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How To Purchase

Choose from either of our stores below to see the full range of products in each and order online if you wish

Why Choose Normandie Wine?

There are many reasons to make Normandie Wine your one-stop destination in France for all your liquor needs

Service

Our service is unmatched

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Price

Our prices are unbeatable

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Range

Our range is unmatched

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We Have A Huge Range of Whiskies

With over 100 brands of whiskies from countries all over the world, we will have your favorite whisky at an unbeatable price.

Cherbourg

Ouistreham

Red wine and cheese, the end of a myth?

For years, we have consumed young wines, low vinified and poor in tannin. Structure meshed well with cheeses. With the evolution of technics and tastes, red wines have become more tannic, rich and no longer suitable for cheese. A sip of red wine on cheese that leaves an unpleasant bitter aftertaste? It is a chemical reaction: the wine tannins are hardened fat cheese.

Bright white wines! Vinification of white wines do not have the maceration step in the fermentation broth. Or is this step that gives the wine its color and also its tannins. White, poor wine tannins support so much better cheese.

What white wine to cheese?

A tip: Prefer a wine from the same region as the cheese. As a general rule:

  • Soft cheeses and washed rind (Munster, Maroilles) with very typical, rich and aromatic wines like Gewurztraminer or a Chateauneuf du Pape.
  • Pressed cheeses uncooked / cooked: with white wine round and structured like white Burgundy.
  • Goat cheese: as the cheese is fresh or cooked him go dry fruity white like a Sauvignon wines from the Loire.
  • Blue cheeses: with a Sauternes or other sweet. A test also with a good old Banyuls or Porto.
  • Soft cheese and rind (Camembert, Chaource): no wine, even white! Too fat, too creamy, they dégagerons an unpleasant bitterness. Pick a cider.

For diehard red wine fans

If you really want to serve red wine, use a soft, round little tannic wine. Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil, some Beaujolais or black Alsatian Pinot.

Be bold and try the "bubbles"

Who said the cheeses had to serve with the wine? Many people agree with champagne, cider and even beer.

What about Champagne and cheese?

For strong cheeses: choose Champagnes vinous and mature.

  • For hard cheeses (Gruyere or County): Choose Champagne fruity and quite young ...

What about cider and cheese?

Soft cheese and crust flowers: use with semi-dry cider.

  • Washed rind cheeses (Livarot, Pont l'Eveque): these powerful aromatic cheeses level demanded raw cider, rich flavors.
  • Cheese cooked pressed cheeses (Comté, Beaufort, French Emmental) serve with raw cider.
  • Hard cheeses uncooked (Reblochon, Saint-Nectaire, Morbier) serve with cider rather sweet and fruity, semi-dry or sweet.

Some advice: do not taste the cider too cold! Ideal temp between 10 and 12 °.

What about beer and cheese?

It is still a well-kept secret: the beer is consistent with the cheese as well as wine. "The agreement beer-cheese is traditional in countries like Belgium and Denmark. Serve cold beer but not ice, not to kill the flavor.

Cheese and tea, the latest trend?

While in France, the cheese is traditionally eaten with wine, growing gourmets initiate agreements with tea. Teas vary depending cheese and serve still warm at the time of tasting.

  • With Camenbert: Use of Japanese green tea torriffié bancha hojicha with aromas of toast, dry wood and fruit.
  • With Pont-Eveque : use a Darjeeling Spring Indian black tea a very rich aroma, with floral notes and plant.
  • With Comté: use a Chinese pu-erh tea or pu'er or a summer fruit aromas and dry cooked darjeeling.
  • With blue cheese: Use a black tea from China Yunnan, flowery and sweet, with notes of honey and wax wood

Now we have a partnership with the company where you can enjoy great benefits at the moment:

- 10% discounts on purchases

(offer not valid on beer, spirits, wines already discounted)

To get this special offer, please show us  your valid boarding pass Stena LINE.

Offer valid until 31/12/2016 in Cherbourg

Visiting France via Ferry

Ferries from Poole or Portsmouth on the south coast of England, or Rosslare in Ireland provide good connections to Normandy, and it’s both quick and simple to book directly on-line with the ferry companies (Brittany Ferries or Stena Line and Irish Ferries). Day trips and special offers are available throughout the year and there is a wide choice of facilities and accommodation on board to make your journey comfortable and enjoyable. From March to October there are several fast craft services available, making a day trip from the south of England a realistic option; with 24 hour return fares as low as £45 for a car and 2 people the savings in France are quickly recouped. Traveling from the Irish Republic needs more time, but return crossings for a car and 2 people on the luxurious Oscar Wilde can be as low as €200 including a cabin both ways.

Ferry Operators from the South of England

Brittany Ferries operate a modern fleet of both classic cruise ferries and fastcraft from either Portsmouth or Poole to Cherbourg or Ouistreham. If you cross the channel regularly as I do you can’t fail to be impressed by the quality of service on offer backed, up by attentive and willing on-board staff. The Normandie Express can occasionally be a bit lumpy, but the level of concern shown if you are feeling unwell or have a young family to cope with is quite honestly exceptional. The company is also making a big push on pricing for 2018, so expect to find even better value for money.

Ferry Operators from Ireland

At Normandie Wine we are in partnership with Irish Ferries and can offer special discounts at certain times of the year on the Irish Ferries service from Rosslare direct to Cherbourg. The route is served by the magnificent MV Oscar Wilde which is every bit as good as the company’s own publicity suggests and boasts levels of comfort and space that you might find on certain cruise liners. Cabins are a huge improvement on the previous vessel the MV Normandy.

Another option is to travel by ferry to France from Rosslare to Cherbourg on Stena Line and get away the easy way to Europe! With the cheapest fares and a choice of 3 ferry crossings a week on the Stena Horizon, pick the time that suits you to travel to France. You can book a cabin so you and your family arrive relaxed and refreshed for your visit to Cherbourg and beyond.

Our Advice

A wedding is a very special day, a happy but often daunting event. Our advice is to try and keep things as simple as possible; offer guests one white, one red and a sparkling wine for the main event. We pride ourselves in the level and integrity of our personal service; just send us an e-mail with an outline of the food you intend to provide on your day and we will reply immediately with our suggestions of wines or even talk it through with you. We have total confidence in the wines we offer but, if you are still not sure, you can always taste in the shop before you make that final, critical decision.

Red vs White

People are never sure whether to buy more of one wine than the other thinking that guests might drink more white than red or vice versa. The best bet is to go 50 – 50 and, from personal experience, guests will drink whatever is in front of them as the meal progresses so don’t lose too much sleep over getting it exactly right. 

Champagne vs Sparkling Wines

If you can afford it, Champagne is the obvious choice for a special event. Unfortunately, the current worldwide demand for Champagne is so intense that it’s not a cheap commodity. That’s why we offer a wide choice of Méthode Traditionelle sparkling wines, bottle fermented exactly the same way as the real thing but generally not as complex and made in other French regions. At about a third of the cost of Champagne, a good VouvraySaumur or Crémant will be more than acceptable and, at the end of the day, if it is to be served solely to toast the happy couple, all your guests will see is a tray of glasses and won’t be any the wiser. At the bottom end of the price scale are the Vins Mousseux, generally poor to medium quality still wines that have CO² pumped into them like all popular soft drinks - useful for making a Bucks Fizz at the evening disco but it would be a shame to spoil your special day by cutting too many corners.

Calculating Wine Quantities and Savings

To help calculate what you need, the following guidelines should help. You should get 6 flutes of sparkling wine and 4 – 5 glasses of still wine per bottle so, if you aim to serve 2 glasses of sparkling wine and a half bottle of still wine per person, 150 guests would need about 50 bottles of bubbly and 75 bottles of red and white combined. Expect to save at least £2/€3 per bottle on still wines, and £3/€5 on a bottle of bubbly by purchasing your wines from Normandie Wine so you would save in the region of £300 or €500 on Irish prices on this quantity of wine. Brittany Ferries offer a 24-hour shopping trip fare almost all year round, priced at between £45 and £65 depending upon the season and including a car and 2 passengers. Irish Ferries offer a return trip including a cabin both ways for around €250, again for a car and 2 people.

Think Weather and Food

Think about the weather you might expect and what food you are planning to serve. Don’t, for example, offer big, oaky and tannic wines in the middle of July and, conversely, a Beaujolais would struggle in the depths of winter if served with a rib of beef. Most couples today offer a fish course so wines like Chablis, Mâcon, Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé or even a good Muscadet are very popular. If you want a good value white Appellation wine, then a Touraine Sauvignon, white Bordeaux or Alsace wine are typically very good and, if you are on a tight budget, we have a great range of Vin de Pays varietal wines from the south of France. We have a close relationship with few winegrowers from Loire Valley and either the Sauvignon Blanc or Pineau d'Aunis are really well made.

Popular Wines

A list of classic reds would include Saint-Emilion and Médoc from Bordeaux, Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Vacqueyras from the Rhône valley, Beaune and Mercurey in Burgundy and Saumur Champigny and Bourgueil in the Loire valley, to name but a few. Beaujolais is a popular summer red; either a good villages wine or one of the crus like Fleurie, Morgon and Brouilly go well with a cold buffet or ham, chicken and even lamb. Good value wines include Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur, Saumur or, again, a good Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah from Languedoc (Vin de Pays d’Oc) have been popular choices over the years for those on a tight budget.

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