Winerd Night

Um. We might have a reputation.  Knowing our love of board games and wine, our brother & sister sent us Winerd for Christmas.  The description on the box reads, “This exciting board game tests your wine knowledge with every sip. Begin by tasting three different wines -- use the tasting sheet to note their names, where they are produced, and their aromas, colors, and flavors.”

Adam describes it as the grown up drinking game.   Here is the basic premise. You have 3 different bottles of red or white wines. Each player tastes the 3 wines and taking notes about the wine's color, smell, and taste as well as noting the wine's name, vintage, and region of origins.

Each turn, you draw a trivia card which asks a question about wine (read by one of your opponents). If you answer correctly, you advance on the board. Along the board are spaced four Blind Taste Test squares. Whenever you land on one of these, another player secretly pours a glass of any one of the 3 wines. You then taste test what was poured for you now must name the selected wine, its vintage, and the region or country it came from. For each correct answer they move forward 1 space.  To win the game, you must complete a final tasting.  To do this, you must name the wine selected and poured for you. If you are correct, you win the game.

We have been so blessed to have made some great friends in Bristol.  We met Kate & Simon through Adam’s MBA courses.  He ran into Kate at an international student’s mixer and they quickly decided that we could all be friends.  Fast forward 18 months or so and both Adam & Kate have finished their respective dissertations (Kate is working on her MSc in Marketing & did some fascinating research on marketing to new mom’s through social media!) and now theye have time to play with the rest of us.

So a proper game night was in order (as a side note, if you throw the word ‘proper’ into any sentence, it makes it more British – ie. if someone wants some time to ponder an idea, they request a few moments to ‘have a proper think.’  It cracks me up).  We quickly realized how little any of us actually know about wine.  

Simon went out in the lead, the rest of us tasted and guessed as much as we could.  Well, maybe not as much as we could – there were probably only 3 glasses of wine consumed between the 4 of us all evening.  We’ll have to try harder next time we play!

What a game night – can’t wait for next time!