With St Patrick’s Day almost upon us, this week a look at four very different ‘Irish’ wines. Locally grown sparkling wine has been receiving rave reviews in the English media. Leaving aside the understandable national pride of the local journalists (something every wine-producing country suffers from) there are some seriously good English sparkling wines.
Mind you the prices are fairly serious too; the average retail price for a bottle of English wine (sparkling or still) is around €24. We don’t see many of them in Ireland, although Marks & Spencer do carry a range, and Nyetimber, the leading UK producer of sparkling wine is also available in a few outlets.
Parts of the south of England share chalk soils similar to those in Champagne. In recent years there has been a rush to plant Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay, the three grape varieties responsible for Champagne. Despite the huge increase in plantings, total English wine production is a mere 4 million bottles, compared to more than 300 million in Champagne. However the best wines, given sufficient ageing, can be every bit as good as Champagne. One of the leading lights in the English wine industry is Irishman Dermot Sugrue. Born in Kilmallock in south Limerick, Sugrue had an interest in fermentation of some sort from a young age, brewing his first beer at 15, and his first wine at 16.
When he had finished his degree in Environmental Sciences, he began working as a Financial Services adviser, but threw it all in to study winemaking in Plumpton College in East Sussex. After a successful spell at Nyetimber, he joined Wiston, a large family-owned estate on the chalk soils of the South Downs. In addition to the excellent Wiston Estate wines, Sugrue also produces sparkling wine under contract for many other growers, and still finds time for his own creation, Sugrue Pierre. This recently received the highest ever score for an English wine in Decanter magazine. In addition, he consults for other wineries in the UK, and India as well.
Sadly all of these wines are produced in very small quantities, but Ballymaloe has just received a shipment of the four Wiston Estate wines, available from the Ballymaloe Cookery School shop. Sugrue will also make an appearance at the forthcoming Litfest.
Charles Simpson was born in Ireland but moved to England at the age of four. He and his Scottish wife Ruth both gave up successful careers, he in pharmaceuticals, she in humanitarian aid, to set up Domaine Sainte Rose in the Languedoc. Now, 12 years on, they have built a reputation for quality and innovation in an area more noted for tradition and volume production.
Not content with that, the Simpsons have now purchased a new site close to the Kent coast in England. The first vines (again, all Champagne varieties) will arrive in May. Like Dermot Sugrue, they will soon be producing English sparkling wine. “We bought in the Languedoc because it was an up-and-coming region”, says Charles Simpson. “We had no interest in established areas like Bordeaux and Burgundy. We wanted to work in an evolving area. The UK offers us anther challenge, although we will continue with Domaine Sainte Rose.”
Neasa Corish from Cornelscourt in Dublin met, fell in love with, and married Languedoc wine producer Laurent Miquel. She is an integral part of the family business and a driving force in the sales department.
This is a larger enterprise than the boutique Sainte Rose, but also one of the most innovative in the entire region.
The Miquel family has managed to have various versions of their wines listed by Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Marks & Spencer and O’Briens. The key to this success is simple; the wines are generally of very good quality, supple and easy to drink, and very reasonably priced too.
They have not been afraid to experiment either; the latest release is an Albariño, the first produced in the Languedoc.
The last Irish tipple is not really a wine at all, but a beer, and a fairly strong beer too. O’Hara’s, based in Bagenalstown in Carlow, straddle the gap between micro-brewery and large producer very well.
Aged in whiskey barrels and sold in a 75cl bottle, O’Hara’s Barley Wine is the third seasonal release from the company. A mere 1,700 bottles were produced, so move quickly if you want to try it.