French Wine for Weddings: How to Pair Wine for Your Wedding
Have you ever wondered how to incorporate French wine into your wedding?
Careful planning enhances this special event, and carefully selected French wines can help create a memorable occasion.
Before you decide on anything, you’ll want to make appropriate choices based on your budget and your preferences or what you think the guests would appreciate. What foods will you be serving at which event, and which wines go well with them?
First, this post focuses on reliable wines with great value. A second post will consider suggested menus and wine upgrades.
To start, when we planned our daughter’s wedding, I had returned from Bordeaux and brought several fine wines with me. I associated wines with French friends and pleasant occasions.
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For the Rehearsal Dinner, I served a magnum of classified Graves wine from our daughter’s birth year.
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Then the Wedding Dinner featured a fine Muscadet, Marquis de Goulaine, from a historic Loire Valley property near Nantes.
If you have visited some French wine châteaux, serve those wines, adding your personal touch to the occasion. Many French parents put aside a case of fine wine from each child’s birth year. It will surely be perfect (and then unobtainable) to serve at that child’s wedding, many years later.
Here are some events to plan with suggested menus and wines:
French Wines for Weddings
Rehearsal Dinner
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The Rehearsal Dinner is a convivial affair for close relatives and those directly involved in the wedding. It is usually held in a restaurant or club, with the family bringing special wines.
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First, you might have chilled salmon with dill sauce, Roast Leg of Lamb with mint sauce, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, and green beans with slivered almonds.
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Now let me suggest a Marquis de Goulaine Muscadet sur lie, a refreshing white wine, that complements the salmon perfectly.
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Next, the Leg of Lamb is the classic dish for Bordeaux, so look for a flavorful wine such as a Château Clarke from Listrac, a fine property that deserves to be even better known.
Wedding Luncheon or Dinner
You will have a Wedding Luncheon or perhaps a Wedding Dinner to plan. It all depends upon the time for the wedding itself.
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Start with Quiche Lorraine, Grilled Chicken Breasts with baked zucchini and rice pilaf, with fruit-filled meringues, and the Wedding Cake.
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An easy wine for weddings: Offer your guests a treat with chilled Chablis to go with the Quiche Lorraine, perhaps Sauternes “Vaillons” Ier Cru.
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And with chicken, offer a choice of Rothschild Mouton Cadet Red or White.
For the toasts of the bride and groom, only champagne will do. I suggest individual glasses be served of light Taittinger brut.
Sunday Morning Buffet
Sunday Morning Buffet may well be part of the wedding plans.
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This is usually held at some member of the family’s home. Now it is for out-of-town guests – but everybody will show up!
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Finally, I would serve a fine French sparkling wine, a Crémant de Limoux, either by itself or as a festive Mimosa with orange juice. Avoiding mixed drinks at the buffet is probably wise, and your guests will appreciate the festive bubbly touch!
Hopefully, this will help with pairing French wine for weddings. And don’t forget the honeymoon, how does a romantic trip to France sound?!
