News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: There’s more to this one than a fat, fancy bottle

By Kilkenny Now 12th April 2019 0

BACK in the Seventies, no trendy home was without a Chianti bottle. Some people even drank the wine, but the key thing was the rotund bottle, known as a fiasco (flask), in which candles could be burned, the accumulated wax giving them an even chubbier shape. Ruffino Chianti was the best known label bottled in […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Fizz may not be better but it’s usually dearer

By Kilkenny Now 5th April 2019 Post a comment

LAST week I mentioned, in passing, the two types of Prosecco on sale in Ireland – frizzante and spumante. A number of readers (well, one’s a number isn’t it?) have asked for more information. So … Prosecco is the name of a village where the sparkling wine is produced but that is not important since […]

Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: ‘A paper jam is what your printer creates when you try to run an A4 sheet through its evil, word-devouring works’

By Kilkenny Now 3rd April 2019 0

I BOUGHT my first home computer more than 30 years ago. It was a huge contraption. The actual computer rested in a box on the floor with the keyboard and screen on a sturdy table above it. The table had to be sturdy to cope with the weight of the equipment. It was nearly as […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: A nice wee Prosecco, just what mammy ordered

By Kilkenny Now 29th March 2019 0

WHAT’S your mum’s favourite tipple, asks a flier that has popped into my email basket. I didn’t have a mum. I had a mam, sometimes a mammy, and her favourite tipple was tea. She drank gallons of the stuff and always in the same minuscule measure. Whether quaffed from a giant mug or sipped like […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: A hint of Oil of Olay to go with the fish

By Kilkenny Now 22nd March 2019 0

THE late Simon Hoggart, a fine political journalist who also wrote about wine, recalled the most ridiculous description he had ever read of a wine, a Gewurztraminer. “Top notes of vanilla, spice and lychees,” it said, “with undertones of Nivea cream.” Can you imagine telling your guests, “You’ll love this – it tastes of Nivea […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Time to bring down the curtain on Britain’s parliament panto

By Kilkenny Now 20th March 2019 0

BRITAIN’S parliament has been compulsive viewing of late with its ‘ayes to the right, noes to the left’ and the demented Speaker shouting for ‘aw-DA! aw-DA’. It reminds me of nothing so much as the pantomime, with its set pieces, stage villains and the audience hissing and booing. It also calls to mind another old […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: How to have a grape St Patrick’s Day

By Kilkenny Now 15th March 2019 0

SO what wine will you drink on St Patrick’s Day?  I recommend Vin de Liffey, the black one with the white head, best sipped from a pint glass. But Ireland is officially listed as a wine producing country by the European Commission and if you are very persistent (and a wee bit mad) you can […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Here come the leprechauns, let the green beer flow!

By Kilkenny Now 13th March 2019 0

AS THE festival of green beer and drunken leprechauns staggers towards us it is startling to reflect that, in the not-so-distant past, Ireland’s pubs were closed on St Patrick’s Day. The ban, imposed in 1903 to combat public disorder, was not lifted until 1972. A great deal of ingenuity was devoted to defying it. One […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Pinto Gris and Pinot Grigio: neighbours divided by shades of grey

By Kilkenny Now 8th March 2019 0

PINTO Gris and Pinot Grigio are neighbours. Both wines come from the same white grape with a greyish skin (hence the French name ‘gris’). At one stage these wines must have been identical but different production methods have driven them apart. In Alsace, where most of the French Pinto Gris is made, the harvest is […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: A papal favourite but it’s not infallible

By Kilkenny Now 1st March 2019 0

MOST of us know it as the name of a wine, but Chateauneuf du Pape is also a village near Avignon, the southern French city that housed the papacy when it moved from Rome for much of the fourteenth century. It is a pretty village of stone walls and cobbled streets, spread around the foot […]