Malbec at the Blackrock Castle wine club

Another lively session of the Blackrock Castle wine club took place last night, with eight wines under discussion and a startling number of items in 'other news'. Because of a party in the main hall of the Castle Trattoria, the club meeting was moved to the more intimate, less lofty space adjoining, and I can't help agreeing with Brian Clayton, fabled chronicler of Cork wine, that this was an improvement. The only drawback is that if we use the smaller space again, we'll have to limit numbers to forty or forty-five. Demand for the club nights is still so strong that this would mean dishing out rather more disappointment than we'd like; but we'll keep our recollections of the still more sociable atmosphere, and remarks about it, in the suggestions box. As I mentioned in a previous post, we were very pleased to welcome Cassandra Harmon, export manager of Clos Triguedina in Cahors, SW France, to speak as a special guest at the tasting. We were delighted with how well the whole flight of five wines from the estate showed, and with how ably and persuasively Cassandra introduced and distinguished each of them in turn. The wines tasted- all Malbecs, with a little blending here and there - were as follows:

• Guy Allion, Le Poira 2008 - from the Loire Valley
• Alessandro Speri, Prodigo 2005 - from Mendoza, Argentina
• Alessandro Speri, Prodigo Reserva 2005 - ditto
• Mystery bottle - Pavia, Blina - Barbera d'Asti, Piedmont, Italy
• Clos Triguedina, Esprit de Flore
• Clos Triguedina, Château de Flore
• Clos Triguedina, Le Petit Clos
• Clos Triguedina, Clos Triguedina
• Clos Triguedina, Prince Probus 2005

You can let us know what you thought about any of the wines by following the links to our website, thanks to reviewmeisters LouderVoice. I'd like to write a smart line about Malbec-friendly foie gras and the surfeit of information that we announced during the evening, but I'll let it go. There was a rich diet of news, offers and forthcoming events, is about the size of it; I'll summarize them here. You'll hear more about each in turn in due course. We have a sixteen-bottle sampling machine at the Marina, primed and ready to go! For the time being, when you call in, you can have a free tasting measure of any of sixteen wines (whites chilled, reds just right). Try before you buy comes to Cork wine retailing. This is a huge wow, to put it mildly. Come down to our Centre Park Road showroom and give it a whirl. May is Malbec Month! For the month of May, all our wines containing Malbec will be available at 10% discount. Wine dinner with Margaret River winemaker Glenn Goodall! On Tuesday 25th May we'll hold a dinner at the Castle Trattoria with winemaker Glenn Goodall from Xanadu estate in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. Great wine, great food, €55/head, ticket available here. What is this en primeur business about? MD of Bubble Brothers, Billy Forrester, will be holding an informal meeting at the Marina premises on Tuesday 4th May at 6.30pm for anyone who's interested to find out more about how the en primeur system (buying Bordeaux at a considerable discount by putting your money down in advance) works. Wines costing less than €10/bottle are very definitely part of the picture, so there's nothing lost by going along, especially when you can try out our new tasting machine too! There was still more news than this:

• a new web-shop for Bubble Brothers;
• a reminder about our champagne deal (just two days left - see our home page for more);
• our attendance at the forthcoming Wine Australia fair in Croke Park;
• 5% discount at the till with every purchase for holders of our loyalty card;
• and probably more that I've forgotten.

It was a great night for all concerned, and we're already looking forward to the next one on Thursday 27th May, when Billy will be introducing some of his latest discoveries from Italy.