Some wines

Corvo 2007 - the long-established cheap and cheerful staple from Sicily, currently on offer in the shop at 2 for 16 euro. Lightish, simple and fruity, an acceptable bottle at this price and arguably nice enough with a bowl of pasta.

Is Argiolas Vermentino 2007 - a step up from the Costamolino. Nice floral nose, fresh, crisp, fruity style with a salty finish. Reminds me of a sunny day on a beach in Wexford.

Pesquera 2005 - this was tightly sprung when opened first, so I decanted it and we had it with lamb. Full-bodied, rich, spicy, leathery, really delicious and with a bright future ahead of it. WE had the 2001 recently and it was just drinking nicely, so I will come back to this one in a few years time.

Bin End Sale on now

Savings of upto 30% can be had now on wines as the bin end sale starts. These are genuine savings on good wines, but we have to make room for new stuff coming in over the next few weeks. It varies from wines we have a a fair amount of to wines where we just have a few bottles left on the shelf. well worth a look....

10th Birthday this year!

It's hard to believe it, but On the Grapevine is 10 years old this year. We opened the doors for the first time on St. Patrick's Day 1999. We first met John, our landlord, in early December 1998 with the crazy idea of opening a wine shop in this new unit he had just built as part of a mixed development off the main street in Dalkey. Dalkey is a funny place in terms of what works and what doesn't and he wanted to make sure that whatever went in was there for the long haul. So, we met him, presented our plan and he liked the idea. Then we went to the bank, back when they were lending money to people and they gave us the green light as well. All of a sudden, from having a pipe dream, we were in the position where we could do this thing if we had the courage. It was one of those things where you would spend your life saying "What if....?" if you DIDN't do it, so really we had no option but to try it out.

We were both in reasonably well-paid jobs, both very busy lives. We were just married, no children, starting out in life. We had no experience in the wine trade and, although we both liked and were interested in wine, we really knew very little about the world of wine. So, it was a leap in the dark, to say the least. But we did leap - Pam gave up her job in Feb 99 and set about getting the shop open. I stayed on in my job for the first 6 months just in case...

More about history another day.

Back from Portugal

Just spent a week in the Algarve and tried my best to drink interesting stuff. However, the bar where we were staying was doing happy hour every night at 6pm and they had decent Guinness so it was a pint with dinner followed by a couple of glasses of something half decent from the supermarket at home after the kids had gone to bed.

The best in terms of price / quality we found was Don Rafael by Mouchao, which I think is the entry level one from this really good producer, one of the best in Portugal (in my limited knowledge). It was medium bodied with really nice fruit and balance, very drinkable stuff. WE also had a bottle of Mouchao 2003 the one night we went out for dinner and this was really good - very elegant for such a big wine and everything in harmony. Very nice stuff indeed. It costs about €35 a bottle here, I think. (I saw it for €49 in Faro airport). I must ring the lads in Wicklow Wine to see what the story is....

Any cheap bottles we tried (less than €4) were pretty poor, not surprisingly. Worst of all was some sparkling wine we bought in Aldi (the proper supermarket was closed). Don't know how much it was, but it was undrinkable. Nice choc chip cookies, though, in fairness.

Wines over the Christmas

How did your wine fare over the Christmas period? Good, I hope. Everybody wants a decent drop over Christmas and we had lots of queries about what to drink on Christmas Day. I always think there are so many variables on Christmas Day that is is better to drink something you like and are comfortable with (from both taste and price points of view) that trying to drink the best bottle ever or to try and match it perfectly with turkey ( and ham, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sprouts and all the rest...). However, we always go for some sort of Pinot Noir as it is our favourite grape variety and it does seem to go well with turkey, its silky tannins and delicate fruit going well with a good turkey. This year we had a bottle of Mugneret Gibourg Vosne Romanee 2002 hanging around so we thought it would be a good runner. It was delicious, concentrated yet silky and with delicious, pure fruit. We didn't quite finish the bottle, on Christmas Day, so there was one glass left for me last night and it was even nicer.

We preceded dinner with some smoked salmon, accompanied by Roederer Rose 2002. I have always thought that Roederer Rose was one of the nicest Roses on the market and the 02 is no exception. A pale, delicate salmon pink colour, with delicious fragrant but fresh strawberry fruit and the characteristic Roederer elegance, concentration and balance. Really excellent.

On St. Stephens Day, we had the second portion of Christmas Dinner, but went for white this time. I got a present of a couple of Riedel Vinum Extreme Chardonnay glasses which are really quite beautiful. Into these amazing glasses, I poured the Chavy Meursault Narvaux 2006. I know that this wine is only a baby, but when it is so delicious, why wait. Chavy's wines always have an energy, a nervosite about them that I really like. In the Meursault, the typical roundness and broadness is matched really well with Philippe's style and results in a delicious balanced wine with perfectly judged oak and no hint of fatness or over-ripeness.

The latest crisis...

As we lurch from one crisis to the next with no let-up in the bad news, the last thing we needed was to have our sausages taken away from us! Aren't the builders in enough trouble without taking away their breakfast rolls? Is it a genuine crisis or just another example of a botched knee-jerk reaction from a government who can't manage to dress itself in the morning?

From what I have read, around 2% of products are affected and you would have to gorge yourself on the stuff for thirty years before there is an effect. We have all been eating the stuff since september at least so why the big panic now? An entire industry is put in peril for this? Or is there something more sinister that we don't know about?

A whole lot of questions, but no answers, what's new?

The good news is there are no wine scares to worry about.

And, if we find any, we will kick it into January when everybody gives it up for a few days anyway.

Don't we look festive?

Carol did a great job on the window this year, dontcha think?