Wine Investing
02 May 2012
During Ireland’s property boom it was said that to be a successful developer you needed a spine of steel, with another part of your anatomy cast in iron. Or was it the other way around? It hardly matters, for investing in a turbulent, overheated market requires nerve and verve. It is not for the faint hearted. Wine is no different, except in one critical respect: if the bottom falls out of the market you can always drink the wine; eating share certificates or dining on bricks and mortar is not such an enticing prospect. Read More...
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Wine Sale Prices???
02 March 2012
Two days ago I received a press release announcing details of a fine wine sale running simultaneously in some of Dublin’s best wine shops such as Redmond’s in Ranelagh, Thomas’s in Foxrock, 64 Wine in Glasthule, Gibney’s in Malahide and McHugh’s of Kilbarrack Rd and Malahide Rd. My eye was immediately caught by the De Bortoli Shiraz Viognier 2007 from Australia’s Yarra Valley. Over the years this wine, and its predecessors from a number of vintages, has done remarkably well in Food & Wine Magazine tastings. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it has consistently been the highest scorer in the magazine’s 15-year history. Read More...
What Price Half Price?
12 December 2011
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...
Shackleton's Whisky
06 December 2011
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...
What Price Taittinger?
13 October 2011
I recently attended a ‘Family of Five’ press tasting hosted by Tesco in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Dublin, showcasing wines from five producers across the globe. The members of the quintet are all well known: Taittinger, Louis Jadot, CUNE, Errazuriz & Villa Maria. Most of the wines were pleasant enough but this is not intended as a report on the tasting, replete with tasting notes and so forth. Rather, it is intended to highlight a pricing anomaly that defies comprehension. Read More...
Big but Balanced
13 October 2011
With regard to high alcohol wines the ‘big but balanced’ argument is one that I have never bought. So what if it is balanced? That only makes things worse, for there is no hot prickle of alcohol on the finish to warn you that this one’s a monster – you will have to wait until the following morning to discover that. Masses of fruit, masses of tannin, masses of alcohol, masses of oak, masses of mass. Sure, it is balanced, but only in the sense that an Olympic super-heavyweight weightlifter is balanced. What about a bit of elegance? Read More...
Bordeaux Lunch
28 July 2011
Last Friday in Bordeaux the weather was doing a quickstep between snippets of sunshine and cascades of rain. The former showed the city to perfection, gloriously restored and barely recognisable now from the drab, sad metropolis that presented a tired face to the world in the 1990s. The latter sent the crowds scurrying for shelter under awnings and umbrellas or, more effectively, the portico of the splendid opera house. There I stood, peering grimly across to the Regent Hotel, as the Porsches and BMWs divested guests and luggage for a short, wet sprint to the lobby. Read More...
Rugby Wine XV
09 July 2011
In anticipation of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand later this year I was commissioned recently to ‘select’ a World Rugby Wine XV and here is the result. The subs’ bench has yet to be filled and competition for those places is expected to be stiff, so get your suggestions in quickly…
1 Loosehead Prop
St Hallett, Old Block Shiraz 2005 14.5% Australia
Resisting the temptation to make quips about ‘a chip off’, we welcome the selection of Old Block in this key position where his experience and dogged application of the basic principles of scrummaging will prove invaluable. His contribution goes largely unnoticed by spectators but that doesn’t bother Old Block who contents himself with the high esteem in which every front row forward in the world holds him. It is worth noting that he was selected in preference to his Italian cousin Amarone who, it was felt, had bulked up too much in the gym, leaving him perfectly competent in the set pieces but unable to get from one end of the pitch to the other in any sort of acceptable time. Read More...
Vintage of the Century
17 June 2011
Nobody is quite certain how long the comic farce Vintage of the Century has been running and the bad news received today is that the Guinness Book of World Records will not consider it for inclusion due to the multiplicity of its authorship. It would be difficult to enumerate all the hands that have had a part in Vintage’s success but the list certainly includes: wine writers, Bordeaux negociants, châteaux owners, wine merchants, sundry smoke and mirror practitioners, PR spinners and the man in the street, including the social media tweeters and their ilk, commissioned just a few years ago to “freshen up the script.” Read More...
Taste of Dublin
10 June 2011
I spent a fair portion of the late afternoon yesterday dodging the rain at Taste of Dublin in the Iveagh Gardens behind St Stephen’s Green. The ultimate, must-have, accessory was a see-through plastic rain poncho and thankfully there were 20,000 of them on hand to keep everyone looking their best. It was chilly too, so some heart-warming food was called for and I made my way straight to Jaipur where the endlessly talented Sunil Ghai was in charge, with some Bombay Railway Lamb Curry ready to hand. Read More...
Mayday Brunch in Singapore
02 May 2011
Having made do with nothing more than an orange for breakfast I was ready for something more substantial by the time I entered the Capella Hotel, Singapore yesterday for the mother of all brunches. On arrival, I caught the unmistakable, gentle but insistent, whiff of white asparagus on the air. Following the trail to source I came across a steaming urn of soup manned by Jan Touschil, head chef at the Magma German wine bistro. It was splendid stuff, delightfully subtle and judiciously seasoned by a light hand. Read More...
Anthony Worrall Thompson at WGS
30 April 2011
It is the throwaway remarks rather than the masterclass itself that makes an hour or two spent in Anthony Worrall Thompson’s company memorable, and the audience earlier today, here at the World Gourmet Summit in Singapore, weren’t complaining. Time and again the cookery demonstration took a back seat as he gave his opinion on all matters culinary, by way of anecdote, tale and joke. Somehow at the end of it all he managed to produce cauliflower and courgette fritters, fish fingers, stuffed aubergine and, quirky to the end, ‘prawn lollipops’. Read More...
Wooly Wine Speak
11 April 2011
I had a minor hissy fit while watching the Channel 4 news last Friday night. Apparently researchers have discovered a link between the consumption of alcohol and certain cancers. Once this news was announced various worthies were wheeled in to give us the benefit of their wisdom. More than once the term ‘a glass of wine’ was used, which was the red rag to this bull. Read More...
Mouton Magnums
25 March 2011
“I hope the Mouton Collection is enjoyed by the new owner, who I believe is from Asia.” So said singer Chris de Burgh earlier today when I contacted him about the sale this week of an extremely rare collection, from de Burgh’s cellar, of magnums of Château Mouton-Rothschild spanning every vintage from 1945 to 2005. The price paid was £155,250 (€178,538, $251,660). Read More...
Tango!
01 April 2010
Borris House, County Carlow. Ancestral seat of the McMorrough-Kavanaghs, High Kings of Leinster. It is not recorded if they were keen dancers but if they could have been re-incarnated in their ballroom on Friday evening 12th February last one suspects that they would have approved of the tango music and dancing that filled the night and banished thoughts of the bitter cold outside. Read More...
A Night at the Opera
01 May 2009
The only thing in short supply on Thursday, 16th October last year – the opening night of the Wexford Festival Opera – were superlatives to describe the stunning new opera house itself. For once the ball gowns and the dinner jackets and even the visually spectacular production of Snegurochka had to play second fiddle to the venue itself. Read More...
Graham Knuttel
01 August 2007
“I’m sure we have met before,” says Graham Knuttel as he opens the door of his restored Georgian house in central Dublin. It is not just a standard opening gambit either. Both of us are quite certain that our paths have crossed at some stage in the past, but try as we might a firm memory of it remains elusive. Read More...
Turner by Turns
01 February 2006
Early January traditionally ushers in a wave of resolutions that would do a monastery proud. A week or so later, however, most of them have bitten the dust, abandoned as far too strict and ambitious. They needn’t all be like that, though. Here’s a suggestion for a ‘resolution’ that demands nothing more than a bit of get up and go, some forward planning and a liking for a pleasant weekend away with spouse or partner. Read More...
St Petersburg - World Orchestra for Peace
12 January 2004
It is May 2003 and St Petersburg’s famed Mariinsky Theatre is getting a facelift. An ocean of mint green paint has been applied to the vast exterior and now the finishing touches, in the form of white highlights, are being daubed on by a lady with a minute brush. She’s probably still there. Read More...
