpose shape is enough, as choosing wine glasses without the hype explains.
Water. A water glass at every place, filled before anyone sits down and kept filled all evening, with still and sparkling on the table. Over three hours, water is what keeps the evening pleasant.
The list. A printed card with the wines in the order they will be poured, one line each. It lets guests pace themselves, stops the same question being asked all evening and gives everyone something to take home.

Temperatures, decanting and the corked bottle

Work backwards from the moment each wine is poured and write the times down.

Temperature. Sparkling and whites cold, reds cooler than most rooms. In a warm city that means reds spend 15 to 20 minutes in the fridge before opening and whites come out of the fridge 10 to 15 minutes before serving. An ice bucket filled with water and ice rescues anything that has drifted. Serving temperatures are worth getting right before anything else.
Decanting. Young, tannic reds can go into a decanter one to two hours ahead as a rough guide, tasting as you go. Old bottles need to stand upright for a day or longer so the sediment settles, then a careful pour just before serving, since air can finish a fragile wine. How long to decant depends on the bottle.
The corked bottle. Open and taste every bottle before it reaches the table: the young ones before guests arrive, the fragile old ones just before their course. A corked bottle found in the kitchen is a minor inconvenience. Found at the table, it stalls the evening. The reserve bottle exists for this moment.

Timing the kitchen and the pours

Give the kitchen the running order with the wines written on it. Pour each wine just before its course lands, so the glass is waiting when the plate arrives. A wine that turns up after the food has gone has lost its reason for being there.

Decide who pours. One person moving round the table in the same direction each time keeps the pours even and knows exactly what is left. Pour modestly and top up instead of filling glasses. A full glass at the change of course means a wasted wine or a guest who feels obliged to finish it.

Leave a few minutes between courses for people to talk about what they have just tasted. That conversation is half the point of a wine dinner.

The end of the evening

Close with something to eat and a last pour that everyone knows is the last, then bring out water, tea or coffee. Book cars in advance for anyone who needs one and make sure nobody drives.

Everything above fits on one sheet of paper. For each wine, write down its course, its serving temperature, its decanting time, its pour size and the number of bottles, reserve included. With that sheet written, the host gets to sit down. If you would rather be a guest at your own dinner, we run fine dining and vintages dinners with partner venues.

The arithmetic of a wine dinner.