Planning for a party? Here’s a simple trick to help make sure you have enough wine.

Step One: Start with 2 drinks per guest

You can assume most guests will want a drink right when they arrive, whether it’s a toast with some Sparkling, or a glass of White to sip as they begin mingling. Typically, that first glass is sipped pretty quickly, and a second should be expected.

Step Two: Add 1 drink per hour

Not every guest will move at this pace, but it’s helpful for your own estimates to assume they’ll have another glass roughly every hour, especially if there's dinner involved.

Step Three: Plan your bottles

Every 750ml bottle of wine contains 5 glasses of wine, so all you have to do is divide the number of drinks you estimate your guests will want to sip by 5.

For example… if you invite 20 guests to your party, and the party lasts roughly four hours… that’s 2 drinks, plus 3 more drinks, so 5 drinks per person.

20 * 5 = 100 drinks in total

If you divide 100 by 5 again, you’re back at 20. You need 20 bottles of wine, or 1 bottle per guest, to accommodate everyone.

Now, you’ll never have to wonder if you have enough wine. Focus on enjoying the evening with friends, instead!

[[metafields-iwt]]

Note: this assumes you will only be serving wine at your party (we love that!) but it’s not always the case that everyone wants to sip wine all night—we don’t understand it, but we’ll accept it. The number you calculated still applies, but if you want to serve 50% wine, 25% beer and 25% spirits, for example, just adjust your math.

For a 20-person, 4 hour party, you’d only need 10 bottles of wine, and enough beer and spirits to accommodate 50 more drinks for your guests.