Ireland fine wine merchants of the year

he Sunday Business Post annual wine awards 2008 by Tomás Clancy While this year has been a testing one for businesses in general in Ireland, the wine trade has been weathering the unsettled times with some degree of aplomb. Wine is now truly part of Irish culture. Large numbers of men downing pints of plain in pubs after a hard day’s labour are almost a thing of the past. People in today’s Ireland have returned to the kitchen and, between conversations lamenting the price of houses and lauding Obama’s victory, many can be found sipping a well priced chardonnay from a well-regarded producer, while stirring a plainer supermarket wine into the cooking sauce. Wine culture fits this new attentiveness to quality rather than our previous scattergun snatchings of excess. And the Irish wine business has responded with flair, ingenuity and realism. This following selection is evidence of this: Best fine wine merchants (Outside Dublin) 1. Le Caveau, Kilkenny 2. Wicklow Wine Company, Wicklow 3. Greenacres, Wexford 4. James Nicholson, Crossgar, Co Down 5. David Dennison Fine Wines, High Street, Waterford Next month will mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of Le Caveau, the Kilkenny wine shop owned by Burgundy native Pascal Rossignol and his wife,Geraldine O’Rourke. The couple perceived a coming trend when they set up this bespoke importation business. Le Caveau would fit in easily in any wine-growing region, especially Burgundy. Among a good selection of wines from around the world, there are wines which are not otherwise available outside Burgundy. The only disappointment is that, after taking time to select a handmade Pommard, after admiring a bottle of a small, family-owned domain’sVieillesVignes, PulignyMontrachet, you emerge out of the shop into Ireland, not into the glare of the sun in Beaune. Sunday Business Post, 14th December 2008