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Choosing Wedding Wine, part II

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

A swift recap from Part I. We’re buying wine for my sisters wedding. We need a white, a red and a fizzy.
We’re buying local, from either Bubble Brothers or Curious Wines ,or both.
We have samples, and I’m going to detail them in this post.

At this point, I must mention that we decided against Champagne ™. We feel that Cava (or any sparkling wine) can be just as good as a champagne, for a pleasantly smaller outlay.

The wines we chose from Bubble Brothers:
wedding samples

We have 2 fizzy wines and a red and white pair.

Reading from left to right:

Fizzy
MAS CODINA, Brut, Cava DO Penedès
Red
LES CINQ PATTES Bordeaux rouge
White
LES CINQ PATTES Bordeaux blanc
Fizzy
Veuve du Vernay Brut Rosé

The wines we chose from Curious Wines:
wedding samples

Reading from left to right:

Fizzy
Mas Macia Cava Brut Gran Reserva
White
Cuvee Jean-Paul Sec VDP 2008
Red
Cuvee Jean-Paul Rouge VDP 2007
White
Pascal Bouchard Grande Reserve Chablis 2007
Red
Charles Thomas Moulin-A-Vent (can’t find a link)
Fizzy
Mas Macia Cava Brut

We kept all the wines in or around our price point, but allowed some latitude. We told Matt and Julian (the sales guys in the wine shops) what our price point was, what the meal was (once we’d found out ourselves) and the sort of crowd. I don’t think there’s any point in being anything but honest with vendors, the more information you can give them the better they can help you.
The bottles above are our choices from their recommendations. We took a few samples and have plenty of time to make our choices – allowing us to taste “a colour a night”.
I wouldn’t fancy trying the above list in a single evening. Well, I would, but I wouldn’t like to try to read my notes afterwards.

We opened the whites at the weekend. We had assorted family members and neighbours in on it – basically anyone that passed our door was press-ganged into offering an opinion. We’ve now chosen the white, and will move onto tasting the reds.

In part III I’ll describe the choice of red and white, giving as much insight into why we chose them as possible.
Part IV will detail the choice of sparkling and Part V will be the round up and tips.

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Choosing Wedding Wine, part I

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

My sisters wedding is on next month, and the menfolk of the clan have been tasked with the wine.
I’m going to explain how we are doing it, in the hopes that the information might be helpful to others in a similar situation.

Firstly, the wedding itself. You need to make plans.
Will you have drinks as people arrive? a toast during the meal? how much wine will you provide during the meal?
For our family wedding – It’s an irish one, being held in a Castle! There’s a punch reception on arrival. There will be a “champagne” toast during the meal and my parents want to have enough wine on hand to keep everyone’s glass full during the meal. So now we know we need to cater for fizzy stuff and white/red wines. The hotel has provided a wine list, and the corkage fees, which helps us to figure out a budget.

Armed with this, we now have three shopping venues in mind. Firstly, the foreign trip. We take a couple of shoping trips to France each year, so we’re familiar with shopping for wine abroad. We considered buying the wedding wine abroad but decided against it. There’s always a chance that something might go wrong, and with a remote purchase the chances to fix problems can be too small.
The day of our failed booze cruise I spoke to a lady in the queue who had a pallet of wedding wine waiting for her to collect in Roscoff!

The other two options we have are local. Bubble Brothers and Curious Wines are two local wine sellers, based in the Marina in town and Bandon, respectively. Both are open to the public as well as having websites and both offer a wedding service. With the foreign option off the list, we went to visit both
establishments to solicit advice, and collect samples for tasting.

We started in Bubble Brothers, as they’re closer. We called in and spoke with Julian. We explained the situation, the numbers of guests, tried to explain the sort of people (categorising white or red basically) and totally forgot to tell him what was on the menu (I confess we didn’t know). He explained some rules of thumb for amounts of wine – one bottle between two people and so on. We worked out the amount we were willing to spend, taking corkage in the hotel into account and this gave us a rough budget. With some more helpful advice we picked out some samples for white, red and fizzy.

Into the car and on we went to Curious Wines in Bandon. There we met Matt, and went through the same dialogue. This time we were a little more prepared for the sort of information the wine shops need to provide the best feedback. Again, we bought possibles for the wedding.

At this point, we need to chose the wines, negotiate prices and figure out delivery.

In part two, I’ll detail the samples we took.

Sneak preview:
Bubble Brothers:
wedding samples

Curious Wines:
wedding samples

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bubble brothers wine tasting

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

This evening I attended a wine tasting presented by Bubble Brothers in the Aga Shop in Cork.
Julian from Bubble Brothers presented 8 wines, all from the Langeudoc region in France. This is a region I’ve visited a couple of times and found it to be lovely, so I had high hopes for the wines.

It may be the scientist in me, but I’ll have to explain the procedures for this tasting. Julian would pour us all a glass, and then tell us a little about the producer of the wine. We’d then taste it and at my table at least, would all have a different opinion and argue about it. Noone at our table was spitting, but we used the supplied bucket to (regretfully) dispose of the remaining wine after we’d tasted a sufficient quantity. Some of the drivers and local critics were spitting with impressively tidy technique. Not something I’m interesting in learning though, I’ll keep on drinking. Anyway, there was plenty of time to ask questions and look for further information. I was delighted that one of the wines on the list was on my list of wines to try. It’s now on my list to buy.

Bubble Brothers wine tasting

At my table I had 3 members of my clan, my father, my uncle and my sister Emma, newly returned as a Dr. from Edinburgh. I don’t think that we had more than 2 people with the same opinion at any one time. I suppose that’s family for you.

The venue was lovely, the company was jovial, the wines were nice and the experience was a delightful counterpoint to the doom and gloom omnipresent in todays media.
If you’re looking for some wine related fun, or you just want an evening out with a difference try a wine tasting.

For anyone interested, the wine list and my scrawled notes. Up top are random thoughts that struck me, in double quotes are things said either by Julian (our host) or someone in the room, single quotes came from people at my table.

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new decanter

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I got a lovely present of a new decanter today. I have been using plain simple water jugs
that I picked up in Dunnes for a tenner.

This is lovely though.

IMG_0188

There’s something wonderful about the smell of wine, and the way wines can change as they breathe.
The taste is nice too of course!

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berry brothers

Friday, June 26th, 2009

I was in Dublin for a work trip yesterday, so I popped into Berry Brothers & Rudd wine shop. I’ve been looking forward to a trip in for ages and I was not disappointed.
I’d have to describe the shop as “oaked”. It’s old school, beautiful building and lovely construction. The staff were lovely and helpful, and I could have spent hours browsing.
My only small complaint would be that there’s simply too much choice, and not enough space to lay it all out. It’s a little overwhelming.
It’s a shame it’s closing. I hope to make it back again before they close for good.

Berry Bros. and Rudd

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wine tastings are fun

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Last night I went to my first wine tasting – hosted by Curious Wines at the Ambassador hotel in Cork City.
I had no idea what to expect – I know very little about wine in general so I was hoping to learn something and move outside my ‘choice’ comfort zone.
I was travelling in a party of 4 – my sister and two friends. Unfortunately my friends had to cancel at the last minute. We landed in to see a number of tables laid out with spittoons, glasses, tasting notes and glasses of water. Suddenly I had that feeling you get at the dentist when you see the instrument tray laid out by the chair. No matter, I said hello to Mike and my sis and I took a seat.

Mike opened proceedings and introduced Joyce Austin of New Zealand Boutique Wines. Mike was careful to put our minds at rest and made it clear that things were informal. Joyce was a fantastic MC for the evening, explaining the wines and giving lots of useful information on wines in general, not just the ones she was promoting.

For the procedurally curious, the wines were poured “blind” into the glasses on the table. We then had time to swirl, smell and taste them before she explained what we had just tasted.
You could then either finish the glass or abandon the contents into the buckets on the table.

Curious Wines tasting event

I confess I did taste the intruiging looking bucket at the end of the night. I won’t reveal the results of that taste test though.

All in all, it was a smashing night. I met a number of Irish wine names, everyone was very friendly and in great form. I was stunned by some of the revelations, mainly to do with how different in character a different ‘breed’ of a familiar grape can be.
If you get any chance at all to attend a wine tasting, grasp it with both hands.

incidentally, if anyone wants to see how seriously I take life:
tasting-notes

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Amon-Ra

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

I popped down to CuriousWines in Bandon this morning to pick up some wines. I had my eye on some Amon-Ra from Glaetzer Wines.
I brought the clan with me – my father was looking for some champagne and my uncle was in advisor mode.

I picked up a brace of the Amon-Ra, a Bilancia Viognier, an Amarone and a Woodstock on the recommendation of Laurence Veale from SourGrapes.ie.

wines

As before, we landed in, plenty of parking and lots of room to move around the shop and browse the selection of wines. Mike and Matt are dead friendly and very helpful if you have questions, even the daft ones we were asking. As a bonus this morning we had a tasting of a new wine they’re thinking of adding to the store.

My thanks to Mike.

brian at brianclayton.ie if you have any comments.

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a booze cruise with a difference!

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

I go on a couple of shopping trips to the Morlaix area each year to stock up on wine. Recently I heard about the Curious Wines warehouse in Bandon. I contacted my usual booze cruise crew and we arranged to take a trip down to the warehouse. We landed in, found the place with no problems and found plenty of parking.

Curious Wines

In we went, got a friendly greeting and started a few laps of the place to see what was on offer.

Curious Wines.

My uncle is the real brains of the wine buying operation and was very impressed. My father and I are just enthusiastic amateurs and were equally impressed.
The layout is very good, it’s easy to see what’s on offer and there’s plenty of space to move around. It’s reminiscent of shopping in France, but with a temperature difference. As always, narrowing the choice down is the hard part, but I walked away with some lovely whites.

My thanks to the Curious Wines gang, and congratulations on winning Best Commercial Website 2009 in the Digital Media Awards.

p.s. if you’re driving down from Cork, you could do much worse than stop off in the Viaduct Inn for lunch.

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Eiswein

Friday, February 13th, 2009

My birthday is coming up, this is my treat to myself:

Icewine

It’s Icewine. I had never heard of this until my last “booze cruise” to France. My wine buff uncle and his cousin told me about it over dinner on the boat, and from the description I knew I wanted to try it. So, before Christmas I popped into the folks in Bubble Brothers in the English Market and got a bottle of the Vidal Icewine. We had it after Christmas dinner and it was fantastic, so this is round two. Taste reports to follow!

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