Get a bunch of friends to each bring a bottle. Maybe give a criteria, like a price range, so people don't feel obliged to impress with the price tag.
All bottles are delivered to the kitchen at the beginning of the night, where the host puts each in a numbered paper bag. Each attendee gets a score sheet.
Start serving, either by pouring or just putting a few bottles on the table at a time. It's a normal party, apart from each person giving each numbered wine a score, and conversation about the wine being an icebreaker.
At the end of the night total up the scores and reveal the bottles, generally to some hilarity.
It's fun to throw in a few wildcards. As the host, I threw in a couple of extra bottles: one well above the price range and another the cheapest I could find. (Found out after the event that an attendee also decanted a box into a bottle. All in the spirit!). I also poured all the left over bits from each bottle (not glasses!) into a bottle and served that up towards the end of the night.
The cheap wildcard came second. The dregs came middle of the pack and the expensive bottle came below the dregs. It was a fun night and the guessing game really got people talking about what they liked and disliked, but they couldn't be pompous about it, unless they wanted to risk a ribbing at the end of the night.
The nice thing about the party is that everyone is in on the joke and they are in it together. They know from the beginning that there are going to be surprises and much of the conversation is around this. The host can avoid an advantage by putting the bottles into blank bags then getting someone else to apply the numbers.
My family often does this, but more like you have to figure out which wine is which out of 14 across many varieties and provenance. My wife and I both got 2nd and 3rd place with only mixing up two. Though it was less so what is cheap what is expensive, it is an interesting game nonetheless. We blamed the many years we spent in Napa on being so good :P
I played a more "advanced" version of this. There was roulette like table. you could bet on drink name/type (type of wine/whisky/rakia/vodka/etc..), country of origin and what it's made from. Dealer was pouring under table from covered bottles.
Get a bunch of friends to each bring a bottle. Maybe give a criteria, like a price range, so people don't feel obliged to impress with the price tag.
All bottles are delivered to the kitchen at the beginning of the night, where the host puts each in a numbered paper bag. Each attendee gets a score sheet.
Start serving, either by pouring or just putting a few bottles on the table at a time. It's a normal party, apart from each person giving each numbered wine a score, and conversation about the wine being an icebreaker.
At the end of the night total up the scores and reveal the bottles, generally to some hilarity.
It's fun to throw in a few wildcards. As the host, I threw in a couple of extra bottles: one well above the price range and another the cheapest I could find. (Found out after the event that an attendee also decanted a box into a bottle. All in the spirit!). I also poured all the left over bits from each bottle (not glasses!) into a bottle and served that up towards the end of the night.
The cheap wildcard came second. The dregs came middle of the pack and the expensive bottle came below the dregs. It was a fun night and the guessing game really got people talking about what they liked and disliked, but they couldn't be pompous about it, unless they wanted to risk a ribbing at the end of the night.
It also works with beers or homebrew.