How to Read a Winelist

When the wine list appears many restaurant customers, me included, feel like hiding in the loo until the “Who chooses?” moment has passed. As a wine writer, I'm frequently handed the carte and asked to select appropriate partners for the food guests have chosen, which can run the whole gamut, from rare venison to tofu. As a moment to dread, choosing wine to accompany a meal is up there with buying a second-hand car or telling your rugger-bugger dad you want to be a ballet dancer. So the first thing to do when confronted with a wine list is to shed your ... more

Badfellagate - a wise decision

Newspaper critics of all persuasions will be sleeping better in their beds following the judgement of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland overturning the verdict in what I think of as 'Badfellagate', a case in Northern Ireland in which a restaurant proprietor sued a critic over an adverse review. Anthony Lester QC, an architect of the UK Human Rights Act, fighting the appeal on behalf of the Irish News, said it would be “perfectly ludicrous” if libel proceedings could be issued every time a critic wrote a bad review and with this I wholeheartedly... more

THE CHARMS OF WEXFORD - Part 1

a GUIDE TO MY FAVOURITE COUNTY I have just celebrated my 20th anniversary of coming to Dublin to live. When I arrived on 28th August 1987 the place was closed for business. Emigration, albeit not in famine ships, seemed to be the fate of Ireland's populace once more. The ferries leaving Dun Laoghaire sat several feet lower in the water than the one that brought me to land. Did somebody actually shout “When you get in, turn the lights back on” or was that a trick of my imagination? Now, or so 'they' tell us, it's boom time and we are accounted one o... more