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Free
Run
- The not so secret
diary of a master of wine |
| People
often ask what's it like tasting wine for living. The short answer is that
often it's fun. There are plenty of fascinating places and people to visit
and of course fabulous and dreadful wines to try. This is an attempt to
bring some of it to life given the enormous amount of positive feedback
that I got from my diary of an Australian trip with a group of MWs that
was published in Food & Wine magazine. - a copy of which is in the
articles section of this web site. |
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| September
2003
- An Post Delivers Killer Blow |
Monday
15th September
Spent two weeks in Australia, some of which
has been published as a diary in Wine Ireland's November / December issue. |
Thursday 11th September 2003
More intense work on the word processor which is beginning to get me
down. Everything always takes longer than you think it will - one of
life's golden rules. Eventually turn the computer off and head for
Leopardstown and an army of Chilean producers. There must be no one
left in Chile. My heart sinks when I see that there are 71 exhibitors each
showing about 15 wines. There's maybe 1000 wines and I've got three and a
half hours to taste, not to mention chat and catch up with people. It's
hopeless.
Spot Jim Farrelly, a former colleague at
Gilbeys on a stand and head across the room - you've got to start
somewhere. He's living the highlife in Barcelona running a marketing consultancy
and working with some Chileans including De Martino who's top end wines
are shocking good. Just as I am beginning to warm to the task Jim rocks me
to my boots with the impossible news of another former colleague's death
in the UK in his mid 30s. I've known so many people who've died this year,
it's insane, all of them much too young. Suddenly wine doesn't seem so
important any more.
With my heart much less in it I trudge
around begging exhibitors not to give me more than a couple of samples to
try but it's almost impossible. As with yesterday I'm one of the last to
leave desperately sipping, spitting and scribbling hoping to find a gem
that I might otherwise miss. The thrill of the hunt and the discovery of a
new star - is that what what drives us cork dorks, not to mention
astronomers?
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Wednesday
10th September 2003
A busy day begins with more frantic work on the keyboard racing to meet
deadlines before heading to News Talk 106 FM studio to do weekly slot
about wine. Discuss shopping in Northern Ireland, taste Sainsburys' wines
and hopefully raised a laugh beyond the studio with tales of Compendiums barricades.
Raced from studio to Ely Wine Bar for tasting of ten vintages of Concha Y
Toro's Don Melchor. Thankfully the winemaker is stuck in plane somewhere
over the Irish sea so we get to rattle through the wines without listening
to a history of Chilean weather patterns. I mean what would he have said?
"it was dry and didn't rain much and the next year it was dry and
didn't rain much" etc ad finitum. Early finish means I just have time
to try and get to the tasting at the Clarence. It would be a 15 - 20
minute walk but in a car in traffic and finding parking it takes me 30
minutes, meaning I get there with 15 minutes to spare and with most of the
bottles down to the last inch or less for the good ones. Taste frantically
but slow up when I realise that I'm not going to get kicked out bang on
5pm. As ever lots of great wines and lovely people selling them. They
deserve to do better than perhaps they do if the turnout was anything to
go on. Bump into Jim Nicholson of the eponymous wine shop in Crossgar in
Temple Bar, who's shop I'd visited on Saturday (see below). It's a small
world.
There's a tasting and dinner hosted by
the Chileans at Leopardstown prior tonight but there's a limit to how many
tastings even I can face in one day and besides, it's quicker now to drive
to Dundalk than Leopardstown from my house. |
Tuesday
9th September 2003
Spend day desperately trying to finish writing book when Tomas Clancy
calls me from the Superquinn tasting being held for the press to show off
the wines in their upcoming annual French sale. What Superquinn tasting I
ask? Don't know who I upset but they never ever invite me. Delighted to
here that although there are a couple of good wines Superquinn and their
sale appear to less impressive than a few years ago.
Liam Cabot calls to ask if they invited
me to Wine Knows' tasting the next day at The Clarence Hotel explaining
that they had lost their list of who they had invited and had they invited
me already? No, but at least they did invite me.
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Monday
8th September 2003
Irish wine show or rather the Noffla Wine show at King's Inn as it's an
event that highlights the results of the off-licence association's tasting
competition and is accompanied by stands hosted by importers with lots of
wines to taste prior to the handing out of gongs. Mary O'Rourke gives an
utterly empty speech in which she manages to speak for 20 minutes without
actually saying anything. All of which perhaps makes her a consummate
politician.
The winning wines aren't bad and I'll
post notes on them asap. |
Sunday September 7th 2003
Decide t go to Wexford with wife cathy and kids to check out Greenacres,
Pettitts and the Sky and Ground pub/offie for lunch. Bad idea as it pours
rain all day, all the shops are closed and the kids argue continuously.
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Saturday
September 6th 2003
Head off up M1 to Northern Ireland to review wine shops for the next
edition of the book. First time up the newly extended motorway and I'm
stunned to find myself on the Newry bypass just 65 minutes later. Memories
of all those times I did this drive in my Gilbeys days before this was
built, stuck in traffic in Balbriggan or Drogheda or Dundalk flood back a
I cruise along at 70mph.
Decide to head for Bangor and work
backwards. Find a couple of places in Bangor and then head for
Belfast in search of Compendium wines. After many U-turns, wrong turns and
much map consulting, I eventually find myself driving into Castlereagh
Industrial estate. The road to it is bedecked with Union Flags and there
are plenty of broken windows on run down warehouses. I check the doors are
locked. maybe a car with a Dublin registration isn't such a good idea
around here. It gets worse, more derelict buildings and then there it is.
Compendium is part of the Russells group and is situated at their head
office and warehouse. There's a fifteen foot electric fence, barbed wire,
a sentry box and floodlights. it looks like an RUC station or I suppose
that's PSNI station (shame I say that they didn't call it NIPS or Northern
Ireland Police Service).
Despite the forbidding exterior the
inside is a haven of tranquility and beauty with wall to wall wonderful
wines, wooden floors and shelving and Scotland V Ireland rugby live on a
TV! Makes a change from Bach or Mozart. This would be a great shop whether
in Belfast, London, Dublin or New York and is well worth the effort of
finding it. The fencing it turns out is because their warehouse which
contains cigarettes and spirits was broken into last year 3 times in 10
days!
Move swiftly on to the centre of town and
Direct Wine Shipments. It's an impressive old building that looks like a
converted warehouse next to the Sea Cat ferry terminal and like so many
off-licences you need to buzz the door bell to get in. Thankfully unlike
so many of the chain shops there are no bars on the counters! Security
does seem more important here than anywhere I've been in the Republic. DWS
have gathered an impressive array or agencies and mostly sell only their
own wines as far as I can tell, so the range is good but lacks a little of
the wow factor that Compendium have.
Heading out of town for Crossgar I come
across the Forestside shopping centre that I 'd gotten lost searching for
(junction of Ormeau rd and A55 - if you're looking for it). As ever
parking is a nightmare but the Sainsburys is impressive. Pop into M &
S and not that they have the UK not Irish range which is bigger than that available
in Dublin.
Drive off in the sunshine through the
countryside in search of James Nicholson's shop in Crossgar. Eventually
find the village but not the shop at first, which isn't on the main road.
It's a very impressive set up with a much bigger range than his website
can show case and friendly knowledgeable staff who are delighted to tell
me that they have just won the award for best wine merchant in Northern
Ireland.
Getting late as I head for Newry and
Sainsbury's to do some serious shopping, stopping along the way to check
out a Safeway and very good it is too. The final drive home is even faster
than the journey up and I drive along the empty road open mouthed and
spell bound at the novel experience in Ireland of cruising at 70 - 75mph
for 45 minutes. |
Thursday
September 4th 2003
A seminar and dinner in Trinity College hosted by Allied Wines and
Errazuriz wine maker Ed Flaherty. Oddly, I feel like a tourist as I walk
through the gates at Trinity. I've not been here since I was a tourist
visiting coming to look at the 'Book of Kells' a decade ago. It's easy to
forget how beautiful and tranquil it can be and so central.
There's a good turnout of journalist and
retailers and sommeliers to hear what he has to say about terroir in
Chile. We're going to have to earn our dinner as whilst talking to
somebody I suddenly blurt out 'Jeyzus' mid-sentence as I notice that
beyond them on the far side of the room is a wall of wine. Ed will, I'm
informed be illustrating his talk with 23 samples! I worry that we'll
still be here at midnight and there's meant to be a dinner too!
Ed is tall, thin, erudite, articulate,
laid back (he's from California), approachable and a skilled winemaker to
boot. If he wasn't such an all round nice guy you'd hate him as one of
those lucky people who seem to have it all.
Amazingly Ed rattles along and the
samples are briskly poured and we finish just about on time. The talk
turns out to be more about cabernet which is perfect as I'm due to give a
seminar in Rutherglen late in the month about Cabernet too!
Manage to collar Ed after the meal and
get him to promise to let me pick his brains tomorrow about cabernet and
provide some wine for it too. Result! |
Tuesday
September 2nd 2003
First autumn tasting and it feels like going back to school. Aldi
are hosting a tasting and lunch at Newman House in Dublin. All the star
pupils are there and the lunch was fun and full of wit as everyone caught
up with what everyone else had been up to over the summer.
Oh, the wines. Well there was only one
that I really didn't like, a sangiovese, but the rest were pretty good and prices as keen as you'll
find in Ireland. Interestingly,
given the grief that they get from some quarters about foreign companies
putting Irish ones out of business, I learned that Aldi make a point of
trying to stock goods from the country that they operate in which in our
case means sourcing most of their fresh produce here and Irish goods
account for around 30% of their sales. |
Monday
September 1st 2003
I’ve just returned from the post office
where I tried to post a bottle
of wine to the winner of the Wine Republic monthly draw for a bottle of wine for new
subscribers. The counter clerk looked at it my package and demanded:
"Does this contain liquid"? "Yes a bottle of wine" I
replied. "I can’t accept it then" he responded. “Shurely
shome mistake”, I muttered, I receive wine by post all the time and have
worked for mail order companies in Ireland that have contracts with SDS
(the courier arm of An Post) who deliver for them.
But
no, I was informed that following the September 11th incident there’s a list of things as long as your arm (cunningly not available
to the public or not in my local office at any rate) that An Post will not
accept for delivery. Presumably semtex and anthrax are on the list too, so
Al Qaeda and the Real IRA must be gutted but why wine or at any rate liquid?
Wine is hardly a weapon of mass destruction, a WMD, although admittedly a
case of wine might render a few people unconscious in certain
circumstances, but that’s only temporary and usually entirely voluntary.
I
wondered out of the post office in a state of amazement to the sorting
office next door to collect a package, having received notification that
there was something to collect. It was of course a box of six bottles of
wine in special cardboard packaging developed for ‘La Poste’. Clearly
the French post office have no issue with bottles in the post and even sell special
cartons exactly for such a purpose.
I
went back and asked the same clerk who turned me away how it was that the
same office was working with these suspect items but wouldn’t take my
bottle? He shrugged and said he’d turn a blind eye this time but
couldn’t promise it wouldn’t be returned to sender. I wait with baited
breath.
Am
I the only person in the wine industry that didn’t know of this rule?
How do mail order and internet companies operate? Do UPS or Fedex take
this huge risk on? I’d love to hear what retailers have to say. Please
post something on the bulletin board
if you have experience of this ruling.
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