Posts Tagged ‘wedding’

choosing wedding wine, the aftermath

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Well, it’s the day after. I’m sleepy and I’m downloading over 400 images from my camera.
This is the last in a series on how we chose and consumed the wine for my big sisters wedding.
Please have a look at parts 1, 2 and 3.

First off, congratulations to Trish and Ronan. The wedding was a blast and we all wish them the very best for the future.

trish and ronan

Secondly, the wedding went very well. It was held in Ballyseede Castle in Kerry. The wines had all been shipped down, so all we had to do at this point was drink them. The speeches were held after the starter, so the hotel staff served the pink fizz at that stage. The hotel staff had salted the bottles throughout the room and opened them all at the same time – so there was a continuous pop throughout the room. I could see heads turning to see what it was – great result.

The wines were very well received – I heard the waiters commenting that they were very nice.
We also had a good few compliments from guests, so we were delighted. They passed the “empty glasses” test with flying colours.

wines!

If I could draw a conclusion or two from this experience.
Wedding can and should be fun. They can be stressful though, so it’s a great idea to talk to your local suppliers and use their experience. Haggle! Talk to the venue and explain your plans, organise the delivery nice and early. Plan the sequence of events so the hotel knows the system. Haggle with them too. This can take a lot of the stress out of the planning and leave you free to enjoy the big day.

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Choosing Wedding Wine Part III

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Another swift recap, from parts 1 and 2. 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.

I’ll try to explain how we chose the wines. These are totally subjective choices, purely down to what we like and what we felt would best suit the wedding. All the wines were nice and the decision was very difficult in the end.

We tasted the whites first. We had a total of 3 to taste and choose from. We opened all three after dinner one night, and tried a sample of each.
We eliminated the one from the selection process early on. It was lovely, but we wanted something a little more mellow. We had a total of 8 people (family and neighbours who made the mistake of walking past the house) offering opinions on the other two, and the winning wine won out with a 5-3 majority.

The choice of reds came down to a really close run thing. Either wine would have suited admirably, and this was a very tough choice.

Finally we had to chose the fizzy for the toast. This was the big surprise of the night for me. We had a choice of 4 – one Rose and 3 Cavas. We opened the Rose first and after one taste it was declared the winner. It ticked all the boxes of look, sound and taste. It’s what we wanted for the wedding. I demanded to try one of the other Cavas but the executive decision was made.

If I had to say one thing about the experience, it’s that the sellers have lovely wines, right on whatever the price point. It’s very hard to chose between the wines. We made the decision purely on subjective grounds – what do we like, what do we want for and from this wedding experience. You’ll have to do the same.

Both sellers offer delivery to the venue. With a standard bottle weighing in at around 1.5kg, you’d be transporting a significant weight in your car. It’s much easier to have the wine delivered a week or so ahead of time – it’s one thing off the stress list!

Oh – and the three we chose are:
Les Cinq Pattes Bordeaux rouge, Les Cinq Pattes Bordeaux blanc and the Veuve du Vernay Brut Rosé.
My thanks to Matt, Mike, Julian and Valerie.

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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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