News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Raise a patriotic glass to Paschal Donohoe

By Kilkenny Now 6th September 2019 0

IN France, Spain or Portugal it is easy to buy a perfectly decent bottle of wine for a fiver or less. In Ireland you can only do this if a supermarket has a struck a deal with the supplier or decided, for some reason of its own, to subsidise the cost. That’s because Irish excise […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: African wines with a Waterford accent

By Kilkenny Now 23rd August 2019 0

SOME beautiful wine is made in Waterford but it’s not called Déise Delight or Vin de Dungarvan. The Waterford in question is in South Africa – the Waterford Estate in Stellenbosch, 70kms east of Cape Town. That’s where Jeremy Ord and Kevin Arnold have established a remarkable vineyard. European vineyards mostly grow a single variety […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: The last of the summer rosé

By Kilkenny Now 16th August 2019 0

AUTUMN is on the horizon, but for the last of the summer wine let me return to rosé, the great staple of barbecues, picnics and garden parties. It used to be looked down on as a sweet summer drink for people who could not decide between white and red. But I read that it has […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Where a glass of wine is good for your art

By Kilkenny Now 9th August 2019 0

PADDY McKillen started his business life in Belfast with the family’s motor repair business. He moved to Dublin where he specialised in the supply of car exhausts. He went into property and, later, the hospitality industry. He is a hotelier with a major reputation world-wide. His son, also Paddy, owns many clubs and pubs across […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: A hot red from the black soil of Sicily

By Kilkenny Now 12th July 2019 0

LAST week I wrote about the wines of Gozo. From the north of that Maltese island, you can – if the day is clear and your eyesight good – see the coast of Sicily. What you are looking at is the region of Avola (the town of that name is a bit to the west) […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Little holiday island with some nice, big wines

By Kilkenny Now 5th July 2019 Post a comment

THE island of Gozo lies between Sicily and Malta. Politically it is part of Malta, but it is very different from the bigger island with its traffic jams and crowded urban centres. Malta always seems in a hurry. On Gozo they don’t know what the word means. It’s a gem of a place with sandy […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: A jug of red with your five a day

By Kilkenny Now 28th June 2019 0

FEW of us return from a holiday in Spain without having shared at least one jug of sangria. It’s not that the Spanish try to force it on their visitors. They rarely drink the stuff themselves and tend to treat it with the sort of amused contempt we reserve for green beer on St Patrick’s […]

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WINE O’CLOCK: Turning water into wine spritzers

By Kilkenny Now 21st June 2019 0

I’M a-going where the water tastes like wine, sang Woody Guthrie. Never been there myself. Sadly, I have been to places where the wine tastes like water, but nobody writes songs about them. Generally speaking, water and wine are best kept apart. They shared top billing at the Wedding Feast of Cana – but they […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Chardonnay – a good name for wine but not for women

By Kilkenny Now 14th June 2019 0

I READ that Chardonnay is making a comeback. That’s bad news for the unfortunate women who acquired it as a first name in a mad trend that swept parts of the country about 20 years ago. It’s no fun being called after a dodgy wine. But, of course, it wasn’t a dodgy wine back then. […]

News Opinion

WINE O’CLOCK: Awful blurb, beautiful bottle, lovely wine

By Kilkenny Now 7th June 2019 0

DADAISM is a cultural movement that began in Zurich in 1916. Bet you didn’t know that, now. Neither did I until I read it on the back of a wine bottle. According to the label on Dadá Art Wine No 3, “Dadaism’s main contribution to art is its constant questioning about what art, or poetry, […]