Wine Balderdash

Wine Balderdash is a variant of the game Balderdash where instead of words and their definitions, the game is played with wines and their labeled descriptions. I've only played it once, but it was a great amount of fun. It's a game that combines creativity and comical moments, especially as the rounds progress and wine is drunk.

Materials: wines, pens, sticky notes & tape, and scraps of paper. Preferably, each player brings their own wine, selecting for wine with an ornate/outrageous/comical description.

Setup: each player writes down the description of the bottle on a piece of paper. The bottle's description should then be covered up with tape and/or sticky-notes.

How to play: Wine Balderdash is played in rounds. During each round, one player serves as the leader. To start the round, the leader serves the wine that they brought to each of the players. Players then taste served wine. Next, players privately write down plausible sounding descriptions of the wine on a scrap of paper and place that scrap into a hat. The leader of the round also places the actual description into the hat. Then, the leader reads each description from the hat out loud, and each player guesses which description was the actual description. One point is awarded to each player who guesses the actual description. Points are also awarded to players whose descriptions are guessed by other players, one point for each guess.

That's it! That's the whole game. On a personal note: I co-invented this game with my spouse for an event held at my cooperative house, drawing inspriation from Jony Ive's voiceovers for Apple products.