Goodbye Dublin, Hello London

11.20am, London Bridge Road, London City Central, England
Well, it’s Goodbye Dublin, Hello London! We said goodbye nicely yesterday, with a quick trip around the city with the 2008 Pewsey Vale Riesling, 2007 Wild Ferment Chardonnay, 2007 Bush Vine Grenache, 2006 Shiraz Viognier and 2006 Patchwork Shiraz – and I’ll give you a couple of highlights.

I had a first today. I was working with Cassidy’s lovely fine wine man Eoin (Owen) Byrne, and we went into the Kelly’s Off Licence in Clontarf to show the wines to Mick O’Connor … and folks … he’d already checked out the blog! I was pretty excited as he thought it was a good read. So I shall continue on!

It was a nice exercise to compare the two Shirazes from 2006, as the vintage is standing up really well. That Shiraz Viognier has got seriously lush berries but with good solid length and has miles left to go.

Cod cakes on the Cill Airne

Then around we went to the old Docklands that have been completely rebuilt, and where they’ve made an old ferry boat, the Cill Airne, into a fabulous floating restaurant. She sits about half a mile upstream from where the Liffey goes out to the Irish Sea, and she has the Blue River Bistro on the upper deck and the fine dining Quay 16 on the lower. They’re looking for new Australian wines, so in we went to see the sommelier, and we took the opportunity to have lunch from their daily 10 euro specials board. Here’s Owen’s “salmon & cod & crushed green peppercorn cakes, with tomato capsicum and onion salsa”.

Across the afternoon we ducked in and out of restaurants around the Grafton Street area with the on-premise king Peter Whelan. Whilst a lot of the owners said that business was down in the city centre compared to last year, a lot thought the economy had bottomed out, and that things were starting to move. They were more concerned about the weather. Over the four days of sunshine last week, everything was full. But with the overcast stuff, folks had dissapeared. So bring on the sun, and lets hope the worm has started to turn for them.

My last night in Dublin was at the Hibernian Club on St Stephen’s Green – est 1840 so they’re nine years older than us – where we did a tasting and dinner with Mark and Cullum from The Corkscrew fine wine store and 60 of their customers. We had a top line up:

At the tasting:

• 2008 Mesh Riesling
• 2007 Heggies Chardonnay
• 2004 Signature
• 1998 The Reserve
• 2003 Octavius

Wiht dinner:

• 2007 Wild Ferment Chardonnay
• 2006 Barossa Shiraz Viognier
• 2006 Botrytis Viognier
• Museum Muscat

We gathered in the main dining room overlooking St Stephen’s Green. Lovely in the true sense of the word. The wines flew on the night. I was just the tour guide they were performing so well. And we had a couple of young expat Australian lads (Perth and Cessnock) there for some extra character, and no one left early … always a good sign. There were some really nice comments from folks about how they felt they got the feel of the Barossa region and the winery from the combination of the stories and the wines, so it looks like we might have organised another outpost of support in the heart of Dublin. Thanks a heap Mark & Cullum – they look after us well, and looks like they’re already taking bookings for The Great Yalumba Tasting – Part 2! Great stuff!

Molly Malone is a Saints fan!

Oh – and here’s how we said goodbye to Dublin – at the Molly Malone (you know – the “cockles and mussels alive alive o” lady) statue down the end of Grafton Street.