Weddingbee Blog

I mentioned before that Mr. EB and I are wine lovers, thanks in large part to my dad who has introduced us to so many great wineries. Mr. EB and I used to live close to some amazing Oregon wineries, and we loved to head out to Dundee Hills to taste some wine on a weekend afternoon (not so great for our bank accounts, but always nice when Dad would gift us a bottle or two!).

Dad driving up to meet us at the winery in Dundee Hills

Now, even though Mr. EB and I love wine, my dad still knows way more about it and so has taken over the wine-procuring duties for the wedding. Which is perfectly fine by me because it’s one less thing that I have to worry about, and I know we’re going to have some great wines during the weekend. What I didn’t expect, however, was that we might be able to have our very own, one-of-a-kind wine at our wedding. What am I talking about? Oh yeah, a couple of weeks ago, Mr. EB, Dad, and I sat down in the kitchen of one of our favorite wineries and blended our own wine for our wedding!

Yes, I’m completely serious. How freakin’ cool is that??

The winemaker pulled about nine different samples for us to use in our blend. We tasted through each of the samples and picked about five that were our favorites. Luckily, with only some minor variations, we have pretty similar tastes when it comes to this type of wine.

The three of us spent about an hour tasting (And spitting! It was only about 10:00 AM after all.) through all of the wines. We ended up with a great pinot noir blend that all three of us thought was the best. (The winning blend was from four of the wineries’ pinot noir vineyards, one of which we got to walk with the vineyard manager after we were done blending.) Actually, I think the winning blend was only the second one we tried—we just couldn’t find a combination that we liked better than that one!

Now that we have our own wedding wine, we’re in the process of designing a custom label for it. I am no designer, but luckily a very good family friend is, and she’s agreed to help us (i.e., make sure that we don’t come up with something horribly ugly!).

So check it out—our wine is in the barrel waiting to be bottled and later hand-labeled by us!

Our wine in the barrel!

I still can’t believe that we get to incorporate such a personal aspect into our wedding day. And there should be enough bottles leftover so that Mr. EB and I can save a few to open on future anniversaries and remember the amazing day that we had.

Oh, and just in case you thought I was kidding when I talked about how my dad likes to do glass tastings—check these pictures out as just a sampling of what he’s done in the past with all of his Riedel* glasses! I love these glasses, and while Mr. EB and I do not have nearly this many, we are starting a pretty nice collection ourselves.

*No, Riedel has no idea who I am, or that I love their glasses and am touting them here. But seriously, if you want nice lead-crystal wine glasses, this is an excellent choice!