WINE: Now there are more wines to choose from, and more space in which to enjoy them, writes Mary Dowey
NEW CABOT & CO "I'm never moving again," sighs Liam Cabot. As the new Cabot & Co is just 50 paces from the old one, and Cabot is one of the cheeriest people in the Irish wine scene, there must be more to this move than meets the eye. There is. At 5,000 square feet, Liam Cabot's new shop in the IFSC is a massive temple to wine. Cabot has been up ladders for weeks, painting the walls terracotta, overseeing the hanging of chandeliers made of giant wine bottles and hauling stock. "We moved 9,000 bottles the other day, and, astonishingly, we didn't break a single one."
Here, in an air-conditioned cellar with room for 2,000 cases, you can store your fine wine for a fee of €20 per case per year - and you don't even have to have bought it from Cabot & Co.
Fine wine also features dramatically in a full wall display of the grandest bottles on sale - 750 of them. From the beginning, Cabot & Co has worked hard on its range. These are drawn both from a broad spectrum of wholesalers and from WineKnows, the importing company which the Cabots run in conjunction with On the Grapevine. Gems include Huet in Vouvray, Château de St Cosme in Gigondas, Enzo Boglietti in Piedmont and Turkey Flat and Trevor Jones in South Australia.
Upstairs there is a huge mezzanine which will be transformed into a wine bar in the new year. "More work," I say. "Yes," Cabot grins. "But it's easy to work hard when you're obsessed with something." And off he goes to celebrate the opening of the new shop with his favourite treat, a bottle of Scyri 1999 from COS in Sicily (€29.99).
Cabot & Co, Custom House Square, IFSC, Dublin 1 (01-6360616). Open Mon-Fri, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sat, 1-8 p.m.
NEW ON THE GRAPEVINE Halfway up Booterstown Avenue, you will find a brand new emporium of 500-600 wines. Gabriel and Pamela Cooney of On the Grapevine in Dalkey have opened their second shop - it's long and narrow, but filled with natural light from a glass roof on the back section and French windows to a gravelled courtyard. A startling transformation, apparently - because this space was previously owned by a scrap collector. "We cleared out enough stuff to fill 18 skips," Cooney reports.
Whereas Bordeaux and Burgundy are the strongest sellers in Dalkey, Booterstown customers are younger and less traditional, seizing on Sauvignon Blanc from La Motte in South Africa (2004, €11.95) and Kim Crawford in New Zealand (2003, €15.95); the rich Spanish red, Castell del Remei Gotim Bru, Costers del Segre 2002 (€13.95); the full-throttle Tommaso Bussola Valpolicella Classico 2003 (€13.95) and the trendy bubbly La Riva dei Frati Prosecco Brut Frizzante (€14.50).
By the time this appears in print, the art gallery planned for upstairs will probably have opened.
On the Grapevine, 45 Booterstown Avenue, Co Dublin (01-2108157). Open Mon-Sat 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
NEW ELY Ely, Dublin's buzziest wine bar, has reopened after a major refit. It's sleeker, more comfortable and more spacious. But, as Tom Doorley pointed out in a recent restaurant review, the best thing of all is the new wine list. Owners Erik and Michelle Robson now offer over 400 wines by the bottle and 73 by the glass. The new house wines bottled specially for Ely are flying off the shelves - a Chenin Blanc Chardonnay from Loire producer Florent Baumard and a Costières de Nimes Grenache-Syrah blend from Châteauneuf fireball Laurence Féraud (both at glass €6.80, bottle €26).
From the by-the-glass list, I'd find it difficult to decide between Talmard Macon-Uchizy 2003 (€6.80), Domaine des Baumard Savennières Clos de Saint Yves 2000 (€7.60) and Leeuwin Estate Art Series Riesling 2002 (€8.90) among the whites. Red lures include Zenato Valpolicella Classico Superiore 2001 (glass €6.40, see Bottles of the Week), Ravenswood Zinfandel 2001 (€6.55) and Château du Cedre Cahors 2001 (€8.80).
As for the bottles, Ely has many more serious wines on offer than before. You can inspect them in their temperature-controlled display unit - from Michel Lafarge, Robert Chevillon and de Vogué in Burgundy; Le Sang des Cailloux in the Rhône; Vega Sicilia and Alvaro Palacios in Spain; Penfolds Grange and Bin 707 in Australia. "We'd have bought even more if we hadn't spent so much money on the builders,"' says Erik Robson.
22 Ely Place, Dublin 2 (01-6768986). Open Mon-Fri, noon-11.30 p.m.; Sat, 1-11.30 p.m.