Wedding booze - what to get and where from

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

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I need to source some alcohol for my upcoming wedding. We have guestimated that we will need approx 24 bottles of wine and 12 bottles of something sparkling.

For the sparkling stuff we want to avoid champagne due to the cost, so was thinking of Prosecco or something similar.

For the wine we've got no idea. We'd probably go for a 50/50 split of red/white. But pretty much everyone we know has a different preference on the colour/region etc so there's no way we're going to please everyone, therefore we'd like a reasonable all-rounder (if such a thing exists!). Neither my or the missus drink wine so are utterly clueless on this front.

Has anyone got any suggestions on what to get and/or where to get it?

Our main concern is cost. We want to keep it as cheap as possible without offending anyone. Bearing in mind they will have lots of it and it will be free, hopefully people's normal standard will have slipped somewhat!

Thanks for any advice.
 
Have you confirmed that the venue is happy with you providing the alcohol and/or doesn't charge a fee per bottle or something equally annoying? Most venues seem to be very funny about not getting to charge you for food or drink.
 
FrenchTart said:
Have you confirmed that the venue is happy with you providing the alcohol and/or doesn't charge a fee per bottle or something equally annoying? Most venues seem to be very funny about not getting to charge you for food or drink.
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Yea they charge an extortionate corkage fee, but we reckon it will still work out cheaper to buy our own and pay the fee than buy it through them.
 
Southern Rhone for the red is commonly appreciated - something like a Gigondas or Vacqueyras are both decent. On the white front, Picpoul de Pinet is always a very good option, cheap and goes with practically everything (Chateau de la Mirande is a strong one).

Edit - if you want to go really cheap on the red, but remain decent, Berry Brothers own stuff is good (their Cote du Rhone and the Good Ordinary Claret).
 
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I bought a load of wine from tesco when they had the 3 for 2 plus 25% off 6 bottles. I filled a trolley fot £120 ish and all bar a few were vinegar.

The only supermarket that has decent wine for numpties is waitrose.
 
Regy53 said:
how many people are going?
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~75, although some of those are kids and some of the adults don't drink wine.

After doing some sums, the wine must work out at less than £5.50 per bottle for it to be worthwhile (i.e. be cheaper than the house stuff they sell taking into account the corkage charge).

I'd seen that tesco are doing the 25% off, but could do with some suggestions as to what to go for.
 
might the virgin wine type schemes been any use in this instance. I never really bought wine in bulk but if I were some of the deals were quite useful

I bought some flowers earlier today and received a £50 of free win offer if you want me to send it to you I can

Virgin Wines are delighted to offer Interflora customers an exclusive 12-bottle case of boutique wines with a delicious £50 voucher saving! With cases worth over £109 for only £59.88, you'll pay just £4.99 a bottle!
 
Get the Prosecco from Aldi. The cheaper one is better at a fiver a pop.

Get the red from Waitrose - Cuvee Chausseur. It is a very very good wine for a fiver and a crowd pleaser.

Tesco are selling some decent NZ Sauvignon at the moment for £6.49 a bottle.
 
24 bottles for 75 people..dream on.

You need to figure at least 1 bottle per person, plus other drinks.

Just pay someone to supply the wine.
 
maccapacca said:
I bought a load of wine from tesco when they had the 3 for 2 plus 25% off 6 bottles. I filled a trolley fot £120 ish and all bar a few were vinegar.

The only supermarket that has decent wine for numpties is waitrose.
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I've had nice wine from both Tesco and Sainsburys (and other places of course). Admittedly nothing I've tried that has been in the ridiculous Tesco offers has been that great though.

mpledge52 said:
~75, although some of those are kids and some of the adults don't drink wine.

After doing some sums, the wine must work out at less than £5.50 per bottle for it to be worthwhile (i.e. be cheaper than the house stuff they sell taking into account the corkage charge).

I'd seen that tesco are doing the 25% off, but could do with some suggestions as to what to go for.
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Sounds like a good excuse for you to buy a selection of bottles in advance in order to sample them and decide what you like best ;)

'Harry said:
24 bottles for 75 people..dream on.

You need to figure at least 1 bottle per person, plus other drinks.

Just pay someone to supply the wine.
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It sounds like at least 1/3rd of the people won't be drinkers but I do agree that provisioning 1/2 a bottle of wine per person might be a bit on the hopeful side.
 
We had 92 people inc 12 kids, so 80 adults. We had over 160 bottles. Just wine that is anyway. Christ.

I'd get them to provide the house if you have to keep under a 5er. Just saves you the arse ache and you'll be hitting about that cost anyway.
 
Regy53 said:
I bought some flowers earlier today and received a £50 of free win offer if you want me to send it to you I can
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Thanks for the kind offer, but you saying that reminded me that I've got the same voucher kicking about from something similar! I'll take a look.

'Harry said:
24 bottles for 75 people..dream on.

You need to figure at least 1 bottle per person, plus other drinks.

Just pay someone to supply the wine.
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randomshenans said:
We had 92 people inc 12 kids, so 80 adults. We had over 160 bottles. Just wine that is anyway. Christ.

I'd get them to provide the house if you have to keep under a 5er. Just saves you the arse ache and you'll be hitting about that cost anyway.
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2 bottles of wine per person :eek:. This is only during the sit down meal, so 3 and a half hours tops. If everyone gets through 2 bottles of wine in that time then I think we'll have more problems than the cost of the wine!

I've done some rough calculations and reckon there'll be about ~50 people that will drink wine. Only 5 or 6 of them are heavy drinkers, and ~10 of them are old enough that half a bottle of wine will put them on the floor.

Anyway, the amount we need to buy doesn't sway the cost in favour of the venue or buying it in ourselves so I'm only concerned about what to by at the minute, not how much.
 
we got our wine from virgin wines, basically phoned them up said I was going to order a load and they sent out a case to try with a price list - we got rose/white all around £5/6 a bottle
we got our red from Tesco direct as we couldn't get one we liked enough from virgin for the money
(we had a few friends around for a couple of tasting nights as well to help us pick, so it wasn't just to our tastes)
for prosseco we got a load of it last Christmas from asda as they had it on cheap - you're coming into prime time for deals on wine/fizz at the moment!


we allowed a bottle a person (6 bottles per table of 6 - 1 of each twice if you know what I mean)
I still have two cases of red and a case of white, 8 bottles of fizz -
but we also made 80 pints of homebrew and a 5 gallon container of sloe gin based cocktail for evening guests - pretty messy night!
 
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Seriously, be careful with Prosecco, many of the cheap ones are just chemicals in a bottle and most contain almost twice the sugar of champagne/cava - FAR too sweet for a toast/aperitif.

Go for Champagne or Cava, according to taste and budget unless you can find a REALLY good genuine Prosecco (probably around £15).

For white, I've never found anyone who dislikes a decent Chardonnay Viognier if you can find one on budget but the previous suggestion of Picpoul de Pinet is good too, specially if there's any fish on the menu.

Check out Australian or Spanish/Italian reds - they're far better value than French in most cases.
 
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covenantuk said:
Seriously, be careful with Prosecco, many of the cheap ones are just chemicals in a bottle and most contain almost twice the sugar of champagne/cava - FAR too sweet for a toast/aperitif.

Go for Champagne or Cava, according to taste and budget unless you can find a REALLY good genuine Prosecco (probably around £15).
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or you can taste the stuff they put on offer around the festive period and make sure it tastes ok
 
The UK has massive import duty on wines, it's like fixed at a 5er or something (can't remember the exact breakdown) so that when you buy a 7quid bottle, you're actually getting a 2quid bottle, when you buy a 10quid one, it's actually a 5er etc.
If you could trip over to France you would be limited to french but you'd easily hit that budget.
We got all of ours for less than 5euros a bottle and it was really decent. But then that's a mission, which is why I'd get them to do it lol
 
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