News

Noma pop-up at Ballymaloe

Noma Pop Up Really enjoyed our night at Ballymaloe where two formers chefs at Noma restaurant hosted a pop-up. Yannick Van-Aeken and Louise Bannon`s menu `from bog to shore` was produced from locally foraged and sourced ingredients. Two of our wines were selected to accompany the dishes - Riesling Katzenthal 2010 Meyer-Fonne and Chinon 2010, Pensees de Pallus.
Read more

Another Brilliant Night In Galway

ArdBiaNight This time it was at ArdBia @ Nimmos where Kevin Powell of News of the Curd took over the kitchen, as part of Ard Bia`s Winter residencies, and cooked a stunning three course meal. And we had the wines to match. What an enjoyable night!.. The three wines selected and served were: Verdicchio di Matelica 2011, Colle Stefano; Pays de Vaucluse `Les Plans` 2010, Domaine Santa Duc; Banyuls Rimage `Mademoiselle O` 2010, Domaine Pietri-Geraud Kevin Powell`s News of the Curd and last but not least the fabulous and unique Ard Bia @ Nimmos Restaurant
Read more

Beaujolais Nouveau on Thursday 15th November!

Delighted to announce the arrival of 2 Beaujolais Nouveaux - Nouveaux with a difference, the wines are made in small volume by 2 artisan producers who both have a light-handed approach in the winery. They`re almost here and on our shelves! pre-order for delivery from Thursday 15th November or call to our shop to sample... Didier Desvignes, Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau `Nature` 2012 http://www.lecaveau.ie/shop/beaujolais_nouveau_nature_didier_desvignes.html Domaine de la Plaigne, Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau 2012 http://www.lecaveau.ie/shop/beaujolaisvillages_nouveau_la_plaigne.html
Read more

Italian Wine Dinner at Il Vicolo Galway

IlVicolo_Nov12 A line up of Artisan Italian Wines paired with delicious, authentic Italian dishes.. This was the theme of last night Italian wine dinner at Il Vicolo Cafe, Galway City. The wines presented were: Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Frizzante `Naturale`, Coste Piane Verdicchio di Matelica 2011, Colle Stefano Maremma Rosso `Principio` 2011, Antonio Camillo Chianti Classico 2006, Rodano Recioto di Soave `Vigna Marone` 2007, Tamellini Il Vicolo Cafe 5 Buttermilk Walk Galway City
Read more

Bridgestone Guides Megabytes November 2012

John and Sally McKenna pick and recommend a pair of wines from our imports. Wine: A Right Pair Vincent Girardin Bourgogne Saint Vincent AC 2010 (€18.95) Lush white Burgundy that drinks like a million dollars and sells for under twenty euro? Impossible, right? Believe it or not, but the great Vincent Girardin’s Bourgogne AC comes in neatly under €20 and for that it offers the most voluptuous mouthfeel, with notes of minerals and straw rather than fruits and butter on the palate. It’s a glory, and the second glass brings vanilla and strawberry. This wine is full of life, and bestows that gift on the drinker: one sip, and you feel more alive. Gianpaola Paglia Morellino di Scansano Bellamarsilia (€13.85) Paglia’s Bellamarsilia offers a bright garnet colour and a great nose with stone fruits, damsons and leather. In the mouth it’s completely alert – what photographers would call “smart-sharpened”. This is a red wine that turns up the attributes of the vineyard and amplifies what is in the wine, rather than making it up in the cellar. Lovely modern Italian winemaking. (The Right Pair from Le Caveau, Kilkenny, www.lecaveau.ie John McKenna 06/11/2012 http://www.bestofbridgestone.com/blog/pick-me
Read more

Pithon-Paillé estate is reviewed in thewinedoctor.com

Chris Kissack of the winedoctor.com pays a visit to Joe Pithon`s estate. pithonpaille2012jopithon Read the full article here
Read more

Shop facelift

After few days of hard labour, moving everything around, dismantling shelves etc... Le Caveau has a new look!.. Tell us what you think! Le Caveau New Look DSCF0360 DSCF0351
Read more

Tomas Clancy recommends Riesling Grand Cru 'Wineck-Schlossberg' Meyer-Fonne

Domaine Meyer-Fonne, Riesling Grand Cru Wineck-Schlossberg 2008 - €29.99 from Le Caveau, Market Yard, Kilkenny, lecaveau.ie - The Corkscrew, Chatham Street, Dublin 2; thecorkscrew.ie (92 points) This Alsace estate consistently over-delivers in quality for the price. The Meyer-Fonne Pinot Blanc and Riesling cuvees offer an opportunity to sample alomst every aspects of Alsace`s complex terroir, for under €20. However, there is a final piece of the jigsaw; the top flight wines from Meyer-Fonne which include Grand Cru vineyards. These wines have two phases, an initial glamourous period when they offer the best aspects of the easier drinking, cheaper wines. So why not go for the cheaper wines? Well, because of the second phase. Four years on, when the everyday offerings are fading, the Grand Cru nature of the Wineck-Schlossberg vineyard takes over. The crumbly, granite-dominated soils shine through. The wine exhibits acacia honey, baked apple and petroleum notes over a solky smooth wash underpinned by tremendous minerality. An epic story, just getting started. Tomas Clancy, The Sunday Business Post Magazine. 28th October 2012 sbp28Oct12
Read more

New Bridgestone Food Guide

bridgestoneJohn and Sally McKennas` Guides - New For 2012 All the best places to eat, shop and stay in Ireland. Perfect for all food lovers.. Le Caveau Market Yard, Kilkenny, Co Kilkenny Tel: +353 56 77 52166 www.lecaveau.ie Pascal Rossignol is a polished kind of a guy, and yet there is something about him that is unambiguously feral, something wild. It should come as no surprise, then, that he is a champion of “natural” winemaking, that crossroads of viticulture that is currently the most contentious zone that the wine world has seen in many years. He imports wines from the likes of Frantz Saumon, Sicily`s Anna Martens, Nicolas Renaud, and Thierry Puzelat. Their wines are remarkable, in a very literal sense; you cannot taste them and be unmoved: they are wild things, and one can see why Pascal Rossignol admires them and sells them. But they aren`t the only things he sells, for the tiny Le Caveau is filled with great wines, chosen with fastidious discrimination and amazing knowledge, and sold ith great charm by Pascal and Geraldine. A jewel of a place. Read the full article here.
Read more

Savour Kilkenny 2012

What a better opportunity to showcase Burgundy wines than when 2 of the best chefs in the Country are joining force to cook a dinner based on Game and Autumn flavours. Yep, it`s all happening this evening at Campagne Restaurant, where chef/owner Garret Byrne will be joined by Peter Byrne, head chef at the Powerscourt Ritz Carlton`s Gordon Ramsay Restaurant. Not sure if I am allowed to do this, but here`s a peep at tonight`s menu; unfortunately the event is fully booked, so if you haven`t secured your table, there`s always next year... Bourgogne ‘Saint-Vincent’2010, Vincent Girardin Game consommé,brioche foie gras crouton ***** Glazed oysters, cured wild salmon, spinach and hollandaise Chablis 1er cru ‘Montmain’2009, Gerard Tremblay ***** Partridge, pear, lentils and caramelised walnuts Cotes de Nuits Villages 2008, Louis Boillot ***** Wild venison ‘en croute’,crushed pumpkin, red cabbage and brussel sprouts Nuits Saint- Georges 1er cru ‘Chaignots’2007, Chauvenet-Chopin ***** Apple, porcini ice cream Tres Vieille Fine de Bourgogne, Joseph Cartron Here are some related website links: http://savourkilkenny.com/ http://www.campagne.ie/ http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Powerscourt/Default.htm The Festival will continue throughout the week-end with lots of really interesting events, including the following `not to be missed` : Irish Food and Film in Kilkenny Design Centre (Thursday 25/10 from 6pm) http://www.kilkennydesign.com/ Kilkenny Tasting Menu in Zuni Restaurant (Friday 26/10 and Saturday 27/10 from 7.30pm) http://www.zuni.ie/ Initially planned for Friday only, Zuni have decided to add a second date. Maria Raftery and her team will propose a 7-course dinner based on the multitude of first-class ingredients found in County Kilkenny. Irish Craft Beers and Tapas in The Grapevine (Saturday 27/10 from 2pm) http://thegrapevinetapasbar.com/?page=1 Kevin has invited 8 Degrees Brewing Co. to demonstrate how Artisan beers can be food friendly. Five beers to sample and tapas to match each one. Lots of demonstrations on the Parade on Saturday and Sunday, including the visit of Rory O`Connell `Ballymaloe House - Warm winter flavours in the cool Marble City` on Saturday at 2.30 pm Plenty, plenty more to be enjoyed so if you are not sure what to do this week-end, Kilkenny has all the answers!
Read more

Handcrafted Corkscrew by Laguiole en Aubrac just in!

The wine world always needs a fiery debate to sink its teeth into... Find our Laguiole en Aubrac Corkscrews here.
Read more

Raymond Blake writes about Natural wines

Natural Wine, by Raymond Blake The wine world always needs a fiery debate to sink its teeth into; under-garments were once tied in knots when the use, or overuse, of new oak was discussed; then came the cork v screwcap debate, which now simmers on a back burner, allowing for rational rather than hot-headed debate. Step forward ‘natural’ wine, it is your turn to set the commentators at (verbal) daggers drawn. It is hard to fathom how the simple word ‘natural’ could be the cause of so much heated debate but, once it is appended to ‘wine’, the fur begins to fly. The problem is two-fold: those winemakers who do not class themselves as ‘natural’ object to the seizure of the moral high ground that the term ‘natural’ implies; and, as yet, there is no widely accepted definition for natural wine. (See below.) My own disposition is to be in favour of these wines, as much because of what I see elsewhere as what I see in them. The world is awash with bland, industrially produced wines that are the very antithesis of what wine is all about. Wine’s greatest strength and enduring joy is its variety. Rob it of that and you are left with very little, usually a technically faultless or ‘too perfect’ wine – and that rates almost as a fault in my book. These wines have been to the gym, used the sunbed and had the botox done. But their flavours, often in the shape of too much oak or excess added acidity, are bolted on rather than integrated; they have no character of their own. A wine should, nay must, express something of the grape it is made from and the place it is made. Without grape ‘n’ ground it is nothing more than another alcoholic beverage. It is not just the producers who are to blame for this. Far too much wine tasting in the wine media and the trade today is little more than fault spotting. The wine is put through its NCT (or MOT), passes or fails, and that’s that. It’s like assessing candidates for a job on the basis of an aptitude test alone, with no interview. It’s mad and it’s leading to wines that are ever more formulaic, ever less exciting. The natural wine movement has sprung up in reaction to all of this, particularly the over-manipulated, characterless wines. Any natural wines that I have tasted have had character aplenty. Granted, some have gone too far down the funky ‘n’ feral road for anybody’s liking, apart from the winemaker, but most have been suffused with vibrant flavours, lovely freshness and a light texture. They are usually lower in alcohol and have seen less new oak than their mainstream brethren. As a consequence there is much less weight and density of flavour; the wines tend not to plod over the palate, yet they do not cross it unnoticed either. In terms of style, natural wines are sometimes too challenging, too quirky for wine drinkers more used to polished ‘perfect’ flavours. It isn’t going too far to say that some of them exhibit an earthy ‘pong’ that is for aficionados only. But that is not their biggest problem; it is the use of the word ‘natural’ and the suggestion, however unintended, that the wine somehow makes itself, with only a nudge from the hand of man. That is far from the case, for even the lowest intervention winemaking requires significant human input. A better name needs to be found, but what might that be? ‘Un-manipulated’? ‘Low Intervention’? No, I didn’t think so either. TOWARDS A DEFINITION At present the term ‘natural wine’ lacks a proper, rigorous definition and because of its woolly, feel good overtones it is an easy object for derision. Even amongst its proponents there are many variations of just what is meant by the term and this is unlikely to change in the near future. Broadly speaking, a natural wine will fit the following parameters: made with organically or biodynamically grown grapes, harvested by hand from unirrigated vineyards; no additives such as cultured yeasts, sugar, acid or flavourings; very little fining or filtration; minimal or no use of sulphur. In short, it could be summed up thus: Made with little intervention – in the form of chemical and technological wizardry – in the vineyard and the winery. GET THEE TO… LE CAVEAU Nobody in Ireland takes natural wine more seriously than the urbane Pascal Rossignol of Le Caveau in Kilkenny. And he doesn’t adopt a messianic approach to them either, he stocks them because he thinks they are good wines – and they are. The following trio are top of the pops for me: ‘Gran Cerdo’ Tempranillo, Gonzalo Gonzalo Grijalba 13% €12.50 Touraine ‘In Côt We Trust’ 2008, Thierry Puzelat 12% €20.95 Prosecco di Valdobbiadene NV, Casa Coste Piane 11% €19.50 www.lecaveau.ie Article first published in the July-August issue of Food & Wine Magazine. link to Raymond Blake`s website: http://www.blakeonwine.com/files/natural-wine-september-2012.php
Read more
139 results