Niall Dooley last featured on these pages about three years ago, as a wine Valentine - a chap who had met and married his beloved with the help of Bacchus and some wine seminars. Now there is a new love affair to report. After 10 years as wine waiter in Dobbins Restaurant, Dooley has realised his long-term dream of running his own wine shop. You only have to see him behind his Rathmines counter, dispensing his gentle but efficacious brand of enthusiasm, to know that he adores it.
Opened just over a year now at that busy point where the Lower Rathmines Road and Rathgar Road meet, The Grapes of Mirth is an exciting addition to the Dublin wine scene. "I wanted to offer people something that bit different," Niall Dooley explains. `So, although I have a certain amount of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet and Merlot, I'm inclined to push the more obscure grape varieties - things like Riesling, Viognier, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel. There's a great response. People seem to like to be able to go home and say to their guests: here's something interesting that I picked up down the road."
The diversity of his handpicked range of almost 1,000 wines is nothing short of thrilling. Dealing mainly with small Irish suppliers, he offers gems at every price - bottles from producers who are famous for quality, from Gaja in Piedmont, Henschke in the Barossa Valley, the likes of Leflaive, Brocard and Joblot in Burgundy, Gosset in Champagne, down to the more everyday level of Guel Benzu in Navarra (source of last Saturday's Bottle of the Week) and Domaine Saint Paul, the southern French arm of Burgundy house Moillard-Grivot (Bottle of the Week today). The baskets on the floor hold plenty of good things at under £7.
What you won't find is an ounce of that stuffiness in which fine wines are sometimes shrouded. "I wanted to get rid of all the pretentiousness and have a relaxed environment where people could come in and have a look without feeling ill at ease," Dooley says. So there isn't a bell clanging on the door, to make you feel as if you've set off an alarm, and the proprietor doesn't loom behind your shoulder as you scan the bins of bottles. He has positioned a block of racks down the centre of the shop "just so that people don't think I'm looking at them." And the sound of liquid gushing from a big wine barrel in the window rules out any uncomfortable silence. The formula seems to work. Often, apparently, customers browse mid-week and come back at the weekend to buy.
Or they ring up. "I'm beginning to get quite a lot of phone-calls now from people who say: choose a case of wine for me. I get a great buzz out of that." All very well, but they're missing the fun of pottering around a shop full of temptations - not just wines but good pasta, sauces and a foodie's fantasy collection of olive oils.
Over in Foxrock, an abundance of food like this has fed the growth of another worthwhile wine shop. Thomas's on Brighton Road is the sort of place that makes you salivate the minute you pass the pavement display of glossy vegetables and enter the heady interior. Mingled aromas of cheese, salami and fresh bread, set the nostrils twitching. You feast your eyes on jumbo Turkish apricots, elegant grissini, indecently fat olives. And there, neatly sandwiched in the middle of it all, is a suitably mouth-watering wine section.
When Thomas Murphy bought the premises in 1983, it was a grocery-cum-post office, with store rooms out the back. The long post-office counter provided space for a burgeoning delicatessen with wine in one corner. "But the shop grew more and more cluttered," he explains. "So two years ago we closed for three days and knocked down two walls." A key part of the plan was to make more room for wine.
Even if you were transported here with a blindfold which couldn't be removed until you saw the bottles, you might hazard a reasonable guess as to your whereabouts. French wine of the most respectable kind far outsells everything else put together in Foxrock. And I don't believe I have ever seen so much champagne displayed in so limited a space, with the exquisite De Venoge Blanc de Blancs 1990 (£35) filling an entire pupitre brought in specially from Epernay.
"We have a lot of very loyal customers," says Thomas Murphy. "Some come from Dalkey and Killiney, but most are locals." You'll hardly be surprised to hear that Bordeaux sells best, then Burgundy with Chablis out in front, then the Loire and the Rhone. New Zealand also does well, no doubt benefiting from the cachet of Cloudy Bay.
Robert Mondavi, the Californian king, is another fast mover, even (or perhaps especially) with the steeply priced Napa Valley range and, probably because of the Mondavi connection, Caliterra is one of the few Chilean labels out here with serious appeal. Spain and South Africa go down moderately well. Italy and Australia don't. Strangely, Alsace and Germany are disastrous. (Time to wake up, Foxrock. Good Alsace and German bottles are the Jaguars and Alfas of the wine world.)
But again, it's the overall standard of the wines on offer that makes Thomas's a hot tip for wine lovers - be they seekers after Chateau Giscours 1989 (£79) or something decent that puts a decimal point in the middle of that price. There's a pretty good selection of half bottles, and a striking array of quarter bottles. "The Fleurie and Chablis quarters sell well to people who just feel like drinking a glass of wine," Thomas Murphy says. "The New World ones are bought for cooking."
The Grapes of Mirth, 310 Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6. Tel 01-4969166, fax 01-496 9175. Open Monday Wednesday 11 a.m. 8 p.m., Thursday Saturday 11 a.m. 9.30 p.m.
Thomas's, 4 Brighton Road, Foxrock, Dublin 18. Tel/fax 01 2894101. Open Monday Saturday 8 a.m. - 7.30 p.m.; Sunday 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Goodies from the grapes
Whites
Domaine La Taste, Vin de Pays des Cotes de Gascogne, 1997 (Grapes of Mirth £6.50; also Greenacres Wexford). Niall Dooley sipped a glass of this in Bewley's one day and liked it so much he decided he had to have it for the shop. Lovely ripe fruit flavours with a zesty finish.
Domaine Saint Paul Viognier, Vin de Pays d'Oc, 1997 (exclusive to Grapes of Mirth, £7.95). Another great find for Niall Dooley, who sniffed it out at the London Wine Fair, and for wine fans who are thirsty for something different at a reasonable price. See Bottle of the Week.
Reds
Domaine de Poujol, Vin de Pays de l'Herault, 1997 (Grapes of Mirth £6.95; also Searsons Monkstown, Wine Centre Kilkenny, O'Donovans Cork). In the hands of fastidious winemaker Robert Cripps, Merlot laced with a bit of Carignan and Cinsaut turns out a warmingly individualistic southern French red - earthy and full-blooded.
Antipodean, Yalumba, 1996 (Grapes of Mirth, £9.95; also SuperValu Raheny, Quinns Drumcondra, Bennetts Howth, Bird Flanagan Rialto, Vintry Rathgar, Mortons Ranelagh, McCabes Merrion, Foleys Cabinteely, Spar Ballybrack, Cheers Take-Home Greystones & Shankill, Mill Maynooth, Geraghtys Carlow and some other outlets). Another quirky but tasty number, made in Australia from a grape mix more at home in the Rhone. Shiraz, Mourvedre, Grenache and Viognier produce a wine that's spicy, mouthfilling and ultra-smooth.
Thomas's top tips
Whites
Drostdy-Hof Sauvignon Blanc, Western Cape, 1997 (Thomas's, £7.25; also DeVine Wine Shop Castleknock, Vintry Rathgar, Cooneys Harold' s Cross, Wine Centre Kilkenny, Dailys Douglas and some other outlets). Dublin's Foxrock-ers apparently down vast quantities of this middle-of-the-road Sauvignon - pleasant, easy, everyday drinking.
Chateau de Tracy, Pouilly-Fume 1997 (Thomas's, £16.99; also Superquinn Sutton, Mulveys & Cuisine de Vendange Naas, Wine Centre Kilkenny, Hartes Clonakilty and other outlets). This top example of PouillyFume is a can't-go-wrong dinner party favourite and, in Foxrock, a popular Friday choice for iner (circumflex) a (grave accent) deux.dinner for two.
Reds
Ginestet Bergerac, 1997 (Thomas's, £6.99; also Deveneys Dundrum, Bradys Shankill, Bennetts Howth, Jus de Vine Portmarnock, Pielows Enniskerry and some other outlets). An attractive, easy-drinking young red from next door to Bordeaux which Dublin 18 drinks assiduously midweek.
Chateau Roubaud, Cuvee Prestige, Costieres de Nimes 1997 (Thomas's, £8.49; also Hemingways Ballsbridge, Dowlings Spar Leeson St, Cheers Take-Home at Coach House Ballinteer & Foxhunter Lucan, Deveneys Dundrum, Cavistons Glasthule, Sadie Byrne's James's Street, Lord Mayor's Swords, Londis Malahide, Next Door Roscommon, Geraghtys Carlow). More punch, more guts, with a tarry, smoky edge, in this Languedoc red. Like the Bergerac, it's best with food.