WineIreland

You could spend all your free time following links to wine Web sites and wine blogs.  Why add another one to the pile?

I teach wine courses for the Irish Wine Institute, and I conduct themed wine tastings and wine workshops.   A question I am invariably asked is where to turn to for an introduction to wine.  An overview of wines, wine regions and grape varieties that will inform and entertain—without drowning its newly enthusiastic reader in a deluge of detail.

Then there is the question of what to buy.  Of the hundreds of wines on display, which one do you choose?  How do you find the gems that will reward you for trying something new, whether you are planning to spend €9 or €29 on a bottle?  Especially so if you're shopping on a budget.  Not all of us can afford to buy from the top shelf.

With these pages, I hope to give you a little bit of a head start.  I'll pick some of the questions I get asked most frequently in class: "I'm not really a white wine drinker, what else will work with fish?";  "What is 'room temperature'?"; or "A friend of mine always decants her red wines, does she know something I don't?"

I will also select a topic for the week, and I'll try to keep it short and informative.  To avoid clutter, I'm going to be fairly ruthless in archiving everything that is not current.  Older articles can be found in the "Archive" section.