Marquee & Catering
A Sparkling Affair
A toast to love and romance, a celebratory clink of gleaming flutes and with effervescence uncommonly good, champagne is truly king for a wedding day celebration. Once confined to the rich and famous, champagne is still considered today the finest of all wines and certainly one that adds a sense of royalty to the wedding occasion.
On the French hillsides of chalky earth and delicate sunshine, just northeast of Paris, lies the famed Champagne region. Sliced in two by the meandering River Marne, the historic towns of Reims and Épernay abound with grape varieties that are blended together to create one of the world’s most glamorous drinks. The Champagne region is unique for many reasons, not least for the glorious sparkle and fizz of its produce, but for the history of its ‘Grandes Maisons’ including Louis Roderer, Veuve Clicquot, Moet et Chandon and the ultimate, Dom Pérignon.
When Dom Pérignon, a monk at the Abbey of Hautvillers, accidentally discovered champagne, wine which ferments for a second time in the bottle and whose gasses create its signature bubbles, little did he know that 300 years later the world would still be enthralled. For those of you planning your wedding, it is certainly worth considering champagne to add some extra sparkle to a welcome reception or to mark your wedding toasts, even if you feel it may be a little over your budget.
If you are a celebrity-watcher, the royal choice is Louis Roderer Cristal, chosen by David and Victoria Beckham at their Irish nuptials, as well as the toast of Hollywood’s golden couples. As the name suggests, Cristal is the jewel of Maison Louis Roderer, so be prepared to extend the budget for this choice. If you do, you will rarely taste finer champagne. If your budget strings do not stretch quite as far as the Beckhams, fear not! The reality is that even if your bubbly is not from the renowned French region, excellent sparkling wines are available from the New World and can provide just as much fizz. The main difference is that these wines cannot be called champagne – this distinction is confined to the French region itself and stringently enforced by its laws. Elsewhere, sparkling wine labels will include notations such as ‘méthode champenoise’ or ‘méthode traditionelle’, which indicate that similar processes to those used in Champagne are used to produce this glorious drink.
The best advice we can give you here at South East Wedding magazine is to start by perusing your hotel or venue’s wine list and review the champagne and sparkling wine options. What you should be looking for firstly are the traditional French champagnes, such as Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Moet et Chandon, Taittinger, Bollinger, Piper Heidsick, Charles Heidsick or Laurent Perrier, to name a few. The latter labels mentioned here are widely available in most hotels in the region and some will stock the very finest including Louis Roderer and Dom Pérignon.
The next thing to look out for is vintage or non-vintage. Vintage champagne refers to wine produced from grapes all produced from the same year’s harvest. Non-vintage, as the name suggests, refers to champagne produced from grapes harvested from several years. Vintage champagne is naturally more expensive as the raw materials are at a premium! Non-vintage champagne is lesser expensive and since all French champagne is formed from blending grape varieties of the region together, the quality will not be much less superior. ‘Brut’ on a champagne label refers to its level of dryness and brut champagne is the standard to go for as it is the most appropriate for drinking with savoury dishes as with your wedding feast. If you are a New World wine drinker, meaning you enjoy wines from New Zealand, Chile, Australia, Argentina or California to mention a few, then sparkling wines from these countries may be the best option for you. You will already be familiar with the style of wines from these countries so making your sparkling wine selection may be a little easier. The same guidelines apply re vintage and non-vintage.
If you feel that the champagne and sparkling wines listed appear somewhat over-priced then the next step is to look around at the many wine stores across the region where you will receive advice on regions, vintages and costs per box (usually 6 per box for fine champagnes or 12 per case for more widely available varieties). Buying champagne from a wine store may offer better value, but hotels naturally have to apply a corkage charge based on their storage, preparation and service of the hallowed drink during your wedding reception.
Corkage charges are usually highlighted in your wedding brochure, and if they are not, then it’s best to get this information early on to help with planning and budgeting. You then need to compare cost per bottle from the wine store, plus corkage per bottle at the hotel to give you the overall price to factor in to your budget. It’s often best to order from the hotel as the difference is rarely significant enough to warrant a wider search and then there’s the trouble of collecting it and delivering it to the hotel and that’s time that could be spent on other tasks. However, if the difference is worth it for you, then go for it!
Once you have made your selection the next question to ask is when to serve? To add to the occasion, it is recommended to serve your fizz and sparkle on arrival – first impressions last! It certainly adds to the welcome and since champagne is not so often enjoyed, it’s fitting that it’s available on this, of all days. Most guests will have no more than two glasses on arrival before moving on to their favourite tipple from the bar or enjoying a cocktail.
There are 6 glasses of champagne per standard bottle on average so you order 1 bottle per 3 people, so for example, 120 people equals 40 bottles. Your venue will be flexible so if you want to splash out on 20 or 30 bottles only, then that’s all that will be served and everyone’s happy!
The other notable time to serve some sparkle is during your bridal toasts and speeches. There’s nothing nicer than the clink of a multitude of glasses in toasting the happy couple and it highlights this very personal part of the Reception. In this case, a glass per person is appropriate, so for 120 guests you’ll need only 20 bottles!
If you really wanted to do something extravagant, there are quarter bottles of champagne available from many retail stores and these could be placed in ice buckets (large round ones, not the top hat variety) on the centre of the dining tables so that guests can pop some corks themselves during the speeches to fill their own glasses for the toasts. Something to consider if you want to be a little different maybe?
As with all aspects of your wedding day, the most important thing is to make sure that it’s planned with only both of you in mind. Therefore, if offering champagne to all your guests just won’t fit in with your budget then why not get a bottle just for two? Enjoy it the day after your wedding in your own time, or when you get back from honeymoon to toast your new life together. In this case, break out the savings and go for the Louis Roderer Cristal to really do it in true Hollywood style! After all, this is the beginning of a really sparkling affair.
