Uncorked

Following the ‘finally getting around to using gifts I’ve been given’ theme, this past weekend I finally broke out a gift I got for my birthday: a board game called Uncorked.

[According to its website this game also goes by the name Read Between the Wines, but the version I have is called Uncorked so we’re going with that for the purposes of this post.]

The makings of Uncorked! A scoresheet, tasting note sheets, theme cards. Not pictured: adorable little wine charms that we didn’t use because we were drinking out of stemless glasses. Next time!

You are joining Uncorked already in progress…

I invited some friends over to try it out and, of course, drink lots of wine. There were nine of us and we each contributed a bottle, so there was plenty to go around.

We really had our work cut out for us.

How It Works

The game is fairly simple. Each round the players sip a wine and then, based on their impression of the wine, respond to the theme. For example, one theme was to compare the wine to a celebrity. Then one person collects all the answers and the players take turns guessing who said what. It’s like Things in a Box, except with wine, so infinitely better.

Different theme cards.

You really don’t need to know anything about wine or board games to play – it’s really just a great party game.

How Did It Go?

In short, it was a really fun night. My friends are a funny bunch so it didn’t take long for the responses to hit all our respective funny bones. Wine was sampled, guesses were made, and everyone left my apartment happy. I especially like that it wasn’t a very competitive game. We kept score but never got around to crowning a winner – I think we were all more interested in enjoying the wine and just hanging out.

So many dead soldiers…

Final Observations

Uncorked is really two games in one. On the one hand there is this element of tasting and enjoying wine and learning about that, and then on the other hand there is this element of guessing who said what. Even more amusingly, the tracking sheets used for each round became these sort of logic puzzles where I would mark down who guessed what and who said what to make educated (well, less educated as the night went on…) guesses as the round progressed. As a fan of games like Clue I thought this was a great aspect of the game.

Interestingly, of nine bottles only three countries had multiple wines, which wasn’t planned. It would be interesting to play it with a list of suggested wines. You could have each player bring a different country, or the same country, the same or different varietals, all whites, all reds, all sparklings… There are so many ways to play this game.
So, anyone want to come over and play?