THERE is one word in the lexicon of Irish wine which I struggle to keep out of this column. (Fair play, level playing pitch, other good sportsmen in the field. .. all those sorts of reasons.) Every so often, there is a week when I succeed. The rest of the time up the demon word pops, often in the final minutes of writing, to hurl itself over the line and score another try.
That's McCabes for you - always at the centre of the action. In the weekly round of phonecalls to importers, to ascertain the retail outlets for featured wines, Blackrock's best known wine shop is mentioned with such indecent frequency that one is inclined to plead: No, please, not McCabes again. Please, dear Bacchus, god of wine, if we have to mention a major Dublin outlet may it be Redmonds in Ranelagh (number two for frequency), or Verlings, or anywhere else you like, just to give us a break from McCabes.
Jim McCabe knows full well the trouble he causes and smiles. "Jimmy Redmond is always ringing me up to ask me how many wines we have now," he says. "He's counting his all the time. I think we have around 1,300. A colossal number." McCabes celebrates 10 years in business in Mount Merrion Avenue this November with one of the most extensive, and most interesting, ranges you can hope to see anywhere in Ireland, including many wines you won't see anywhere else.
Regular shoppers will tell you it is one of the country's most customer friendly wine shops, with pleasant staff always on hand to dispense advice. McCabes also run one of Dublin's longest established and most ambitious wine clubs, with 140 members regularly tasting seriously worthwhile bottles. Maybe all the plaudits are in order after all? If they must heap up in such profusion, the general view is that there is no more worthy recipient. Success couldn't happen to a nicer man.
It has not been easily won. Slowly and doggedly over the past decade Jim McCabe has developed his business, with vital help on the financial side from his younger brother John, and on the retail side from shop manager John MuIvaney. Before that, there were difficult years in the early 1980s, when he launched his first venture - a wine warehouse in Dun Laoghaire. But those who know the story would consider the McCabe brothers initiation into the drinks trade as the most difficult thing of all.
They were brought up in Portadown where their father, James McCabe, had inherited his father's pub. More interested in wine than in beer or spirits, he developed that side of the business through the 1950s, initiating agencies and buying wine direct from France in a pioneering way. In due course James E. McCabe Ltd became the largest independent wine and spirit importers in Northern Ireland. There were seven McCabe children - Jim the eldest boy, John the second youngest - born into a world of wine. "From the age of about 12, we had wine with our Sunday dinner, which was pretty unusual in the North at that time," Jim recalls.
The happy family dinners with wine came to an abrupt and awful end. In 1972, on July 12th, James McCabe was singled out as a prominent Catholic businessman and shot dead in his pub. He was 48. Jim was 15. A year later, when the trial of the suspected murderer was in progress, the McCabe children were sent away for the weekend to their grandparents in Blackrock. (Their mother Eilagh is a Dublin Quinn, a sister of Superquinn's Feargal.) "We came down on the Friday evening," Jim remembers, "and we never went back. It was felt that the North wasn't a good place for us to be. I walked into Blackrock College on the Monday morning.
In due course, after a commerce degree at UCD and some work experience, Jim McCabe found himself drawn towards his father's trade - initially extending some of the Northern company's business into the south. When it was sold 10 years ago he retained many of the agencies his father had built up.
"I'm passionate about the business of wine," he says, describing a host of plans for the imminent overhaul of the Blackrock premises now his main focus since the sale of the Clontarf shop earlier this year. "We've tried a lot of things that have worked well over the years. I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but I think the success of our direct imports lies in the fact that I have a good palate for picking out wines that customers will like.
McCabes was first to import the Bulgarian wines which have proved so popular in the Irish market, and also first to bring in Hugh Ryman's wines, later taken on by Quinnsworth. They currently import over 100 wines direct - from everyday bottles at keen prices to majestic Australians like Penley Estate and Wirra Wirra, and top Californians including Stag's Leap.
The real reason for featuring McCabes today is to draw attention to another first. McCabes Wine Festival - Dublin's first annual wine fair and a major event in the November drinking calendar - evolved from modest beginnings six years ago. "To be honest, after the first one we didn't feel like having another," Jim says in his direct Northern way, "but then we thought we'd kick ourselves if somebody else took up the idea."
Now it's the other way round. Any wine lovers who don't get out to Blackrock Rugby Club on Wednesday week (November 20th) will kick themselves for missing the chance to taste over 100 wines from 18 importers. Among them will be 16 classics (Chateau Talbot 1985, Leoville Lascases 1988, Brown Brothers Reserve Cabernet 1983 and other treats) each open for an hour. There will also be the super masterclasses and the famous blind tasting - guaranteed to stump three quarters of the 500-600 wine fans who attend.
Mind you, the real star of the show won't be a wine at all. It will be that dark haired fellow rushing around in his shirtsleeves, working like a man possessed.