Dec 2011
Auction Time
13 December 2011 Filed in: Cellar Notes News & Views
Included in tomorrow’s ‘Wish List’ auction at Adam’s, St Stephen’s Green are a couple of dozen lots of wine, after the jewellery and the fur coats. I cannot speak with any authority on the quality of the gems or the minks but anyone seeking a fine wine bargain would need to tread carefully. There’s some good stuff here, no doubt, but there are some right clunkers too. Read More...
Comments
What Price Half Price?
They’re all at it now. First it was Tesco, now O’Briens have jumped on the Taittinger “half price” bandwagon, offering the champagne at €29.99, down from a notional €59.99. Let’s get one thing straight: nobody has EVER paid €59.99 for a bottle of Taittinger Brut Réserve champagne in an Irish off licence. It was Tesco who first started telling porky pies about the full price and, while I find it perfectly understandable that O’Briens would want to match them on price in the lead-in to Christmas, I don’t understand why they feel it necessary to try and fool their customers into believing that Taittinger once cost €59.99. Just sell it for €29.99 and leave it at that. Read More...
World Gourmet Summit - Singapore
The double-decker Airbus A380 really is a big plane and you only realise how big as you wait in the departure lounge ready to board, along with hundreds of other passengers who, you tell yourself, must obviously be destined to board three or four separate flights. Not a bit of it. The plane easily swallows up a crowd that looks as if it could go a long way towards filling the Aviva Stadium. Apart from that it is pretty ordinary, much like any other plane, unless, that is, you are sequestered in luxury up front, a treat that will have to wait for the day I win the Lotto. Read More...
Gold Star Wines
07 December 2011 Filed in: News & Views Cellar Notes
The National Off Licence Association (NoffLA) runs a tasting every year to select its ‘Gold Star’ wines, which are then heavily promoted in all the members’ stores. The wines are divided into categories such as: ‘New World Red under €8’, ‘Old World White under €14’ and so forth. The resulting selection, which runs to 15 wines this year, can be a bit hit and miss because a selection such as this is only as strong as the best of the wines submitted by suppliers for consideration by the judges. So if there is a weak field in a particular category then the ‘winner’ will be weak also. That said, there can be some real treats as well. Read More...
Shackleton's Whisky
As a youngster I had a big “Explorers’ Map of the World” on my bedroom wall, with the routes taken by the great explorers traced out in different colours across land and sea. It was also bordered by small pictures of Peary, Scott, Amundsen… and one that caught the eye ahead of all the others: Ernest Shackleton. Square-jawed, purposeful, authoritative. Even the name had a solid, reassuring ring to it and I have always been happy to claim that this native Irishman was the greatest Antarctic explorer of them all. Read More...
Man o' War
05 December 2011 Filed in: Cellar Notes News & Views
Kiwi fruit, sheep, teak-tough rugby players, great runners… but wine? It is hardly 30 years since that would have been the reaction had you suggested that New Zealand might be capable of producing world-class wine. And then Sauvignon Blanc came along and changed everything. There has been no looking back since then, though I for one have long tired of strident Sauvignons with electric-shock flavours and little else. Not that they are needed any more, for the Kiwi standard is now carried by Pinot Noir and Syrah and it is my prediction that this pair will take the reputation of New Zealand wine to places that no Sauvignon ever could. Read More...
Bonneau du Martray
The hill of Corton sits, serene and squat, above the villages of Pernand-Vergelesses, Aloxe-Corton and Ladoix-Serrigny in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Topped by forest and swaddled by vineyards it rises to a height of 350 metres and is the most distinctive natural feature for miles around. It lends its name to one of Burgundy’s most fabled white wines, Corton-Charlemagne, and also a red, Corton, whose reputation is less assured. The emperor Charlemagne is said to have owned vineyards here but today the most famed proprietor is the Domaine Bonneau du Martray whose holding extends to 11 hectares. Read More...
