Wedding Wines 101: What to Serve, What to Skip, and What I’m Pouring at My Own

[MUSIC] >> Well, hello, and welcome to The Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast. One of my most asked DM questions and asked questions whenever I do an AMA, or any sort of seminar is what wines should I serve at my wedding, at my party, and given the fact that my own wedding is just a few days away, I thought it was an appropriate time to bring that information here to the podcast. So this episode is going to be all about wedding wines. And I'm going to give you a little insight into my own personal experience in choosing my wedding wines. I'm going to answer a lot of the frequently asked questions. And I'm going to go through a lot of the different scenarios when it comes to wedding wines. Because obviously today in 2025, weddings are very different than how they used to be. There's a lot of different versions of weddings that people are having, some very small, some very large, some that are more food trucks, some that are sit down. And I think that the wine can flow through all of those different scenarios. So I'm going to sort of take you through a few of my favorite tips and hacks for doing that. And like I said, I'm going to give you a little insight as to what I'm serving at my wedding, which I will tell you is a small wedding. It's only about 20 people. So hopefully that will give you a little bit of insight into whatever it is you are planning, or thinking about planning, coming ahead. For those of you who are members of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast Wine Club, the wine that we're drinking today is, I'm sure this is no surprise, it's going to be the sparkling that's in your wine club ship in. So we're drinking the A by Arras from Tasmania, sparkling. This is coming from House of Arras. This is a producer that I discovered via Marc Davidson, who's been on this podcast before, way back when I was selecting some wines for Aspen Food and Wine. And I had asked him for some recommendations on great sparkling wines from Australia and, of course, Tasmania. And this was the producer that he said, "You have to get to know this producer, I'm obsessed with it, I think you'll love it." And I did. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. And they released their wines normally, their vintage-specific sparklings, with a significant amount of age on them. So I was tasting them with about 10 to 15 years of age. Flash forward to a few months ago, I happened to have dinner with the importer that imports those wines here in the US. And he said, "I'm so glad that you love the wines, but I have some very exciting information to share with you, which is, for the first time ever, they're going to be releasing a non-dintage QV that I will be importing to the US." And so that is what is in your shipment for the shipment. So that is a wine that has never been introduced to the United States until now. So we're the first to have it. It is a rosé, and it is comprised of the champagne varieties. So you've got some peanut oil in there, it's majority peanut, shardinay, and then peanut oil. You can see it's got this really lovely sort of pale salmon hue. And what I love about it is there's so much value here. And as we talk about some of the wines that might be great for your wedding or for your event, rate value sparkling is obviously going to be top of mind. It's a subject that people love to talk about because there is such a wide array of selection, some good, some not so good. I was just talking about this with my sister who had her wedding almost a decade ago. And we were talking about the fact that her sparkling wasn't very good. It was a sparkling that the venue had chosen. They also did one of my biggest pet peeves in the world, which is they said it was going to be a champagne toast. It was not champagne. I don't know what it was, but it was not champagne. But what I love about this wine is that this is a sparkling wine made in the champagne method. So that secondary fermentation is happening in the bottle. And it's going to be aged on the leaves for 30 months. Now, to give you a little bit of context, in champagne, the minimum is 12 months. Right? So the minimum for any sort of entry level champagne is going to be that amount. And if you're wondering what that does to the champagne, well, the longer the amount of time is that the champagne, the wine stays in contact with the leaves, which are those dead e-cells, the more it's going to pick up some of this richness and toesiness, creaminess. It's going to add new ones. It's going to add a lot to the wine. And so when you're doing that for 30 months, it's going to give you something that feels really, really elevated. And I love that we're getting that in a sparkling wine that has a lot of value to it. The wine is then aged for another minimum of 12 months in the bottle. So you're getting a wine that has taken four years from the time that the grapes were harvested to what's in your glass now. And honestly, it's really hard to find a wine of that quality for this price point. So again, when we get into the sparkling wine section of this podcast, we'll be diving a little bit more into what are some other sparkling wines that you can find that have a lot of quality associated with it. But don't come in at a crazy amount of money. So on the nose for this one, you can always go back and reference the tasting videos that I do. But you should be getting a really nice amount of fruit. But to me, the Pinot Noir is really pulling through right now. And it's giving me a little bit of like savory sort of mushroom characteristics. There's some like these like really beautiful white button mushrooms on here, almost something that feels like a little bit truffly. And then there is this lovely amount of like creamy strawberry on here as well. So I love the nose so much. It translates really beautifully to the palette, which by the way, the bubbles are super fine. Another one of those like little little things that you're looking for when you're talking about sparkling wine is like you don't want a sparkling wine that's got these big aggressive bubbles. That's usually a sign of poor quality. These are really nice, tiny fine bubbles. And it's very, very drinkable. But not in a way that feels like it's going to be overwhelming or it's going to get really boring in the next five minutes of sipping this wine. This is a wine that I think really serves the purpose of being great toasting wine and great celebratory wine, but also wine that can really pair with food because it has such great wine making behind it. And because it has a little bit of this like savory balance, you're getting kind of the best of both worlds. Also, if you have not explored wines from Tasmania before, I know we've talked about it on this podcast. I'm telling you, there is such great value in this region. I am obsessed with some of the Pinanoras and Shard days that are coming from here. And of course, by extension, the sparkling wines that are made from those two varieties. So definitely a place to look out for in terms of quality and getting really, really great value. So I hope you're enjoying this. I'm of course enjoying this in my all-purpose Gabriel Glass. Feel free to enjoy it in whatever, especially if you're celebrating your toasting. Maybe we'll get to that in this podcast as well. That's what should you be serving your sparkling wine in. But let's get into some of the concepts around planning and how you're thinking about wedding and party wines. I think I want to start with this idea behind volume versus variety. And this is something that, as of only, I really struggled with. I wanted lots of different choices. And ultimately, that was a decision that I did go with. I don't know that I necessarily would do it again, nor do I think that I would recommend it for anyone else. This is really sort of a lesses more a situation. So you want one, maybe two, maybe two choices per color and style. For your sparkling wine, you want to be thinking about when you're going to be having that. So if you're going to be having that during your cocktail hour, if you're going to be having it upon arrival, if you're going to be having it for a toast, for dancing, you really want to mark all the spots where you think sparkling wine will be consumed. Because what I found is it's more than you realize and you maybe want to make some considerations for that. So I would go through sort of your plan and earmark like, hey, do you want people to have a glasses sparkling wine when they arrive? And if so, do you want that to be the same sparkling wine when they're having cocktail hour, when they're having dinner, when they're dancing later? So kind of earmarked that. Your second color is, of course, white wine. I truly think that you only need one choice here. You want something that's not going to be super polarizing and we'll talk about some of the potentials for that. Rose, I find that mostly unless we're in the dead of summer, this is going to be sort of a waste. This is not necessarily something you have to have. So if you're sort of on the fence about Rose, I would say it's probably a no. And the reason I say that is most of the weddings that I've been to or selected wine from, it's the wine that they have the most left over. And I think that there's a variety of reasons for that. One of which is, of course, when there's cocktails involved, a lot of times, the mentality behind choosing a glass of rose versus a cocktail, people tend to go for cocktails at weddings, especially when there's a signature cocktail. And I find that the person who's going to choose the rose is probably going to choose the cocktail in lieu of that. So if Rose is not like your favorite thing, just don't admit it. It's one less thing you have to worry about. And then for your red wine, you're going to maybe want two selections here. The first is going to be a light bodied red wine. This is going to be something like a pinot noir or a granache. And then you want something medium [BLANK_AUDIO] full-bodied. I really do think that you could get away with one of those and if I were going to choose one, I would go with the lighter of the two just because I think they tend to have better value associated with it. And also, this is a wine that people tend to want to drink more of and heavy, big wines can get really aggressive by the end of the date. So that's just my personal thing. Going back to all of my choices, here's what I would say. So I mentioned it's a 20 person wedding. The reason that I have so many choices, so I'll tell you what they are later in this episode. But I basically have like four whites, five reds, three different sparklings and a handful of other fun things kind of woven between. The reason that I did that was we decided not to do any sort of spirits or cocktails at the wedding. This was a choice that we made for a lot of reasons. There's going to be kids at the wedding. So we felt like sort of tempering that down a little bit would be a nice way to keep a nice gentle even flow, best lay plans, who knows what's going to happen. But also what I really wanted the vibe to feel like was sort of the dinner party. And an extension of that for me was this idea of a wine bar. So when people walk up to the bar, it's not going to be like a cocktail bar. It's going to be a wine bar. And I wanted it to sort of feel as such with lots of different choices that people could play around with all night. They could have a little sip of this, have a little sip of that. And maybe it's not the best time weddings out of the best time to be exposed to lots of different things. But I felt like in this scenario, it was more of a reflection of me and my fiance and the general vibe of it all. And the fact that we were really thematic with choosing to do a wine bar versus just a regular bar. So that was sort of how I justified that choice. And I think if that's something that you want to do, that's maybe when you can choose to have more selections. All right, let's talk about the budget. How much money are we spending? Oh my goodness. The wedding planning process has been really eye opening. I'm sure for those of you who have been in this scenario before you know this, you know, it gets very expensive, very quickly. Even a 20 person wedding is just mindboggling. How much money you can spend. So the wine budget, we're going to talk about in percentage terms because everyone's going to be all over the place in terms of what they're spending for their wedding. I would say general budget breakdown should be. And again, this is really going to depend. Go back to that starting with the sparkling. Go back and figure out how much sparkling do you want involved in this wedding. You're going to be about 30% of your budget. Your wine budget is going to be unsparkly wine. This is going to be for your toast, for cocktail hour, for celebrations, for white wines. This is where you're going to be able to save a little bit of money. 20 to 25% of your budget should be allocated to white wine. They are generally cheaper to make. They're generally cheaper to buy. And the style of white wine that I'm going to be recommending to you, these are wines that you shouldn't be spending more than about 15 to 25 dollars per bottle. Now, of course, if you've got a bigger budget, you can go higher with that. If you've got a smaller budget, there's ways to go lower with that as well. But in general, 20 to 25%, reds are where things get really expensive, sparkling a little bit as well. 40 to 45% for your reds. I think that math math since some capacity, depending on how you skew those ratios. But I think in general, you really want to keep in mind that if you're going to have two different selections for red wine, that if you want to split that 40 to 45% for your red wines, earmark the fuller-bodied wines for the more expensive ones. And I'll sort of show you different ways that we can navigate that in terms of what you're selecting. But your red wines are going to be more expensive. And your sparkling wines are going to be more expensive in your whites, but probably not as much as the reds if you want, you know, good wines. All right, guest mindset. I mentioned the fact that we wanted more of like a dinner party vibe. And so you really have to think about what your overall vibe is. I think this is something that people don't always consider when they're thinking about wine. They're thinking about the DJ, they're thinking about the florals, they're thinking about the decorations. But how you want your guests to feel and what you want that mindset to be really plays a factor in how you're choosing wine and how it's fitting into the overall arch of the day. As I mentioned, I have specific wines for arrival, cocktail hour, dancing, and dinner. These are all different for me. Could I have grouped them together? Sure, did I want to know, not particularly, but I wanted these wines to tell a story and I wanted them to sort of help frame the event with a beginning, middle, and end. That was how I went through things. For you, you really have to look at this with your partner, with your wedding planner and just kind of feel out like how much wine do you think that people are going to be drinking? How much is it playing a role? And I think those two things are very, very different in that, you know, there's consumption, right? This goes back to the quantity versus the variety, right? There's consumption, how much somebody is going to be consuming at the wedding versus what do you want the intention to be? And if you want the intention for them to say, I want the wine to be a focal point, well, then you should probably think about that when you're making selections, but if you're like, why is that that a good deal for me? Who cares that? We'll find things that are really easy and crowd-pleasing. So these are just some considerations that you should make before you even start picking your wines. Let's talk about the actual wines themselves. Sparkling wine, of course, this is going to be an area that lots of people have questions about, right? What sparkling wine should I have? Is it pristeco? Is it kava? Is it kramant? Should I be splurging on champagne? The answer is no two weddings look alike, obviously, but I will say that most budgets are not going to allow for actual champagne. As we talked about lots of times in this podcast, champagne is expensive and it's expensive for a reason. If you're going to get champagne, you need to be allocating at least 40 to $50 per bottle for something of quality. Now, that doesn't mean that if you don't have 40 to $50 per bottle to allocate that you can have sparkling wine, there are other ways to navigate this. I will also mention that again, going back to if you want that arrival moment to have champagne, if champagne is important to you, that arrival moment with champagne can be different than your toasting moment. You can have two different sparkling wines at different price points. So don't feel like this has to be one size fits all thing. Talking about some of the potential sparkling wine choices, of course, if you want to go champagne, you can, but my recommendation is going to be to do a sparkling wine in the champagne method that is from a region outside of champagne. Now, you know some of you already know where I'm going with this. That is going to be called hormone. And it's going to be a sparkling wine made in a champagne method, but outside of the region of champagne is still in France. So anytime you see hormone on the label, it's going to say like, hormone, deloire, hormone, de borgón, hormone, de bordo, these are all sparkling wines that are meat in those various regions. Bordo, de l'ouare, valley, burgundy, all-size, that lingua-duck. There's lots of regions within France that make sparkling wine in this champagne method, but using the grapes that are a little bit more appropriate for that region. And that, to me, is really where you can find the best value. I'm going to get to Per second a minute. Don't worry, but I want to stay here for a moment because I think Cromont de L'ouare has just gotten so incredibly great in terms of quality in the last five years. It wasn't a place that I was super excited about previously, but I think what's happened in champagne is a lot of the producers see that sparkling wine consumption is up. The need and the demand for it has increased. And so they've sort of expanded outside of the champagne houses into some of these other regions in France. And they're using a lot of the same techniques and the same people to make these wines. And so the wines are coming in at a fraction of the price. One of the specific producers I'll tell you that I absolutely love is the lingua. And it's a great example of what I was just talking about. This is coming from Bollinger. So one of the great famous champions of France, Bollinger is actually going to be a champagne that I will be enjoying at my wedding. But lingua is from Bollinger and it is a Cromont de L'ouare. They make a rosé version and they make a brute version. They come in and are on $25 a bottle. Sometimes you can find it a little bit cheaper than that. Wine access often does like limited time offers. So make sure you're kind of you're marking set a notification for when it comes back so that you can kind of take advantage of that pricing, especially because a lot of times when you buy in bigger volume, the price typically goes down. So that's one particular that I would be looking at. Outside of Cromont, we have the Prosecco conversation. Prosecco is obviously a sparkling wine not made in the champagne method. So this is being made in the Charmote or Martenotti method. And this is coming from the Veneto in Italy. Now the vibe of Prosecco is one that I really love and I really love it for weddings. The trick here is finding something that really is going to work with your audience. I think Prosecco is a great toasting wine. In general, toastings are fast. They're not intended for pondering or a long sip. It's something you put your hand there, you'll clink, you drink, that's the end of it, right? And so that's where I think you can save a little bit of money with something like Prosecco. One thing that I think is a great way to look at Prosecco is the Prosecco DOCG. So if you can find something that's DOCG, the quality is going to be a little bit more elevated. And then also just keep in mind that when you're looking at different Prosecos, and this is what I think we've talked about on the podcast before, this is one of the most confusing things about Prosecco is when you see dry on the label or extra dry on the label, that actually doesn't mean that the wine is free residual sugar. It actually means it has more sugar. So you really want to find a Prosecco that says "Bruc on it." Miannato is a great example of a very easy-to-find Prosecco broadly produced Prosecco that's made in the Brut style. I know some of you might love Lamarco, which is great. That is made in an extra dry style. So it's going to be on the sweeter side. If that's more your ride, that's totally fine. But just keep that in mind. If you don't want something that's going to be a little sweeter, look out for that on the label. But in general, for Prosecco, you should be spending around $12 to $18 per bottle, maybe a little bit on the higher side of that number for a DOCG, lower if it's not DOCG. Domestic sparkling. Another great way to go, although I will say I'm finding that domestic sparkling is getting pretty close to that of like champagne. So you know, we love our Shomsbergs of the world. We love our great Oregon Sparklings. And I'm certainly not telling you not to do that, but just keep in mind sometimes that you can be about the same price. But I will say that I'm seeing some really great ones produce really more entry level ones in the like 20 to 30 range. So domestic sparkling could be a great way to go, especially if you see that it's made in the champagne method. And then last but certainly not least, some of these other regions, circling back to the sparkling wine that is part of the podcast wine club, this Tasmanian sparkling. Some of these little hidden gem regions really produce some killer, killer wines at a fraction of the price. So I mentioned Tasmania being one of them. Some others that you might not have thought of South Africa makes lovely methecapaciques. So those are sparkling wines made in the champagne method, but in South Africa, usually it's shardney or xenonblanc that are making those under the lovely. And a lot of times you can find them for a fraction of the price. Another place that you probably would never think of, but I love finding on the shelves is the Armenian sparkling. So you probably seem wine access has offered at a time or two before, but I've also seen it out in the in the real world, like easier to find. It's called kush k e u s c h. I think is the spelling of that. That is the sparkling wine coming from our media. That's really wonderful. Same thing goes for wine regions in our own backyard here in the west that are not sort of the norm. So wine regions that are not California, wine regions that are not Oregon. So the finger lakes, I think is a great example. When I was up there last year, I was tasting tons of great sparkling wines from the finger lakes. That were like $15. And if the finger lakes is an accessible place for you to get to, scoot on up there, make a week out of it and come back with cases of it. Because ultimately, I think, you know, it's a great place to visit in general, but also to me, there was such value there, you could also find some really great white wines. Speaking of white wines, what are we doing in the white wine camp? Well, we're, I think in general, avoiding shardney, unless it's an on oak shardney, which I'll be honest, it's not my favorite thing. So if you were like a shardney junkie, go shardney, but for me, I think weddings are a place where you want like the easiest, leanest, brightest, crispiest choice, which is going to in turn sort of be the most crowd-pleasing. The other reason that we're sort of staying away from something like shardney is once you start getting into the lanes where white wine has to be oaked, that's when the price starts creeping up, right? Oak barrels are very expensive. They take time. So that's going to add about 10 to 15 dollars per bottle in general when you're talking about anything of quality that's been being aged in oak. So what do we do? We look for the wines that don't need to be aged in oak. We look for the peanut gris and the peanut grigios that are aged in stainless steel. We go choose something like something like a monk that, again, aged in stainless steel can be released after nine months. They don't require long amounts of time for aging. And so when you're asking for these wines, that's what you should be looking to. There should be a little bit of a red flag if you're seeing a 12 to 18 dollar oaked shardney. That should send some alarm bells because I think that's going to be a place where they're cutting corners. And you're just going to get lower quality. So I would veer in the direction of like a sewing up long, a peanut grigry Italian white wines. I cannot stress this enough. Please go navigate the Italian shelves of whatever wine shop you're going to go to, whether that's wine access or somewhere else. Italian white wines are so delicious and so food friendly and so drinkable and they're usually so inexpensive. So that would definitely be a place that I would look to seeing those for Germany. I think the German white wines are hiller and we got several that are at our wedding. So and it doesn't have to be reason. If you don't love reason, which is a whole other subject of debate, we've got many episodes in which we could convert you into loving reason. If you don't love reason, Germany produces lovely other varieties like peanut grig, also in a peanut grigio, you know, long salone, which is going to be at our wedding. Salone is a great little to me like hybrid somewhere between like a sewing up long peanut grigio and a shardnace. If you want something that has a little bit of texture, salone is a great way to go. So those are a few places that I would be looking for white wine. For red wine, again, kind of breaking it down into the categories of light bodied and fuller bodied. So for your light bodied, I would be looking to Bogeyling, personally. I'd be looking to Bogeyling. I'd also be looking to Portugal. I think those two places for red wine right now, they're giving you a ton of value and they're giving you a ton of quality. There is a Bogeyling in this shipment this month. It's a crew Bogeyling coming from Florey. This is just, this is a wine that I think is so crushable and drinkable and delicious. Kind of, to me, it's always been the Italian answer to that, D'olcetto. D'olcetto coming from Piedmont, really lovely, easy drinking, fun, fruity, but also is like sort of slightly serious undertones. Great, great party wine, great wine to like just enjoy. And I think both of those wines, if you had to only choose one red wine for the entire event, both of those wines would crush. You could go the Pino Noir route if you wanted to, but as I've mentioned before on the show, you know, Pino is really fickle, right? It's a, it's a grape that even though it's very crowd-leasing, it's a grape that really pays a lot of attention to where it's grown. It's a very tear-war driven wine. And so I'm going to be sort of on defense about whether Pino is appropriate or not. It's really, really dependent, but to me, Portugal, Bogeyling are great places for that. For your fuller-bodied wines, what the heck are we doing here? Now I mentioned this is where we can start increasing our budget a little bit, right? This is where I think some of those NDA wines are just so good for this situation. I love when people tell me that they got cases of NDA wines for their parties, for their wedding, because I think NDA wines are an incredible way to get great value at affection to the price. You don't know what NDA wines are. We have done a whole episode on them, but effectively, these are white labeled wines, right? These are wines that are coming from wineries. Wine access gets a lot of the nappa valley stuff, and they're coming from wineries that, for whatever reason, whether this is like a cash flow issue or maybe they have too much juice, maybe it was a blending thing. They are bottling these wines and selling them under a different label, but it's effectively the same juice in the bottle. And you're getting, sometimes you're getting deals where the bottle would have gone through 300 dollars and you're getting it for like 30. There's a whole section on wine access on NDA wines, so you can kind of sess them out here. And by the way, this episode is coming out September 18th. This is sort of prime time for NDA wines. Maybe like a little inside baseball for you guys. Right now in the wine world is a really tough time for wineries, so because there's so much happening, right? Because it's harvest, because there's a lot of cash that has to be outlaid for everything from Greeks, to barrels, to labor, and so for that reason, a lot of people are, you know, they're offloading, or maybe it's a space thing. They're offloading lots of different things. And so you're seeing generally in these like September, October, November months, you're seeing lots of NDA wines come out. That's sort of my little theory behind it all, but in general, this is one like, I think the best stuff comes out, so pay attention to that. That's what I would be looking for in terms of the full-bodied wines, but the other place that I would be looking, she was Argentina. I think there's some great stuff coming out of Argentina, Chile as well. If you want something that's a little fuller-bodied, obviously you're going to be looking to Argentinian Malbec, but there's also Caberni's sewing omblins. And I think even if you found other things that are not those, even if you found a great way from Argentina, I think Argentina is making killer wines. And the stuff that they're exporting right now is just dynamite. So that is where I would be looking for your regions. The last sort of section, and this is a personal thing and this. totally budget-dependent, your seller keeper wines. So for some of you, maybe you want something that you want to be able to drink in five years, 10 years, fingers crossed, 20 years. This is a place that I think you can make a little memory, have a little sentiment. We've talked about the fact that wine really helps to unlock memories for people. And I think when you have something really special, maybe that you're drinking on the day, maybe you just get one bottle for you and your partner, but maybe you get three more and you see them for down the line, for that 50th anniversary, for that 10th anniversary, for that 20th anniversary. So what are the wines that are appropriate in that instance? And by the way, some people may say that etiquette suggests that whatever you serve, you should be served for everyone. I actually don't buy that. To me, this is like, this is me in my fiance's day. And if we want to have a little something for ourselves and maybe we want to share it with some people, I think that's totally fine. So what are some examples of great bottles that are designed to age? The first is going to be vintage champagne. I mentioned Bollinger is one of the champagnes that we're going to be enjoying. And that for us is going to be the 2008 RD. So the Bollinger RD is one of my favorite and great vintage sort of tattoo-cubage champagnes. And that is going to be a wine that is going to age for a long, long time. Do not be afraid of champagnes' ability to age, especially if it's meat in that way. Now, what you don't want to do is get the champagne that's non-ventage. These are not champagnes that are designed to go the long haul. You want something that's specifically vintage-jaded and you want to make sure that you're spending at least around $100 for something like that. That's in general, I think, a good threshold for the spend on champagne. For red wine, Bordeaux. I am serving lots of Bordeaux at the wedding. I am long on Bordeaux right now. I think Bordeaux is a place where there is tremendous value that is such a classic to me. Right now, buying Bordeaux at the prices that we're getting it is like, it's like when people were buying Chanel back in the day and it was still extensive, but it got exorbitantly more extensive in the last five to 10 years. And it's a classic, right? All of those things that people were buying in the '80s and '90s in Chanel, like, they're still really relevant today. Chanel never dies. And to me, that's very much Bordeaux. Bordeaux is this classic region that can age for tons and tons of time. That always just sort of feels like it's the right choice. So Bordeaux is a great choice for that, whether it's left bank or right bank. You want to make sure that you're buying again something of quality. So if it's a first growth rate, that's very extensive, but it doesn't have to be some of the producers that we're serving on Tcha'atua Montepos, which is second growth or growth, I forget exactly. You kind of want to be looking not necessarily at their classifications, but you want to do pay attention to score and to vintage. This is where I think the critics really get Bordeaux right most of the time, and also vintage plays a huge role in Bordeaux's ability to age. So keep in mind, obviously, the wines that you're drinking at your wedding are not going to be current vintage. They're usually going to have about at least four years, if not five, which would probably be too young anyway. But look for great producers. There's some really good ones on wine access right now. Brinello de Monteschino. Again, I'm going to be serving Brinello de Monteschino at my wedding. I've got the 2010 Valdicava, a great producer of Brinello, but there's so many great producers of Brinello in Monteschino. And there really wines that love to go 20, 30, 40 years. Same thing goes for Brolo, another great Italian red wine that I think can age for lots of time. Naparcabernate is always great. It ages really beautifully, free for anniversaries. And of course, for those of you who are going to be maybe honeymooning there, who have sentimental ties to their such a great choice to enjoy your wedding, I also find that not the Cabernet. If you're going to enjoy it on your wedding day, can be a little easier to drink hunger than some of the other ones I just mentioned. Tips and hacks, magnums, great choice for wedding. I love magnums for weddings. I love magnums for parties. But people always ask, is it just for show? No, not necessarily. Magnums are a great way to just look great. They also like they pour faster. They produce waste. Sometimes you can also get really great deals on magnums. One of the tricks that I learned a few years ago was to look at some of the secondary market retailers that buy collections of wines and then resell them. A lot of times you can find really great large format, even larger than something like a magnum, kind of a fraction of the brays. And I found a really great bottle. I think it was a 2002 three liter of done Cabernet done Napa Valley Cabernet. I think we got it for like 400 bucks. I mean, it was like such a steal for what it was. So magnums are a great way to go. And we will be welcoming our guests with magnums or champagne because why not? How fun is that? Another tip. Chill everything. Even your reds. I know we've talked about cooling your reds down a time or two on this podcast. I do strongly believe in chilling your reds down. I think that's a great way to go to keep things fresh and lively and vibrant. So I would say especially because people, the room gets whether outside or inside the room gets warm. There's energy, people are, there's lots of things going on. So you want those reds to be a little cooler than you think they should be. Personal touches. If you're going to have something special, we're going to be doing that. Taking a moment to just share why something is special can be a really great way to bring your guests into the conversation around some of the wine selections that you made. So I'll share with you one of the things that we're doing. And hopefully no one from my family is listening. So one of the things that we're doing is the sort of these sort of bottle reveals. Now I mentioned it's 20 people, five of which are kids. It's really only 15 that we're dealing with. So what we're going to do is we've got all the wines that we've got for our wine bar. But about every 30 to 45 minutes, we're going to bring something out, a bottle that's really special to my fiance and I. And we're going to make a little toast. And we're going to share it with everyone. And it's going to be these sort of like surprise in the late moments to share some exceptionally good bottles. But also tell a story around this bottle and why it's meaningful to us. And to me, it was a great way to again, bring our guests into the conversation and also bring them into our journey and loop wine into that. Because ultimately, if you can tie these memories to the wines that you're drinking, it's such a strong bond. And it really, it will make for such a memorable moment. That's just something that I'm doing. It's again, small wedding. We're able to do some of these more interesting things. But I think if you can take that idea and riff on it in some way, that would be really fun. Seving labels and corks is a great thing to do. But also getting people to sign your wine bottles. So maybe if you do a magnum of something, get everybody to sign it, bring a pen that can write on glass and get everybody to sign the bottle, whether that's closed or open. You could potentially allocate something that you could enjoy later down the line. That's been saved by all of your guests or by it's been signed by all of your guests that you can enjoy in five or 10 years. So that is sort of my thoughts on the approach to all things wine. I want to go through some of the more frequently asked questions starting with, how much wine should I buy for my wedding? Ooh, this is a tough one. So the way that I estimate it is one glass per guest per hour. For a 750-milliliter bottle of wine, you're going to get about five glasses. That's a five-ounce pour. There's about 25 ounces per bottle of 750-milliliter wine. So it's one glass per guest per hour. That doesn't include your ceremony time. And you also need to be accounting for cocktails. You have to do the math on how much people are going to be drinking cocktails versus wine. So you should definitely taper it down if you feel like that percentage is higher for cocktails. But I would say one glass per guest per hour is a really safe, safe bet for how much wine. You're probably going to have loved everyone. But that's OK. Everybody needs loved to have a wine. What's the best type of sparkling wine for toast that won't blow my budget? Again, I think Prosecco is really your choice here. If it's just going to be for the toast specifically, go for Prosecco, get something that's decent, but isn't going to blow the budget. Because ultimately, again, that toast is not about the wine that toast is about whatever you're seeing. People are going to be crying. They're going to be clinging. They're going to be talking. They're not taking a moment for the wine here. So don't give it to the wine. The wine doesn't need it. Save your money. Do I need a rosé? Is that overkill? I think I'm talking about this already. I know what it talks about this already. But you don't need it. It's not necessarily overkill, but it does feel like a choice that you don't have to make. Do I need to pair wines to the menu, or can I just pick crowd pleasers? Going back to what I said at the top, you have to put a plan in place before you start picking your wines. We are pairing our two wines to what we're having for dinner. But that doesn't mean you have to. They can't. be the same wines. I think it's really nice when people do parrot. When you've got maybe a one, two, three course dinner that's happening. But if it's a buffet, if it's food trucks, if it's any of the other styles of food service, no. I don't think that you need to parot to your food. Just make it delicious, make it crowd please. There's very few instances in which I think anyone is expecting for the wine pairings to be like incredible. But again, if this is meaningful for you, if this is going to be a place that you want to show significance, then absolutely. How do I handle guests who only drink sweet wine? I love this question. Okay, we're not going to have a sweet wine just for them. Let's start there. Our wines are going to be dry. But what we're going to do is two things. Number one, and I'm just I'm so excited about this because I just discovered them when I was at Aspen Food and Wine, Champagne cocktail cubes. I will link the ones that I'm using below. I found these at the classic in the tense. And I've seen a few other versions since like I've seen I think flower is is F L O U W E R is one of the ones that I've seen since they're a little smaller. The ones that I I like are bigger and I'm going to I'm going to like them. These are cocktail cubes. You look like little sugar cubes that you would maybe like putting your coffee. But therefore, you are sparkling wine. And so what you're going to do is you're going to have those available for your guests. It's going to sweeten things up. It's maybe going to add a little bit of flavor. The other thing that you can do is get some flavored syrups. I found some great ones on Etsy's. So I found like rosemary syrup. I found a blueberry and a strawberry syrup. And those are actually some of those are going to be for the kids. But also that's going to be a great way for you to just like just add a little like simple syrup or flavored syrup to the wine. Maybe making just for its maybe don't. But I think this is a great way to accommodate those who are going to want something sweet. Most of the time, someone who wants a sweeter wine is going to be also okay with cocktails. And so I think this is an instance where you don't necessarily have to make a specific accommodation for that. If you want to, you certainly can. And that's not to discredit sweet wines by any means that I once mentioned. We are having a dessert like an actual dessert wine. But I do think that you're you're veering off the path of the large majority versus the small minority. And I think in a wedding situation, you have to go with the large majority in this case. But making some concessions or accommodations for what people might prefer. And I think the cocktail cubes are a great way to do that. And I think the simple syrups are a great way to do that as well. The last thing I'm going to mention is dessert wine. I actually think that this is maybe one of the more over-look spots that if you wanted to, you don't have to. If you wanted to, I think dessert wine is so fun. And if you want something that will age, this is also a great way to do it. So when the wedding cake is cut, maybe in lieu of doing a champagne toast, you do a dessert wine toast. Usually, you know, your pour is for dessert wine or super small. You're looking at one, maybe two ounces of dessert wine, just something sweet to kind of nibble on with your cake or with your dessert, whatever you're having. We are doing the 2013 Client Constanceia, which is a delicious sparkling wine of Vanaconstance. It's a sparkling wine coming from South Africa. And so I actually, I had pulled Eduardo and Laura to see what their take was because I was kind of between that one and another one. And I said, what do you think? And they said, well, what kind of cake are you having? And I said, well, it's too tiered. One tier is going to be red velvet. The other tier is going to be carrot cake. And they said, definitely the Vanaconstance, that's going to be your pick. So I'm very excited for that. I'm excited to have a dessert wine moment. And again, I think dessert wine, if Bordeaux feels out of budget, if champagne feels out of budget, dessert wine, you can get some really great like port. You can get some really great dessert wine for not terribly expensive. So that could be a personal choice of yours to make if you so choose. I want to keep sipping on this wine. Hopefully you're going back this if you're drinking with me. Oh, it's eight. It's opening up so much. And it's giving me even more of that like pino side of things that I really love. This feels very pino drip and this feels almost, you know, that savory cherry mushroom thing, but like light almost reminds me of like a like a great provoncil style rosé, but in bubble form. Mm. I love it so much. I'm really excited about this wine. So I guess in closing, if you have any questions about anything that I just said, you are welcome to DM me. I will of course respond as I pause as much as I possibly can. But here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to list below some specific wines that fit underneath each of the categories that I mentioned from each of the different regions in sparkling white red. And I'll give you some rosé options as well if you feel like you want those. But I think that's a great weight and this particular episode with what you might need to plan your own wedding. If you are planning your own wedding, if you are in the midst of that, God speak to you. I hope it's going great. I hope you're having fun. I know everybody says have fun. Just enjoy it. And I know that's easier said than done. Having been through it myself. There's a lot that goes into it that people maybe don't always realize or forget if it's been super, super long. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. I'm looking forward to sharing how everything goes on my end. Oh, speaking of which, I need to tell you what we're serving at my wedding. So I'm going to give you the full list because I know some of you are excited to find out what what will be there. So let me pull that up for you guys. Okay, these are the wines that I'm serving at my wedding again to reiterate. We are having a small wedding. And I decided that my budget for wine was going to be skewed on the higher side. This is not what you have to do. But I know some of you were interested in knowing what I'm serving. So I'm going to I'm going to tell you, but these don't come for me when you're like, these wines are so expensive. I know they're expensive. They're more than anyone should spend really, but this is what I wanted to do because it's my wedding. I get you to decide if I'm going to spend $30,000 in florals or, you know, a big budget on wine. And so here we are. Starting with our on arrival champagne. One of my favorite, favorite producers of champagne, the bill cart, Simone. I know a lot of you know this wine, but what a lot of you maybe don't know is that they make in addition to their very famous, very delicious rosé. They make some wonderful single vineyard and single vintage wines. So we've got on arrival at the 2008 Cuvé Nicola Francois, which is a long, long, long, and then we have their vintage dated 2010 rosé, both of those are coming out of Magnum. We also have a few bottles of 2008 Boulanger, excuse me, 2008 R.D. So this is going to be, I think just for my fiance and I made me to get ready with. We'll see how it goes. I'm kind of I'm letting that fit in where it needs to. But then right after the ceremony, we're drinking a really special bottle that a friend gifted us a vintage, 2000 vintage crew. This is a very special bottle that we we wanted to have a moment after the ceremony where we could just sit down. But of course, we're not going to drink a whole bottle to ourselves in 15 minutes. So we'll probably share with our family for our cocktail reception. And also post in our, we've got the 2013 Dom Perignon, the crew non vintage and then the 2009 Ville Car Simone, QV Louis Blosset Blanc, as well as Boulanger rosé. And then I also have, I mentioned those cocktail cubes. I've got the Le Haert Faire, one of my favorites. This is an extra brute champagne. So we're starting on the super, super dry side. So that what we do add those champagne cocktail cubes, it's not going to feel really unbalanced and overwhelmingly sweet. So the Le Haert Faire is going to be for drinking obviously. But if anyone wants a champagne cocktail, that's what that will be for. For our white wines, we have the 2021 Hans Vershing Epofer Coulog Silvaner. I mentioned Silvaner is sort of your in between Shardney, Saving a Blanc. I love Hans Vershing. This is my favorite winery suit visit in Germany. We also 2023 JJ Prume, a villainous son and a cabinet's reasling 2021 Car Toyser Hall freesling. And then for our reds, we've got the 2021 rings spade for Gunther, which you guys will remember from our previous ship. And so this is a German Pinnoir. I've got a 2021 burgundy. It's a Vone on Japan from Timmy and Montele. 2010, Chateau Margot, Pavillon Rouge. So this is their third label, second label, I forget. I think second one. And then the 2010 Valdicava, Brunella de Montalchino, 2016 Chateau Montrose, which is a bit of a gamble if I'm being honest, because I think it's going to be really young. But I love Montrose. This was a wine that I discovered when I was in Bordeaux right before I actually met my fiancee. So I felt like that was sort of an appropriate wine. And then for dinner, we will be having the Domingue de la Gélie, Pulling the Montrechet, La Trebleau 2022 vintage. I'm not going to tell you right this second, two of the wines because they're from the winery that we're getting married at. So I want to keep that a little bit of a surprise. So if you want to know what those wines are, you could head to our Instagram. And I will reveal those on our Instagram after the wedding is done. But I'm going to keep those a secret for now. And then we also have our dessert wine. So I mentioned it's the 2013 wine constancia, a bit in a constance. So that's, that's the gist of it. That's what we're having in our wedding. Maybe that's interesting to you. Maybe it's not. But I know some of you were interested in knowing what was what was happening in that department. And for each of those, I've got maybe like two to three bottles each. So it's not a ton of wine. We also have a party the following day that any wine that doesn't can get consumed in either wedding will just come to the party of the day after. All right, you guys, I have a wedding to get to. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are not a member of the Wine Access and Filtered Podcast One Club, you can find everything you need to join in the description below. You can also find this episode in full, both on YouTube and video forum. And of course, wherever you're listening to this on all the different platforms. And you can find us on Instagram @WineAccessUnfiltered. I will post some wine-related content there. You can see how it all worked out. You could message me. If you want to message me specific questions about wine-related things, feel free to do so on my Instagram at ZombieVont. I can answer you a little faster there. Beyond that, I wish you all the best at whatever is going on in your life right now, whether that's a wedding or otherwise. I hope whatever weddings you do have to attend to, you have some great wines. And I hope you found this episode helpful. We'll be back in another two weeks. We'll meet you next episode. Until then, cheers. (upbeat music)