Booze Cruise to Calais for Wedding Wine, still worth it?

[urquattroGus]

Soon time to start purchasing wine for our wedding.

In the past the booze cruise has been a no brainer, but I was wondering, with the weaker pound etc...

To me it looks like Champagne is still much better value, but I wasn't so sure about regular wine.

Calais Wine superstore and Majestic are the two that I have looked at, not a huge deal of choice either. I understand both will pay for your crossing, but there is also the time, getting there and back etc.

Budget is about £8-10 a bottle for the wine and perhaps £22-27 for the champagne, or maybe English sparkling.

I'm tempted to pop over to the wine society headquarters and try some whites and reds, for example a nice Rioja Crianza, value Italian red etc would do the job red wise.

Or just use a local wine independant merchant and haggle...

Any tips from those who have been through this?

[Slushbox]

Was in Calais last week. The Booze warehouses have the advantage you can taste wines, have special offers and pay for the Chunnel for bigger orders. Also you can pre-shop/choose online. Can be a bun-fight in the busy season.

However, Carrefours in the Cité Europe also has a huge selection if you know your labels. I picked up three half cases (six bottles) of a very nice 2016 Chateaux-bottled claret for €2.20 a bottle and a dozen swiggable sparkling whites at the same price.

The 'offers' selection aisle is on the far right as you go in, just in front of the magazines section, along with bicycles, pallets of biere, and lawn mowers.

Stock seems to change rapidment, and the offers tend to be French, not Italian. :-)

We shopped at Calais wine supermarket for a large wedding a couple of years ago, they had offers on Taittinger non-vintage for about 20% less than UK prices. The bride wanted disposable Proseccos at €3 a bottle, which we got.

Edited by Slushbox on Monday 22 July 10:41

[Rutter]

I'm sure you have checked or have it in hand but its worth asking whether your venue charge a corkage fee as some of the ones we looked at wanted far too much it made it better value to go with what they had on offer.

[urquattroGus]

Rutter said:

I'm sure you have checked or have it in hand but its worth asking whether your venue charge a corkage fee as some of the ones we looked at wanted far too much it made it better value to go with what they had on offer.

Thanks, good point, but It's a marquee on our field so thankfully no worries about silly corkage fees etc

[malks222]

don’t forget to look at the your normal supermarkets. we got all our wine from tesco and sainsburys for our wedding last summer.

if you go online they quite often have deals/ offers if you buy 6 or more bottles you get 25% off (tesco wine i think). our only problem was we are in scotland and they don’t do alcohol pricing promotions here (cheers snp) so had to do ‘click and collect’ over the border!

[Type R Tom]

malks222 said:

don’t forget to look at the your normal supermarkets. we got all our wine from tesco and sainsburys for our wedding last summer.

if you go online they quite often have deals/ offers if you buy 6 or more bottles you get 25% off (tesco wine i think). our only problem was we are in scotland and they don’t do alcohol pricing promotions here (cheers snp) so had to do ‘click and collect’ over the border!

To add to that Sainsbury are doing 25% off when you buy 6 at the moment, including the reduced wines.

This bottle works out at £8.25

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/chapel-down...

[akirk]

not sure what your tastes will be - but at my recent wedding we had the champagne from Aldi (Veuve Monsigny Champagne Brut) - which is a major loss leader of theirs - currently at £12.49 a bottle - though we bought ahead at Christmas when they reduce it to £9.99 a bottle - a champagne I really like and more than a match for bottles twice the price - if you haven't drunk it then buy a bottle and try it... very well received with a lot of guests knowing their wines... also bear in mind that at most weddings the guests will simply knock back the drink hardly tasting it - so as long as quality is good enough I wouldn't be spending un-necessarily on better wines - they will be appreciated by very few people

the Sainsbury 25% off is I think finishing today and Waitrose have just run theirs, so others may follow... you can track supermarket promotions here: https://www.wine-pages.com/community/threads/super...

but I would definitely consider looking at options in the UK versus the price abroad - I would also consider talking to a local wine merchant who may do you a deal depending how much you are buying - and may well throw in glass hire etc...

[sgrimshaw]

If you've got time to place an order to sample some of these, there are some very nice wines at silly prices here:

https://www.portugalvineyards.com/en/

The house red in my local portuguese restaurant is Dona Helena (as is their White and Rose), which sells at a reasonable £14.75.

I can buy it for £3.09 a bottle here

https://www.portugalvineyards.com/en/wines/5980-do...

[tribalsurfer]

sgrimshaw said:

If you've got time to place an order to sample some of these, there are some very nice wines at silly prices here:

https://www.portugalvineyards.com/en/

The house red in my local portuguese restaurant is Dona Helena (as is their White and Rose), which sells at a reasonable £14.75.

I can buy it for £3.09 a bottle here

https://www.portugalvineyards.com/en/wines/5980-do...

That looks amazing prices, what's the shipping costs like ?

[craigjm]

When would you be making this trip?

[urquattroGus]

Have ordered 12 wines from majestic UK that are also available in Calais majestic.

Going to try them all with my family and see what we think. Most bottles are between £2-5 cheaper than in UK.

Then i can pre order and pay and my parents in law might collect.

Something like that anyway!

Hope that we like some of the wines, I used to think Majestic was OK but it's probably the last place I'd go no for a balance of quality and value.

I use the wine society and a couple of local wine merchants (who do seem to just reliably pick good wines), or just the supermarket.

[kiethton]

Its my own wedding in September and we're doing similar and are using the supermarkets for 2 main reasons (although may go to calais for champagne only):

Anything we don't use we can return without issue - plan is to significantly over-buy!
Pricing, allowing for the cost of hiring a van (for the specific wines we want) wasn't much different - budgets couldn't strtch to Boschendal/La Petite Ferme/Dunelm unfortunately.

We've ended up with the Beyerskloof Pinotage Synergy @ £5.75 a bottle (normally £8 or so) - tried it at their vinyard in SA so wanted this
Then The Grape White Chenin Blanc/Pinot Grigio @£5.50 a bottle - again because we've been to the vinyard

Our venue is also quite good - charging £1.20pp in corkage

[Dr_Rick]

Type R Tom said:

To add to that Sainsbury are doing 25% off when you buy 6 at the moment, including the reduced wines.

This bottle works out at £8.25

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/chapel-down...

I do like Chapeldown. The main site is just down the road from my parents, and we're leaseholders on a vine and get a half case per year from it. Very tasty in weather like this.

Don't like their gin (the sustainable gin company I'm involved with is clearly a better bet) or beer much, but the wines are good, and my brother vouches for the cider.