Bubble Brothers

Liss Ard estate hosted a tasting dinner as part of A Taste of West Cork 2017, and Billy Forrester was invited to supply and introduce a complementary wine for each course.

It's a challenge to grow Albariño successfully, especially in a relatively damp and misty part of the world such as Galicia, but Bodega Granbazán was a pioneer in commercial production of fine wines from this tricky grape.

We don't like to run out of the delicious Cabardès reds of Château Jouclary—any of them—but it does sometimes happen…

…the shelves of Breton supermarkets and cavistes alike are noticeably empty of wine from Brittany itself. Neighbouring regions are well represented, but there's nothing from the Côtes-d'Armor, from Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine or from the Morbihan. Beer? Yes. Cider? Mais oui. But wine? Nothing. What's going on?

…we were very happy indeed to be asked to supply wines for today's launch of The Well Review, a new journal named after the Sunday's Well area of Cork city. Poets and wine, I hear you cry—what a novel association!

…our suppliers in Austria, the Pfaffl family, were nominated by American all-things-wine company Wine Enthusiast among their finalists for the award of European Winery of the Year 2016.

Isabelle Sheridan of On the Pig's Back has once again been rewarded for her long service in the cause of promoting French food and culture in Ireland. And it's a pretty good reward, as such things go, coming from the top this time in Isabelle's native France.

Grüner Veltliner? We found two, packed with all the luscious, vibrant fruit and pepper character you could wish for, and they're both on their way, along with two racy but mouth-filling Rieslings, a dry, food-mad Pinot Blanc and a lovely cherryish light red made from Zweigelt, Austria's most widely grown red grape.

Time flies when you're having fun, and although there doesn't seem such a lot of point in announcing the line-up at our Italian wine tasting in Salt after the fact, you never know when it might come in handy for someone. No harm in marking such a pleasant occasion, in...

…some characters are more essential to the plot than others, and though we leave the hurling of rotten tomatoes to the greengrocers—in fact, we don't even boo or hiss much—we have our favourites like anyone else.