How Many Glasses in a Bottle of Wine? The Host's Math

Someone is hosting dinner on Saturday, and by Thursday the question has arrived: how many bottles do we need? We hear some version of it across the tasting bar almost every week, and the answer starts with a single number. A standard bottle of wine pours five glasses.

Everything else here builds on that. Once you have it, a dinner for six or a party for thirty comes down to simple arithmetic, with a little room left over for the guest who stays late.

The 5-ounce glass is the usual reference because the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines one standard drink of table wine as 5 ounces at around 12 percent alcohol. A bottle of table wine therefore holds roughly five standard drinks, which helps when you plan the evening and when you keep track of your own.

So a bottle gives five glasses at dinner and about twelve at a tasting, and the only thing that changes between the two is the size of the pour.

Most people pour too much at home. A large modern glass can take a third of a bottle, and a full glass is harder to swirl and warms up before you finish it. A third of a glass may look modest the first time you pour it, but it is the right amount, and it keeps the bottle going around the table for longer.

Pour size affects temperature as well. A small pour gets drunk while it is still at the right temperature, while a big one sits in the glass and drifts. Our guide to wine serving temperature covers what to chill and for how long.

• Still wine, standard pour: 5 ounces, about five glasses per bottle.
• Tasting pour: about 2 ounces, around twelve per bottle.
• Sparkling wine in a flute: about 4 ounces, around six per bottle.
• A half bottle (375 ml): two to three glasses.
• A magnum (1.5 liters): two bottles in one, about ten glasses.

Half a bottle per person is a planning figure, and your own table will tell you whether to go up or down. A long dinner with several courses drinks more than a weeknight supper. Guests who are driving home will stop at one glass, as they should.

If you serve more than one wine, there is no need for a full bottle of each per guest. Plan the total first and then split it. A dinner for six might open one white with the first course and two reds with the main, three bottles in all, plus the spare. For deciding which wine goes with which course, our food and wine pairing guide explains how to match the structure of a wine to the structure of a dish.

Parties are harder to predict than dinners, so it helps to think in hours. The first hour usually drinks the most, and the pace slows after that. Put water and food out from the start, and the evening stays easy while the wine lasts longer.

A toast works differently. A toast pour of sparkling wine is small, often about 3 ounces, so one bottle covers six to eight people. Keep the bottles cold and open them just before everyone raises a glass.

If you are going to get the count wrong, get it wrong by one bottle too many. An unopened bottle keeps, while an opened one has a clock on it. We go through the details in how long wine lasts after opening, including why red wine belongs in the fridge overnight.

At the winery, we keep tasting pours small on purpose. In our Educational Wine Tasting we pour five wines side by side and talk through each one: where the grapes grew, how the wine was made, and why it sits where it does. Small pours let you taste all five and still remember the last one clearly.

If you are stocking up for a dinner at home, our wines page shows the full range, from our dry Riesling to the reds from our cellar. We are always glad to help you plan a table, bottle by bottle.