Wine for Your Wedding: Brown Brothers’ Cienna & Cienna Rosso

The wines I reviewed were both from Brown Broth­ers: their Cienna 2009 and Cienna Rosso are both low alco­hol sparkling wines, from the Cienna grape vari­ety which is unique to Brown Broth­ers and bred by cross­ing Sumoll (a Span­ish grape) with Caber­net Sauvignon.

I do love wine — but I’m no expert wine taster so I enlisted my par­ents to help me review the wines.

My Mum and Dad (who you may have seen on the Eng­lish Wed­ding face­book page) know their stuff when it comes to wines so while they gave their expert ver­dicts on taste and qual­ity, I thought I’d share a lit­tle extra infor­ma­tion with you on choos­ing wine for your wed­ding day.

Brown Broth­ers Cienna Rosso wed­ding wine

“A sum­mery wine, very fruity and light” with “a taste of straw­ber­ries” and “a sub­tle sweet flavour” was the ver­dict on Cienna Rosso. This is a vibrant ruby red coloured wine, packed with bub­bles that almost leap out of the glass, and tastes deli­cious. Brown Broth­ers say, “The creamy palate is del­i­cately bal­anced with plenty of nat­ural acid­ity and juicy sum­mer berry flavours… a berry-licious bub­bly burst­ing with irre­sistible fruit flavours”

Brown Broth­ers Cienna wed­ding wine

“Fruity and sweet, lovely and spicy” and “with a taste of berries — rasp­ber­ries and straw­berry” — this was our favorite of the two wines from Brown Broth­ers. Cienna 2009 is a very pleas­ing wine which we’d rec­om­mend with a sum­mer wed­ding break­fast: at 5% alco­hol and with a deli­ciously smooth flavour, it’s per­fect after half an hour in the fridge and   won’t have your wed­ding guests soz­zled before the speeches have fin­ished! Brown Broth­ers say, “A sip of this wine is like tast­ing sum­mer berries in a glass, while the mix­ture of nat­ural acid­ity and fruit sweet­ness leaves a refresh­ing sen­sa­tion on the palate.”

Brown Broth­ers wed­ding wines: the verdict!

Both of the wines were deli­cious and I’d rec­om­mend either as a wed­ding wine. At 5% alco­hol for the Cienna and 7.5% for the sparkling Cienna Rosso, they’re a wise choice if you’d pre­fer a refresh­ing wine for a sum­mer wed­ding, par­tic­u­larly if your wed­ding day has an early start and you want your guests to enjoy a lit­tle some­thing to drink through the after­noon and into the evening. I was also inter­ested to see they’re vegan-friendly wines!

Brown Broth­ers’ Cienna Rosso is avail­able from £9.99, priced from Wait­rose. Brown Broth­ers’ Cienna 2009 is avail­able from Mor­risons, Nisa, Sand­hams and Slurp.co.uk priced from £6.99.

Wed­ding wine advice: cork­age and how much to buy

Cork­age is a hot topic on most UK wed­ding forums, but rarely dis­cussed on wed­ding websites.

Wed­ding wines and cork­age fees

Basi­cally if you book a wed­ding venue which has its own wine, but you’d rather bring your own, the venue will prob­a­bly charge you from £5 a bot­tle or so to open the bot­tles. So don’t assume that pro­vid­ing your own wine at a lux­ury hotel wed­ding venue will save you money. Ask about cork­age fees before you book!

For more infor­ma­tion on cork­age read A Guide to Cork­age at Wed­ding Venues

It’s very likely you’ll find infor­ma­tion on cork­age fees at your wed­ding venue through Google. Type in your venue and ‘cork­age’ and see if any forum dis­cus­sions come up!

How much wine to buy for your wedding

The amount of wine you buy will depend on a few things: when is your wed­ding (early or late after­noon, or late morn­ing), and are you pro­vid­ing a free bar all night?

Think about when peo­ple will be drink­ing: will there be aper­i­tifs on the lawn before the sit down meal? Allow a glass-and-a-half per per­son. Dur­ing the wed­ding break­fast you’ll need 1 glass of cham­pagne for the toasts, and per­haps half a bot­tle of wine per guest. Don’t for­get those who are dri­ving, too young or sim­ply pre­fer a non-alcoholic drink instead.

Links — more on Brown Broth­ers and wine for your wed­ding day

• Brown Broth­ers’ UK web­site http://brownbrothers.co.uk/
• Ulti­mate Wed­ding Mag­a­zine wine tast­ing of Brown Broth­ers’ Cienna Rosso and Zibibbo Rosa  http://www.ultimateweddingmagazine.co.uk/2012/04/uwm-wine-tasting/
• 5 Star Wed­dings Direc­tory review of Brown Broth­ers’ Zibibbo Rosa and Cienna Rosso http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/blog/25655/drinks-for-your-wedding-reception/