Somewhere in the world, 25th July is a day to celebrate one of the most famous pairings. Not Anthony and Cleopatra. Not pen and paper. Not even England and perpetual drizzle. We are talking something far tastier; wine and cheese! Merlot and mozzarella, Pinot and pecorino, Shiraz and Swiss….the combos are endless. Game night friendly (in the right quantities and a careful pair of hands!), there’s a plethora of punchy offerings to make your tastebuds zing. And with food and drink being a very popular theme, what better way than to double down with some seriously moreish games?!
Viticulture World
Viticulture is one of the most renowned worker-placement, hand management games from Stonemaier Games. It’s definitely the most famous wine making game we know. And whilst Viti has you pitting your efforts against other budding bottlers, this expansion has you play the same delicious grape harvesting, wine making gameplay co-operatively.
Working with your extended family, you want to grow, harvest, process, and sell delicious wines from 7 continents. To achieve global success as the best vineyard around, each player needs to hit a personal victory point target as well as smash the team target on the influence track. Balancing personal development with family needs brings a whole new feisty flavour to Viticulture.
Each continent you visit in the game has its own taste and you’ll play through a series of unique events which create changes to the new board layout and uses new components. Whilst the accompanying story within each continent helps you make the best use of resources at key times during your first play, Viticulture World is not a legacy game. Each set of continent event cards can be shuffled up and played out in a random order for maximum variety and crunch. And, as this is Stonemaier, even though it is a co-op game, there’s an Automa enabling you to experience the same rich, full bodied game play in single player mode!
Paris La Cite De La Lumiere
Okay, so there isn’t any wine or cheese in this game. But it’s set in Paris – the heart of grape and gooey cheese country! Without France and their richly decadent offerings of each, this belly rumbling combo would have struggled to get off the ground. A two-phase game played inside the game box itself, you take it in turns to choose whether to lay one of your eight square cobbled street tiles on the central board or select building shaped polyomino tiles from a shared pool.
Each cobbled street tile is divided into four segments and contains a unique mix of each player’s own colour, and when the final cobbled street tile has been laid, the second phase of the game begins. Taking turns to either place a building tile onto the board (topping each off with a rather charming colour coded chimney) or to take a special bonus action postcard (triggering its effect), the game ends when the 8th illustrated depiction of belle France has been claimed. It’s a charming, quirky tile laying game that would pair perfectly with a finger licking fromage and a glass of Fitou!
La Vina
Inheriting an abandoned vineyard and working to reprise its glory is the aim of the game in La Vina. With a muted palette and a relaxed style, this game quickly becomes a race to victory. Often forgotten in favour of the bigger Viticulture, players move down the board harvesting grape cards. How far you go is up to you. Slowly, slowly, catchy all. Or speeding to the prized offering before anyone else can get there. But beware; you’ll need baskets to hold and deliver your bottle ready bounty to the wineries located at the end of the track.
The game ends when a player makes their final delivery and then all the prestige points paid out along the course of the game are counted. Whoever has earned the most, inherits the vineyard and celebrates with one of their own in-house vintage . The end game triggers when a player makes their last grape delivery. The other players can finish moving through their track. Then, everyone counts their prestige points gained through their previous deliveries, and the player with the most points wins!
Fromage
Du vin….du pain…….you know the television advert well (or you do if you’re as old as us!). In Fromage, you are French cheesemakers going through the process of turning cow juice into artisanal cheeses. A simultaneous worker-placement game, everyone places their workers in order to make cheese and gather resources from the area of the board in front of them. After everyone has played, the board spins and any cheeses made are matured. Then you go again with eh new options in front of you. With points up for grabs through selling cheese and managing your cottage cheese industry, Fromage will have you risking it all for Roquefort!
Taverns of Tiefenthal
A large glass of red or white could be on the table in the Taverns of Tiefenthal. With flavourful dice placement and deck building, your goal is to enhance your alcohol empire to make it the go-to destination for satisfied oenophiles. If you can keep the glasses topped up and the patrons happy through clever dice management, your efforts will be repaid. Plus with plenty of mini-expansion content included, you can play the base game or spice it up with some optional modules. Easy to learn with plenty of simultaneous play, this game will hit those heady notes without too much of a rules hangover!
Well there we have it. In vino veritas, and the heavenly combination of cheese and wine is a universal truth for sure. Whichever selection you go for at your games night, enjoy a sharp and tangy duet!
