Milan gets a bad rap from tourists – overpriced and pretentious are phrases that are often bandied about – but I must admit to really enjoying every single one of my visits there. With its proximity to Piemonte, Milanese restaurant wine lists are stacked full of Nebbiolo, Barbera and Dolcetto although I’ve found that, as with most cities, an excursion away from the centre is advised in order to avoid (Read more...)
With BYOB all the rage, we’re delighted to announce our partnership with The Whitefriar Grill.
Every Monday, as part of the Whitefriar Grill’s Corkage Club, you can bring your own bottle of wine to The Whitefriar Grill.
And here’s the best bit…if you bring a bottle from the biggest little wine shop in Dublin, the good folk there will waive the corkage fee for the months of (Read more...)
Semi Final 3
Founded in 1940, Viñedos y Bodegas Muñoz started as a small plantation in the town of Noblejas, in the heart of La Mancha. Today, it farms 400 ha of gnarled old vines, with an average age of 40 years; and its winemaking facilities include 1,500 ageing barrels and a state-of-the-art bottling line that ensures clean, fruity wines.
Muñoz is ranked among the pioneers of La Mancha’s wine community, and has (Read more...)
Yesterday evening as the rain lashed down as normal here in Galway our neighbours over in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop (a treasure trove that must be visited) dropped over a book that had come into their possession that they thought might be of interest to us, ‘The Penguin Book of Wines’ by Allan Sichel (2nd Ed. 1972). Now while I have not read the whole book I did notice some interesting (Read more...)
The Blue Haven is offering Curious Wines’ social media friends the chance to win 1 night’s B&B for 2 with dinner at its stylish and centrally-located Kinsale hotel. To enter, simply caption the image below on any of the online platforms mentioned below. Please note (and sorry to be needy) that you have to ‘follow’, ‘like’ or otherwise validate us to be eligible to win 
Facebook : We’ll post the (Read more...)
Boutique producer Château de la Négly is located in La Clape, an illustrious subregion of the Côteaux du Languedoc appellation. Meaning “pile of stones” in the old Occitan tongue, La Clape is a World Heritage site that was until the Gallo-Roman period an island.
Since becoming Négly’s estate manager in 1992, Jean Paux-Rosset has been on a relentless crusade to raise quality to previously-unimaginable levels, in the process growing (Read more...)
We were placing bets recently on what the most common internal site search phrase i.e. what are site visitors searching for when they arrive at Dublin’s biggest little wine shop?
Some of the top guesses were “Bordeaux“, “Barolo“, “Sauvignon Blanc” and the other usual suspects in terms of grapes.
Turns out we were all wrong. Turns out the number one internal search term (Read more...)
This week started out with a May day sale of two Pinot Noirs and two Chardonnays, from Burgundy and New Zealand. The Malo Chardonnay is easily the best value white Burgundy on the market. We’re bringing this home ourselves for when the sun decides to reappear.
Then on Wednesday, we were delighted to host Sandro Boscaini from Masi, one of the finest Amarone producers. We have some of the (Read more...)
Country / Region : Dao, Portugal
Year : 2011
Grape Variety : Encruzado & Cercial
Style : Crisp, Zesty White
ABV : 13 %
Drink By : 2014
The Winemakers
The gifted winemaker, Sonia Martins located her winery in the heart of the Dao region in north central Portugal. Sites were specially selected with the preferred granitic soil that gives the wine its distinctive character. The altitude of the vineyards helps to (Read more...)
Having just returned from a three week trip in Italy with stops in Milan, Camogli and Verona, not to mention many days in Tuscany with visits to Tenuta di Valgiano, Querciabella, Fontodi, Montevertine and Riecine, I have lots of photos for another installment of “Picture Perfect Italy”. Unsurprisingly for a wine geek, many of these are of vines, soil, vats, barrels, bottles and glasses but one or two were certainly (Read more...)
Something New is going to be a bit of a feature at The Wine Buff over the next couple of months, after tasting and slurping our way through a fair few bottles, we’re just about ready to reveal our new wine arrivals. We’ll be introducing a terrific range of new wines from Italy, France, Spain and South Africa. Our emphasis for the summer is to focus on great value wines, top notch quality and we’ve found (Read more...)
Myself, Regina O Mahony, Jancis Robinson MW, Beverley Mathews
Ballymaloe’s main man of wine, Colm McCan had asked me to give a hand at the Jancis Robinson ‘Wine Grapes’ event and I jumped at the chance. Jancis Robinson. What a speaker. Incredible. Really amazing. She talked us through some wonderful wines and lots of great wine stories. Incredible knowledge, witty and completely engaging. An amazing talk and tasting.
The inspiring (Read more...)
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