The purpose of this section, like so much else in these pages, is to encourage you to experiment. In contrast, though, to the fleeting careers of the laudable fools who donned wings or feathers to leap into flight before the arrival of Ryanair, my hope would be to secure your future as a reader and steadily evolving oenophile with a little bit of a nudge in the right direction.
Each article will feature one of the world's signature wine regions—whether a stalwart classic like Bordeaux or upstart newcomer like Montsant, southwest of Barcelona. I am not aiming to be comprehensive; more than you ever want to know lies just a few clicks away in Google. One does not need to plumb dismayingly recondite depths of detail to acquire the know-how to pick a few representative bottles from the shelf.
For it is all about the wines. Each article features a selection of wines I presented at one of my tasting groups. Nip out and get them; gather a few friends together; and taste your way into the heart of the region they are from. All the wines are available in Ireland, and most are entirely affordable—particularly when you remind yourself what it costs to have a few pints in your local.
To help you make sense of the wines, I include information on the featured wine region and:
- Its most important sub-regions
- Most well-known wines
- Important grape varieties
- Recent vintages; and
- Key labelling terms.
