Most tasting advice assumes six people around one table. Holiday parties don't cooperate. Once the guest list hits 15 or 20, a few things break, and the one most hosts worry about, running out of bottle, isn't one of them.
The bottles are the easy part
The pour math from How Much to Buy for a Tasting Party still holds. At a half-ounce pour, 20 guests need 10 ounces of each bottle per round. A 750ml bottle holds about 25.4 ounces, so one bottle of each pour covers 20 guests with room for seconds, and still covers 24. You don't need to double the flight. The real problems are elsewhere.
Glasses are the real bottleneck
A four-pour flight for 20 people is 80 glasses if everyone gets a fresh one each round. Nobody owns 80 glasses. Pick one of three fixes:
- One glass per guest, rinsed between pours. Put a water pitcher and a dump bucket on every table. A splash of water and a quick swirl is enough between pours of the same spirit.
- Rent them. Party rental companies rent wine glasses by the rack, and some will take them back unwashed.
- Small disposable tasting cups. Two-ounce cups with numbers written on them in marker. Zero washing, and the numbers make a blind round easy.
Split the room into tables of six to eight
One long table of 20 splits into three conversations anyway, and the far end never hears the host. Seat guests at tables of six to eight and give each table its own water, plain crackers, pens and printed cards. Everyone tastes the same pour at the same time, so the host announces each round once, for the whole room.
Pick a pourer, not a free-for-all
Self-serve at a big party means two-ounce "tastes" and an empty first bottle by round two. Either one person pours every round from a central station, or one designated pourer per table gets a jigger and the bottles in order. A jigger with a half-ounce line is the cheapest portion control there is.
Pace it slower
Six people finish a pour in five minutes. Twenty need closer to ten. Plan on four rounds taking about an hour, not 30 minutes, and put real food out from the start.
Blind still works, and works better
A blind round scales well because a bigger room makes for a bigger reveal. Bag and number the bottles, collect one guess sheet per table, and read the results out loud. The blind tasting guide covers the format.
A kit that prints for any headcount
Our Bourbon 101 kit scales easily because it's a PDF: print one tasting mat and tier sheet per guest, one set of bottle cards per table, and the four-bottle flight, lowest proof to highest, runs the same for 6 or 24. Line up rides home before the last round.