Your wedding day is meant to be one of the happiest and romantic of your life, and yet the months/weeks/days and hours leading up to “I do” can be amongst the most hair wrenching, buttock clenchingly stressful you are ever likely to know.

Suddenly you’re spending more time than you ever believed imaginable picking out your colour themes and wondering; “will the floral centrepieces match the napkins?” or “will they clash with the bridesmaids dresses”. Thoughts previously alien to you are suddenly sucking up every spare minute of your day!

WineChap can alleviate at least some of that stress for you, by putting together the perfect assortment of wines for your wedding day (and by creating a wedding registry, allowing your guests to help you compile that wine cellar you always wanted!)

After attending ‘A Lovers Guide to Wine’ – an evening hosted by luxury wedding planners Love and Lord and WineChap, UK wedding blog, Love my dress, has elegantly summed up the service Love and Lord can offer, in collaboration with WineChap.

Consulting for Love and Lord wedding planners, WineChap matched up the perfect wines for a sumptuous, four course, virtual Italian feast (as an example of the service they can offer): www.youandyourwedding.co.uk/receptions/food-drink/love-and-lord-the-wine-chap-consultant

Write-ups of two of our latest Tasting series have featured recently; ‘Toast the Oyster’ and ‘Grape vs Grain’.

Firstly our inaugural ‘Toast The Oyster’ at Wrights Bros Soho receives praise from Vintage Seeker’s editor:

‘Champagne and oysters: a match made in culinary heaven, no doubt about it. But, as I learnt last week at a tutored tasting in Soho, it’s not as simple as putting any old bubbly with a random assortment of crustaceans.

Some varieties will be more complementary than others, just as you wouldn’t uncork a bottle of red to match your steak or cheese course without considering the label. This is what Wine Chap founder Tom Harrow, who is our host and compere for the evening, set out to demonstrate. “Champagne and oysters are a very traditional fit but do we ever stop to think why? – or just re-fill our flute, shuck away and guzzle contentedly,” he said. “The aim of this first session is to show the diversity of Champagne and with an oyster-led menu and how well it pairs to the fruits of the sea.”’

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(NB – This tasting was particularly amusing as was only towards the end of the session whilst chatting to guests I discovered that amongst the intimate group were Simon Field MW and Rebecca Lamont (Berry Bros buyer and wine school manager respectively)!

Secondly – James Graham, editor of UKVine wrote the following comments on last week’s Grape vs Grain Tasting at The Drafthouse Tower Bridge.  The theme, ‘Love in a Cold Climate’, pitted English beers against English wines and to the surprise of many and delight of a few – including guest, Frazer Thompson – Chapel Down CEO, wines carried the day.

‘It was a close run thing but in the end it was a narrow points win for English wine over English beer. It was a runaway win, however, for enjoyment, conviviality and an evening well spent in enjoying and discovering new vintages and brews.

‘Both hosts gave spirited, knowledgeable and wittily partisan defences of each of their drinks at the start of each round. This allowed those unfamiliar with the drinks to know what to seek in the tasting, the background of the drink’s production and provide a pointer to its quality. The downstairs dining room was filled with enjoyment and a buzz of excited chatter, much connected with the drink. A delight was the ending of the session with everyone writing a haiku, and then standing to declaim their neighbour’s effort, often to great hilarity and mirth.’

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