Found this on an (Irish) blog today – “Big brands are capturing increasingly large shares of the market, making individual, idiosyncratic wines harder to find”. Sorry, but that’s utter bollocks. Big brands may be increasing market share but it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find idiosyncratic.There’s never been a wider choice of wines here ...
Natural Wine Tasting at Fallon & Byrne, Dublin by Le Caveau My first encounter with what has come to be called ‘natural wine’ came some five or six years ago during the Salon de Vins de Loire at Angers. That week I was staying at the Chateau des Vaults, as a guest of Evelyne de ...
Valpolicella is a viticultural zone of the Italian province of Verona, east of Lake Garda, ranking as the second most significant production region for Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) wines in volume terms (Chianti is first).This red wine is typically made from three grape varietals: Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara although others are permitted in small ...
The Superquinn French Wine Sale, an annual event, is upon us. The list is a mix of old favourites and new ‘lip-smacking’, their words not mine, bargains. The Etienne Barret Crozes Hermitage Rouge and the Domaine de Brunely Vacqueyras are among the former, representing good value at €11 and €12 respectively, as is the ...
Tasting Notes, Wine & Drink
I’m all for training sommeliers. If a little learning means an end to woejous wine waiters resting the bottle neck on my glass or pouring wine from the second bottle into a glass still containing some of the first, then great. The Restaurant Association Of Ireland (RAI) has asked me to let people know ...
Elderflowers, those creamy sprays of pungent flowers visible in every park and hedgerow, are perhaps the most abundant and useful of all wild foods and we are nearing the end of what has been a bumper season. Dublin’s elderflowers have begun to fade but many trees in cooler parts of the country (e.g. Wicklow) are ...
I’m not mad about the idea of scoring wines. I grew up drinking wine in an age when good wines were treated with reverence and bad ones were scorned* but there was never any attempt to evaluate on a comparative basis other than stating a preference for bottle A over bottle B. Certainly no one ...
Until yesterday I’d always thought that offensive Pinotage and inoffensive Pinot Grigio were two grapes that should have been strangled at birth. Now, after a tasting of Dunne’s Stores current and proposd South African range, I’m prepared to grant the former at least a stay of execution. I’ve always hated Pinotage. If I wanted ...
Olivier Quenet’s fine restaurant Olivier’s at The Schoolhouse occupies a great room, made even better by the warm, bright afternoon sun as I found out last Friday when I breezed in to partake of a whiskey masterclass during which some of Cooley Distillery’s finest were teamed with Olivier’s creative and tasty cuisine. In fact we ...
This topic has peculiar resonance for me as I’ve just spent the last couple of days logging my modest wine collection. I used to have a kid’s exercise book with ‘Cellar Book’ written somewhat pompously in marker on the front. I was always very casual about updating and – as I have wines in 5 ...
