A year ago Robert, 11th Marquis de Goulaine, flew in with a flock of Irish Wine Geese from various parts the globe to perform the official opening of our first International Museum of Wine in Kinsale, Co Cork. Next Friday, the President, Mrs McAleese arrives to unveil a commemorative plaque. There is no shortage of big guns at Desmond Castle, the museum's characterful home. That says a good deal about the irresistible romance of the subject - the notion of an Irish diaspora traceable through multitudinous bottles of drink.
But perhaps it says even more about the passion of the three men who dreamed up this project and nurtured it with the loving attention a wine-maker might bestow on fine claret. Now they're selling it to the world - luring dignitaries of all descriptions and a steady stream of visitors with Irish blood and wine mingling in their veins. For native wine-lovers within reach of the deep south, it's the perfect excuse for a day out.
Who are these determined dynamos? Chief among them is Ted Murphy, a Corkman who combines his job as manager of Douglas Shopping Centre with a well-earned reputation as Ireland's most engaging wine historian. He is a living encyclopaedia on the so-called Wine Geese - those families who migrated from Ireland, mainly between the 17th and 19th centuries, and ended up in the wine trade.
"It started 30 years ago when I was asked to meet Hugues Lawton at Cork station," he explains. "His is the oldest wine-broking family in Bordeaux, and he was the first member of it to return to Cork in 250 years. The original Hugh Lawton had been a mayor of Cork and a wine merchant, you know. This man was in tears, he was so moved. Then we got chatting. `Are there many more boys like you, with Irish roots, in Bordeaux?' I asked him. `It's full of them!' he said. I began to dig and I suppose I've never stopped."
As his own collection of wine artefacts grew, Ted Murphy began to mull over the idea of a wine museum for Kinsale - the obvious place, given its past as a medieval wine port and its busy present built around good food and drink.
The notion was pursued with relish by Brian Cronin, owner of the Blue Haven Hotel - a man so committed that he has devised a Wine-Geese-flavoured wine list for his restaurant and named his bedrooms after chateaux with an Irish past. Peter Barry of Kinsale Chamber of Tourism, now the museum curator, completed the triumvirate who hammered out a deal to give Desmond Castle a new lease of life.
In the company of these three enthusiasts, a tour of the exhibits within the castle's stout 15th-century walls is a sleuthing spree that could go on for days. The Bordeaux connection, researched by Ted Murphy for the television series The Wine Geese in 1990 (and written about so absorbingly by T.P. Whelehan in The Irish Wines Of Bordeaux), is naturally of paramount importance. The conversation keeps wheeling round, like the circling seagulls overhead, to the presence in the Medoc of families such as the Bartons of Chateaux Leoville-Barton and Langoa-Barton, the Lynchs of Chateau LynchBages, the Kirwans, Clarkes, MacCarthys, Dillons. . .
"The Bartons have always considered themselves Irish," Ted Murphy says. "They all have Irish passports. Anthony Barton has been tremendously supportive to the museum." May-Eliane de Lencquesaing, the energetic chatelaine of Pichon-Lalande, is connected to the Galway Burkes who were also wine brokers in Bordeaux. Even today's Comte de Lur Saluces, the man fighting to retain Chateau d'Yquem, turns out to have a semi-Irish granny. But, now that the great wines of Bordeaux have priced themselves beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, everyday wine-lovers will be pleased to discover that the museum also establishes links with many more affordable bottles from virtually every wine-producing region in the world. Australia is well represented - not just through the Irish settlement of the Clare Valley but via more recent emigrants. Among Western Australia's leading wineries are Leeuwin Estate, run by Denis Horgan - a business billionaire with Cork connections (as well as present-day Dublin cousins) - and Chateau Xanadu, set up in the 1970s by Irish doctors John and Eithne Lagan.
New Zealand also features through wineries such as Hunter's (the late Ernie Hunter had Belfast roots) and Forrest (Brigid Forrest is a Cork Moriarty). California is liberally doused in Irishness, encompassing highly-rated Murphy-Goode, the Lee family, owners of Kenwood, and many others. Delving further into the past, Chile has a green streak in Santa Rita. The half-Irish liberator, Bernardo O'Higgins, took refuge in the old cellars there with 119 men during the struggle for independence - a fact celebrated in the Santa Rita 120 range. Errazuriz was apparently founded by O'Higgins's right-hand man, Gen John McKenna.
Indeed, scrutinised wearing green-tinted glasses, the distant past yields a fascinating mixture of well-known Irish links - the Cognac Hennessys, for instance, or sherry families such as the Garveys and O'Neales - and bizarre surprises. Did you know, for instance, that the Cossarts of Cossart Gordon, once the leading shippers of Madeira, were a distinguished Dublin Huguenot family? Or that Rhum Dillon, with the same Irish origins as Chateau Dillon in Bordeaux, is a big thing in Martinique?
Jumping back to the present, the museum also has news of current Irish wine producers such as David O'Brien, son of racehorse-trainer Vincent, in Chateau de Vignelaure, and Gay McGuinness in Domaine des Anges, both in the south of France.
Sceptics will grumble, of course, that tenuous Irish connections can be unearthed in almost every field with determined digging, and may not necessarily mean very much. But wine enjoyment is such a subjective thing - so bound up with mood and atmosphere - that it's hardly too fanciful to suppose a colourful dash of history here and there may enhance our appreciation of it. That's something to ponder if you go to the museum and then try some of the wines below. In the meantime, we must hope that Ted Murphy spends less time in Douglas Shopping Centre and more in Kinsale, so that visitors may hear the Wine Geese master in full flight.
Desmond Castle, The International Museum of Wine, 8 Market Square, Kinsale, Co Cork, tel/fax 021774 588. Open from now until mid-June, Tuesday-Sunday and bank holidays 10 a.m.1 p.m., 2 p.m.5 p.m.; from mid-June to mid-September, 9 a.m.6 p.m. daily; from mid-September to mid-October, Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.5 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m.5 p.m.
White
Goulaine Sauvignon, Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France, 1996 (Foleys Cabinteely, Savages Swords, some other outlets including Blue Haven, Kinsale, usually £5.99).
From the Marquis de Goulaine, one of whose ancestors married Henrietta Galwey of the famous Waterford wine-trading family, a crisp, appley Sauvignon at a very fair price.
Wakefield White Clare 1995 (Superquinn, Roches Stores and many independent off-licences, usually £6.99).
Among the Irish who settled in Australia's Clare Valley in the mid-1800s was a man from Sixmilebridge - a direct forbear of Wakefield's Mitchell Taylor. White Clare is a lovely change - a blend of Chardonnay and Crouchen aged in oak giving full, spicy flavours. It also ages well.
Red
Michel Lynch Bordeaux 1995 (widely available, £7.99-£8.99).
Named after a Lynch who fought with James I at the Battle of the Boyne, overseen in its production by the wine-making team responsible for Lynch-Bages - and it's a thoroughly pleasant, middle-of-the-road red Bordeaux with a big following. Nicely rounded, very reliable.
Concannon Petite Syrah 1995 (McCabes, Verlings, Bennetts Howth, Foleys Cabinteely, Deveneys Dundrum, Grogans Ranelagh, Spar Ballybrack, Mill Maynooth, Greenacres Wexford, Wine World Dungarvan, Blue Haven Kinsale, usually £8.99).
Born on the Aran Islands, James Concannon emigrated in the 1870s, began to make altar wine in California's Livermore Valley a decade later and was soon helping Mexico to develop a wine industry. Salute his pioneering spirit with a glass of this flavourpacked red. See Bottle of the Week.
Carneros Creek Pinot Noir, Francis Mahoney, 1995
(Collins Value Centre Carrigaline, Bernard O'Brien Off-licence Skibbereen, Mannings Emporium Ballylickey, Blue Haven Kinsale and other outlets, usually about £14).
An early experimenter with Pinot Noir in California, Francis Mahoney proudly pays tribute to his Corkonian parents on the back label. Perfumed with roses, violets and raspberries, it's smooth, round and extremely drinkable.
Leeuwin Estate Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River, 1992
(Searsons, £16.95; also Direct Wine Shipments Belfast).
From high-flying Denis Horgan, three generations away from Cork, a fabulously complex, elegant Cabernet from Western Australia - all the classic character of good Bordeaux with an extra hint of mint.
Sherry
Domecq La Ina, Very Pale Dry Fino (Superquinn, McCabes, Carvills and other outlets, usually £8.99)
Celebrate sherry's new chic image and its Irishness through bodegas such as Domecq, founded in the 1730s when one Patrick Murphy bought land near Jerez. Fresh, light, poised and utterly appealing.