Entertaining: How much drink to buy?

When you're having a party, one of the key purchases you'll make is drink. Have you ever had a large gathering and been uncertain about how much drink to buy?

It's always a delicate balancing act between not getting enough and getting too much. There are often going to be different things to consider, like you may know that most of your guests prefer red wine rather than white. We've put together some tables to help give you a general idea about what quantities to buy.

First, you'll need a rough estimate of how many people you're hosting and how many drinks they will consume. The rule of thumb is to allow 2 drinks an hour per person for the first two hours, and then 1 drink an hour thereafter. Apart from alcoholic drinks, you'll also need to factor in a quantity for soda and/or water - this should be around 1 can of soda or 1 bottle of water per person, per hour. To make this slightly easier, here's a table with the approximate number of drinks each guest is likely to consume:

So, now you know roughly how many drinks you'll be serving, it's time to translate that into something more meaningful such as, how many bottles of wine or beer you'll need. Each standard 750 ml bottle of wine should give you around 5 glasses. The following table provides suggested quantities based on the number of drinks served - add or multiply the quantities in the lines below to get you to the expected number of drinks to serve:

* Your preference

* Your preference

Note: All wine bottle estimates are based on regular sized wine bottles - 750ml. If you're purchasing the large 1.5 Liter bottles, you should get 10 glasses from each bottle.