Choosing your wedding wine

By Konnie Kara on 25 Mar 2011 No comments

So, I spoke to Angela Mount, resident wine expert at Your Favourite Wines (formerly Gondola.co.uk, now www.yourfavouritewines.co.uk) very early this morning. 

The wine retail site is owned by Peter Jones from Dragon’s Den. Angela, who was a former buyer for Sommerfield - is the website’s wine expert. She famously had her taste buds insured for £10million when she was head of wine buying at the supermarket.  In addition to running yourfavouritewines.com, Angela does a lot of work in terms of food and wine matching, speaks at lots of wine events, and has worked with top celebrity chefs such as James Martin and Gordon Ramsay at events such as the Good Food Show. The site gets on average 1000 orders a day and is fully concentrating on the wedding market too.  For this purpose her job involves touring the world and in her own words recently:  ‘tasting her way through hundreds of French and Spanish wines’ to further add to the selection at Your Favourite Wines. Where does one apply for a job like that?!

I had to buy the wine for the registry wedding in house at the country manor house (which turned out to be pretty darn expensive when the bill came since everyone was having so much fun we ordered more Champagne for after the speeches). For the Indian wedding I am paying a corkage fee to the venue which is included in the package price and which means I can order and buy my own wine. I still hate that venues charge ridiculous amounts for corkage, and cannot understand how they get away with it all really. (Maybe it’s time the wedding industry was regulated like other industries and horrific and unreasonable charges are made a thing of the past?)

I want branded wine for the Indian wedding because from a straw poll with a few friends and relatives, they all found themselves more comfortable drinking a named wine they recognised as opposed to a non-name wine which, for many guests is either intimidating or just lost on.

Now I know what I like to drink on a Friday or Saturday night, but choosing wine for a wedding is a whole different ball game. You have to not only choose a wine that will suit most palates, it also has to match your menu. What you serve and how you serve it can really help set the tone for your wedding day. Alcohol is also one of the biggest wedding expenses and while you should never serve anything so cheap it tastes like paint stripper and gives guests a blackout of a hangover the next day, you don’t have to pay premium prices for wines you like. I came across Your Favourite Wines quite by chance, I think either via a search engine or from one of the money saving deals websites I regularly hang out in these days. It turns out, bulk buying actually affords you some good discounts over at Your Favourite Wines.

I emailed my menu over to Angela, who loved my choice of makhani daal, spiced fish with cumin and coriander, Punjabi style home made chicken and lamb curries, saag paneer, fried chilli plantain and lots of other fabulous Indian treats for my massive banquet. She immediately suggested I pick a ‘lively, fruity white, and a soft, juicy red, with low tannin, to balance the food on the menu.’  Angela knew I wanted a nice, good quality and well established wine brand which would deliver a fantastic flavour and match what will be fantastic food.

So I’m just about to leave blogging for now and place my bulk order of Casillero del Diablo (which is on offer at Your Favourite Wines at the moment)  because both the Sauvignon blanc and the cabernet, in Angela’s eyes, would work amazingly with my menu.  There are no harsh tannins and the wines are, in Angela’s words: ‘silky, juicy and fruity and will embrace the spices of your menu rather than fight against them.’ Can’t. Wait.

If, like me you’re interested in pairing the perfect wine to your food and learning more about Your Favourite Wine, Angela Mount has all the answers:

Can you tell us a bit about Your Favourite Wines?

Angela Mount: We are a very new online venture, and only launched a few months ago, so at the moment, we are very small but beautiful! We believe we have a unique and very different offer to other online wine companies out there.  The range of wines that we sell online focuses very much on well known wine names and brands. I ran the wine department at Somerfield supermarkets for a number of years and I understand the value of brands and how wine consumers and shoppers look for the reassurance and reliability of wines they know and trust. Your Favourite Wines does exactly that. We bring you wines you know and love, delivered directly to your door.  You don’t have to order 12 bottles, we will deliver anything from a single bottle. So instead of facing row after row of wines in the supermarket aisles and having to carry your wines home, you can sit back (preferably with a glass of wine), browse our range online, take our top tips and advice and order anything from our special offers and mixed cases, to that special bottle of Dom Perignon.

How do you help brides go about choosing the right wine for her wedding?

Angela Mount: As Your Favourite Wines develops, we’ll be launching more and more sections on the site about how to choose wines, and what wines go best with different types of cuisine.  Choosing wine can be quite a scary and confusing process, however much you know about it; and quite frankly a lot of people don’t want to be bombarded with too much detailed ‘wine speak’. Women are far more practical than men ( when aren’t we!) when it comes to buying wine; we want to know how much it costs, what’s the style and, importantly if our chosen wine will go well with what we are cooking this weekend! I’m a working mum with three children, so I know how busy life is and how little time most women have, so part of my job is to give practical advice about what to buy. There really is no right or wrong in wine selection, but I can offer tips and hints about what works best for different occasions.

What are your guidelines for how much wine bride and grooms should order?

Angela Mount: For weddings, I would tend to work on one to two glasses of sparkling wine or champagne and then about half a bottle per head, with probably slightly more white than red. It’s worth buying that little bit extra, just in case.

How does a bride who buys wine online know which ones will go with her menu?

Angela Mount: Well it all depends on the menu, but there are some general guidelines, and in the spring I’ll be launching a series of food and wine matching features and blogs, together with some video content on Your Favourite Wines. I hope it helps brides tremendously. Until then, however I am really happy to answer questions and queries from brides via email at

info@yourfavouritewines.com, or by phone and we can help with advice. Generally, my top tips would be for couples to choose crowd pleasing wines, which make for easy drinking and are refreshing, lively and full of fruit.  So New Zealand Sauvignon, Pinot Grigio, or citrussy South African Chenin blanc or classic Chablis work well, especially with seafood and fish starters.

For reds, my advice would be to stick to lighter, fruitier styles, for several reasons.  Quite often the main course is chicken, which suits lighter reds, and secondly, you don’t want anything too heavy, alcoholic and overpowering to send people to sleep before the party starts!  Some people don’t like big, bold reds, so choose something softer (especially if your wedding is in the Summer), such as Pinot Noir from Chile or New Zealand, Beaujolais or Rioja. A big trend for summer weddings now is Rose. I’m a great fan of Rose wine with food, especially food with an edge of spice; if you’re planning a spicy feast for your wedding, look no further than something like Montana Pinot Noir Rose, or Casillero del Diablo Shiraz Rose – these are dry roses, but bursting with ripe, strawberry fruit flavours, which really bring out the best in spicy food. They’re also my favourite wines to go with prawns and tuna.

What are the top five questions a bride needs to ask her wine merchant?

How much wine do I need given the number of guests? Are delivery costs the same however much wine I order?  (The answer is yes with Your Favourite Wines). What’s the best sparkling wine to buy for the toasts? Here’s my menu, what wines do you suggest within my budget? What wines shall I have for the evening party?

What types of wine are most popular at weddings?

My top tip for wedding wines is to choose wines that have wide appeal; nothing too fancy, nothing too controversial.  This is not the time to experiment with that funky little wine from Brazil that you found a couple of months ago.   Nor is it the time to wheel out either the big blockbuster Shiraz and oaky Chardonnay, or to spend a fortune on top notch wines. Wedding guests are there to celebrate, socialise and enjoy the event; wine is the accompaniment and needs to just enhance the level of enjoyment.

Let’s start with sparkling. By all means buy that special bottle of Perrier Jouet or Dom Perignon for you and your new husband to enjoy, but for your guests, either select a great value champagne, such as our smooth, round and creamy Chaillot Champagne NV, currently at an amazing £15.99, or serve the stylish fizz of the day, Prosecco, which offers a delicate, dry, lively style of wine, easy drinking and delicious. For white wines, my vote would go to the lighter, zestier styles of white, such as Sauvignon blanc and Chenin blanc; Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay are also very popular.  In terms of red Australian Cabernets and Shiraz wines are often top of the bill, but make sure they are not too heavy or tannic.

Do you have anything else in the pipeline at Your Favourite Wines?

Everyone wants help in choosing wine to go with food, be it for home entertaining, or when you are faced with the terrors of a wine list in a restaurant.  So I’m very excited about a new series of videos that we are doing in conjunction with toptable.com to match the best wines to different cuisines, from Indian to classic European.  Each month I interview a top chef and we taste a range of his signature dishes and I try to find the right wines to go with the style of food that they are creating, and that people will also be cooking at home. This month we’re featuring Italian food, and you can see the video and take advantage of a special 25% off offer on Italian wine at www.toptable.com/yourfavouritewines. It’s to make wine and food matching accessible to all and to help take the fear out of choosing wine to match with food!

Your Favourite Wines are currently offering 25 % off a selection of big brand wines and iVillage brides can benefit from an additional extra £5 off when they buy £20 worth of wines to try, and then £100 off when they spend £400 or more on wine for their weddings. Please type in “iVILL5” in the promotional box. The offer runs until the end of January.