Le Monde du Vin

B and I are now back in Toulouse after celebrating Christmas with his family in the Gard and in Valence (Drôme).

As usual, the multiple family meals included quite a variety of wines, since a sweet aperitif for the foie gras doesn't go with fish or cheese. On Christmas day the "wine expert" of the family had us tasting some a variety of good wines with the different courses.

One of the gifts given was a board game about wine: Le Monde du Vin. Basically a Trivial Pursuit about wine, we ended up playing 3 times with the family.

Everyone who played was pleasantly surprised with the game. While it helps to know a bit about the different regions, cépages, and châteaux, the game is set up so that you can enlist the help of fellow players to earn points. If one or two of the players is more knowledgeable than the others, they can help out. We definitely learned a lot about wine while playing too. To play, you roll the dice and move around the board, landing on different spots which correspond to a stack of cards: France split in 3 (northish, south-westish, south eastish) plus general knowledge and international. Each card has an "easy" question worth 1 point, a medium question worth 2 points, and a hard question worth 3 points. There's no race to the finish, just a certain number of rounds, after which you total up your points to see who's won.

B and I surprised ourselves by knowing a few random answers because we had tasted a wine at the Salon du Vin or spoken with someone about a wine region.

One of the questions was about the famous sweet Hungarian wine. B and I were confused. Hungary has a famous wine?

Tokaj, as we learned, is a sweet white wine that tastes of honey and candied citrus fruits. To educate us neophytes, a bottle was dug out of the wine cabinet and accompanied the rest of our game.

Later on there was a question about Pedro Ximenez, which is a Spanish wine. Out came the bottle from the back of the cellar, and everyone got a taste.

These tastings were just for fun, but the game rules do include a section on how to organize a blind taste test if you so desire.

I don't think we'll get the game for ourselves since few of our friends are knowledgeable enough about wine to find the game fun, but I do think it would be a great gift for that person who always hosts the family gatherings. It's a good after-dinner game. The game comes with six pawns, but you could play with 2 or 3 more.