How Much Wine to Serve for the Holidays

Hosting a holiday gathering at your place? Be sure you have enough wine for your guests. Unsure how much wine you need for an event? Don’t worry!

When planning all you need to know is how you plan on serving your wine, how many guests will be drinking, and how long your guests will be there. Think about:

How long will your guests be over? Assume each guest drinks about two glasses of wine every two hours.

How many guests will be drinking? Each standard 750-ml wine bottle is roughly four servings of wine (assuming a six ounce pour).  A magnum bottle (1.5 liters) has eight to twelve glasses of wine (assuming four to six ounce pours).

For a twelve-person dinner for Thanksgiving, with guests arriving around 5pm and dinner at 6pm, assuming all guests are over 21 and will be enjoying wine, plan on consuming six bottles. Over the course of five hours, twelve guests will drink two glasses of wine very two hours, a total of 30 glasses or eight bottles.

Are you pairing wines with individual courses? If you’re pairing wines with individual courses, you’ll need more bottles to ensure that everyone gets enough. The exact number of bottles you need depends on whether guests are drinking full glasses (four to six ounces) or tasting pours (two ounces).

If you’re serving tasting pours at your twelve-person dinner, you’ll want two bottles of each wine for every course you’re serving. To ensure you don’t run out wine over the course of five hours at a three-course meal, plan on eight bottles of wine. For full glasses, you’ll want three bottles of each wine for every course you’re serving; in this example eleven bottles of wine.