TradeNames: Sweeneys Wine Merchants of Harts Corner in Glasnevin grew out of a grocer's shop on Dorset Street, writes Rose Doyle

When Joe Sweeney arrived in Dublin from Enniscrone, Co Sligo in 1937 he went to work as a grocer's apprentice in Lynchs of 20 Dorset Street. It was the beginning of a love affair with the shop, the business and the street which would flourish and grow and become, three months ago, Sweeneys Wine Merchants of Harts Corner, Glasnevin.

Like the best of good affairs, the journey to Harts Corner took a lot of hard work and included a lot of rare times.

In the large, high ceilinged, stylishly convivial and just-opened premises that is Sweeneys Wine Merchants at Harts Corner, Joe Sweeney gently tells the tale of the journey from apprentice to grocer to today's stellar wine establishment. His brother, Tom, who followed him to Dublin and Lynchs in 1944, joins in the telling and so does Finian, his son, and the second generation Sweeney running today's business.

"I come from a small farming background and it was like emigrating when I came to Dublin," Joe remembers. "I'll never forget the morning I left, everyone in the house to wake me, tears and gnashing of teeth. But I was 15 and wanted to go. We were a big family and I had to make room for the others."

Then there was Dorset Street, and the beginning of that affair. He loved the shop from the start.

"I both lived and worked there, long hours but that never bothered me. It was fun to work and I had little money and few options for spending it anyway. Jimmy Lynch was very good to me. Dorset Street was a busy street, with a lot of big shops. There was Liptons and Findlaters, Blanchardstown Mills and Shepherd's Grocers and drapers' shops that included the Silk Mills, which did a big mail order business. Lynch's was a grocery with an off-licence."

Tom Sweeney remembers there being "little or no wine sold in the off-licence. The liking for wine only came later, when people started going on holiday to Spain."

Joe recounts "washing and bottling our own Guinness and whiskey. We had beer pumps for the stout and old ladies would come in with their jugs to be filled from a cask under the counter".

He remembers whiskey coming in "big, delph five-gallon jars", how the liquor companies were separate then with John Power in Thomas Street, Jamesons in Bowe Street, DWD (Dublin Whiskey Distillers) off the NCR and Tullamore Dew in its midlands home. "We bottled our own Tawny Wine," he says, "which we got in big barrels from Kellys at the Five Lamps."

Lynchs was a busy shop, giving a lot of credit to customers and making deliveries on bikes with big baskets. This ended in the early 1960s, Tom says, "disappeared when the supermarkets and self-service started coming in."

Joe Sweeney left Dorset Street and Lynchs Grocers in 1945 to rent a small, grocery/off-licence in Clanbrassil Street. "I ran it very successfully until 1955 at which time Jimmy Lynch decided to retire and gave me first option to buy Dorset Street. I'd never really left, in a way. I absolutely loved the auld place and used call over all the time during the 10 years I was in Clanbrassil Street." Joe Sweeney bought 20 Dorset Street, a basement with four storeys overhead, as well as the business "for about £10,000. I'd married Kathleen Murray in June and we moved into Dorset Street in September." Tom, who had meanwhile been working in insurance, rejoined his brother in the renamed Sweeneys of Dorset Street.

Things went well from the beginning. "We worked all the hours God sent," Joe says. "The community was very close and our customers came from Clonliffe Road, Walsh Road, Mannix Road, Iona Road, Fitzroy Avenue."

Tom reminds that the years were post-war, how everything had to be weighed. Joe recalls tea coming in chests and butter in 56lb slabs. "Cheddar cheese came in slabs, too, but shops were cooler then, without all the machinery that nowadays heats them. We stored perishables in the cellar. Winter and spring you'd have sides of bacon hanging, smoked as well as plain."

Tom and Kathleen Sweeney had four sons and a daughter and everyone lived over the shop until 1968.

The petrol crisis of 1973 led to them becoming a Londis franchise. Finian, the fourth of their offspring, came to work in the shop when he finished school in 1981. He remembers doing his Leaving Cert in Rockwell College, looking at the CAO forms, deciding he was never going to study again and that the business was for him.

"One of the things which changed Dorset Street was the advent of the supermarkets," he says. "They put the kybosh on what was a very successful grocers through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. When I started in 1981 there were eight full-time girls in what was a shop of less than 1,000sq ft (93sq m). It was a very, very serious grocery player in its day! Mam would spent Fridays and Saturdays taking orders non-stop and the staff would get them together and ship them out."

But the end of things as they were had begun, a "slow death" Finian calls it, which led to him developing the off-licence side of things.

"Dorset Street was a poor part of the inner city then," he says, "with no wine sales as such. The off-licence sold Smithwicks, Guinness, Harp, Winter's Tale and Buckfast Tonic Wine and that was basically it." By 1987, Joe says, Finian had "basically taken over. I could see my sidelining coming!"

They were lucky, Finian says, to have the off-licence. By 1992, when he took over the business, he'd expanded that side of things, though they were still selling groceries.

"We put a granite front on the shop and re-named it Sweeneys Off-Licence. The minute Dad signed over to me it was incredible how he stepped back. But his advice was and is invaluable."

They won "Off-Licence of the Year" in 1995. "It was the hay-day of the independent off-licence," Finian says. "In a sense we were there just as the boom was starting and, in a sense too, the pubs were unaware how much the off-licence trade was growing. Then the drunk-driving laws came in; there were a lot of reasons for the way the trade grew and now," he eyes the new Sweeneys and the possibilities everywhere, "here we are 10 years later."

Leaving Dorset Street wasn't so much a choice as an inevitability. Finian Sweeney knew he "wanted to go down the road of very good wine shops" but the building was close to 300 years old, the restrictions limiting. Then there were the bus lanes, the car-parking problems.

"In a sense we were pushed out," he says, "but the minute we made the decision to leave and found this place we knew it was the right thing.Anyone can sell beer but wine's different. It's about getting to know the customer, helping them explore the excitement of new wines, that's where the buzz is. We're going to start a wine club, people really want to share their interest in wine, to talk to like minds, develop friendships. I go on holiday to wine regions. Tuscany's a favourite, it's where I honeymooned with Hannah, my wife, in 1996."

His business principles include supplying customers with information they need and carrying a broad selection of wines.

"Customers will see new wines every month. We sell beer too, of course. Blake Boland, who comes from an off-licence background himself, is our beer expert and a treasured member of staff. We're doing well but we've a long way to go. We've a two-year plan and we're ahead of target when it comes to wine! People are so enthusiastic when they come in, we're getting great support."

He says he's a "slut" when it comes to wine himself. "I try different wines all the time. The fun is in the variety, in finding new wines that hit the spot!"