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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Sommelier: The Wine Facts Society Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget



Sommelier:  The Wine Facts Society Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


This is a game for adults of legal drinking age whose objective is to win some hand-cut cheese cubes and learn some wine facts along the way.

Items Needed to Organize Sommelier:

-Sommelier Test Prep Book – The Sommelier Prep Course: An Introduction to the Wines, Beers, and Spirits of the World by Michael Gibson

-Index cards

-rubber bands (at least 30)

-pens and notepads for scoring

-prize: small plates of hand cut cheddar cheese cubes or crackers and cheese
(There can be multiple winners, so have supplies ready.)

Creating the Game Materials:

You need to write out sommelier questions with the index cards.

Use The Sommelier Prep Course’s chapter review questions and key terms for each of it 29 chapters.  (There is an answer key at the end of the book.)

Make a deck of questions for each chapter with answers and place rubber bands around the card deck for each chapter. The answer key is at the end of the book.

You might want to code index cards for different chapters with c1, c2, c3 and son on.

It will take time to write out the questions and answers, but you will learn in the process. 

How to Play the Sommelier Society Game:

Objective: Wine a plate of hand cut cheese cubes to go with your wine at end of play

Number of Players: 2 to 6 per table

When does play start? 

Players can join and leave a game throughout the day, but have to have 20 right scores to obtain a cheese plate.

Who leads the game?

Each group has a table leader who asks questions and scores players on small notebook paper. 

The leader notes who has earned 20 points for a cheese plate.

Expansion 1 - Pronunciation

Practice saying all the key words until you can say them perfectly.

Expansion 2 - Spelling Test

Once you can say all the key words perfectly, hold a spelling test.  Perfect scorers get a cheese and apple slice plate.

Expansion 3 - Name the Country of Origin of the Grape Varietal

Once you can perfectly pronounce and spell the names of the different grape varieties, go to the Key Terms section of the Grape Varieties chapter in Sommelier Prep Course and name the country that is considered the country of origin for each grape.

Pronunciation and spelling provide clues about country of origin, which is why I listed this game expansion after those two tasks.

Expansion 4 - Fish or Steak Game for Grape Color Memorization

In this game, you need to make an index pack that will list the grape variety's color along with a clue for the wine color on the back of the index card.

For most of the cards, you can use fish for dishes that go with white wine and steak for dishes that go with red wine.  Some white grapes and red grapes can be made into sparkling wines or dessert wines, so you will have to add those categories.

Just making the game index cards helps memorize red and white grape varieties.  

Play this game before trying to memorize wine grape variety colors alone.  Making your own game helps information stick better.

You can play this Fish or Steak game alone or in a group.


Foreign Wine Geography Sommelier Game Expansion

Learning the geographic location of where a wine comes from provides a clue for memorization about the wine grape variety or varieties used to make it.

Some of the world’s most famous foreign wines are blends made from different wine grape varieties like those of the Haut-Médoc in the Bordeaux region of France.

Almost all prestigious foreign wines go by place names that reveal nothing about the grape variety or varieties that was (were) used to make it.

The two exceptions to this state of affairs are Alsace, France and Germany, which use the grape variety used to make the wine on their labels.

To play the foreign wine geography memorization game, use index cards to make your own flash cards.  The process of the making the cards will help you memorize the facts.

An example of a card follows:

Front of Card:

Grape variety:                                       Merlot
Country of Origin:                                 France
Most Famous Wine Location:            Western France

Back of Card:

Most famous foreign wine:

Saint Emilion wines from the Bordeaux region.

Do this for all the foreign wines listed in The Sommelier Prep Course: An Introduction to the Wines, Beers, and Spirits of the World by Michael Gibson.


Just use the directions North, South, East, and West to describe a location in a country to make the game easier.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books



Ruth Paget Selfie