THE HOUSE RULES
A fair pour.
Your event, your field
Choose 2–16 tasters when creating an event. Everyone brings one bottle and judges every flight, including their own anonymous bottle. The count locks when the event is created; the host previews the format before making the draw.
| Tasters | Opening | Semifinals | Final |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2–4 | None | None | All bottles |
| 5 | One group of 5; top 4 advance | None | 4 |
| 6–8 | Two balanced groups; top 2 each | None | 4 |
| 9–11 | Three balanced groups; top 2 each | Two groups of 3; top 2 each | 4 |
| 12–16 | Four balanced groups; top 2 each | Two groups of 4; top 2 each | 4 |
Groups differ in size by at most one bottle and are assigned randomly. Each semifinal receives one qualifier from each opening group. Larger opening groups make qualification harder; normalization cannot remove differences in opponents.
Your ballot
Give every bottle a unique preference rank, favorite first. Preference contributes 80% of the round score. Aroma, flavor, smoothness and overall enjoyment each contribute 5%. Attributes use whole numbers from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), mapped linearly to 0–100.
Preference maps linearly from 100 for first to 0 for last: 100/0 for head-to-head, 100/50/0 for three bottles, 100/66⅔/33⅓/0 for four, and 100/75/50/25/0 for five. Every registered taster’s ballot has equal weight. Revise until the host closes the flight; all tasters must submit before closing.
Moving on
Current-round scores decide advancement. Ties break by preference score, then overall enjoyment. An unresolved tie at the qualification cutoff requires a blind preference-only runoff. Repeat if still tied.
Final placement
Finalists rank first, followed by semifinal eliminations, then opening eliminations. Within each tier, use weighted scores from the stages those bottles actually tasted. Missing rounds never receive artificial zeros.
Three-stage finalists use 20% opening, 30% semifinal and 50% final. Without semifinals, finalists use 2/7 opening (28.57%) and 5/7 final (71.43%). Final-only events use 100% final. Semifinal eliminations use 40% opening and 60% semifinal; opening eliminations use opening scores only. Full precision decides results; displayed scores are rounded.
Weighted preference, then weighted enjoyment break placement ties. Remaining ties share a place, except first and last, which require blind runoffs. In a fully tied head-to-head, one runoff settles both awards.
The reveal
Your host controls the reveal of bottle identities, owners, standings and awards. First earns the Yorktown Tumbler; last earns the Swill Award. Your individual ballots remain private.