We met up on my first full day in Dublin, Jonathan lugging a dozen wines as we were going to a tasting... he and a group of friends are studying wine appreciation. They have a practical exam in a couple of months, so they get together once a week to, erm, study. And what a study session! 6 wines, tasted 'blind', that coud be from anywhere in the world, any year, any style. Try to identify them, order them by price, and pick the 'theme'. Quite a few of us thought the first three were 'new world' (Australian, South American etc) - they were all rather simple, lots of big cherry fruit flavour but not much else. Only one bloke (out of 5 of us) correctly guessed that these were Grenache wines. The second three wines were amazing - complex, rich full fruit flavours, spicy, mature, good oak. Definitely older, and certainly from the 'old world' - maybe France, more likely Spain - there was one that was full of liquorice and herbs and long, complex finish that blew us all away. None of us twigged that these 3 were Grenache too! And we fell over when, their labels revealed, we learned that the first three were French and Spanish, the others all 'New World'. The liquorice allsort that blew us all away? Peter Lehmann from South Australia. Check it out.
(For the record, I managed to pick the price order of these wines, even though I had no idea what they were made of! But enough wine wankery for one day!)
Dinner followed, at a very cosy, bustling french bistro near Dublin Castle, called Chez Max, where we were served by Max himself despite (or maybe because of) the mid-week crowds.
We rounded the night out with more gorgeous wine at a groovy little bar just over the Liffey (allegedly the only place my wonderful but occasionally rampantly classist pal ventures near the 'North side' of town.) The staff there knew Jonathan and his work/tasting pals, so we were well looked after with things to try...
Our next foodie adventure was Saturday night dinner at a Mexican place with J's colleague Laurent (the significance of the photo below is that Jonathan drank BEER!I've never seen that before...) followed next morning by the Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary -honest!) Sunday farmers market - organic veggies, spelt bread, home baked baked pies, frittatas and brownie. Finnsh cloudberry jam (of course! er.....). And cheese.... Dinner that night was rather spesh, accompanied by some gorgeous wines into the bargain. And I came away with a wicked new recipe (of J's invention) that involved snow peas, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes in a cream sauce, over pasta. Apparently next time, it's my turn to cook...
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