🗺️ Irish wine

Irish wine is wine made from grapes grown in Ireland, a country better known for rain than for vineyards. Experts count more than forty vineyards, and very few of their wines reach shops. It is a small, young industry, but a real one.

Vines grow in counties Wexford, Mayo, Wicklow, Cork, Waterford and Dublin. Well-known spots include Lusk in Co Dublin, Kinsale in Co Cork, Lough Owel in Co Westmeath, and The Old Roots near Wellingtonbridge in Wexford, where ten acres carry Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc.

Classic European varieties often need polytunnels to ripen here. That is why growers turn to hardy Piwi hybrids. Rondo is the best known, and it can ripen outdoors. Thomas Walk has grown it at Kinsale since the early 1980s and believes it is the oldest Rondo planting in the world.

Warming is helping. Professor Kees van Leeuwen says commercial-scale production used to be impossible in Ireland. The Department of Agriculture runs two horticulture schemes that wine growers can use, and an EU high-level group recognised Ireland as an emerging wine country. Swedish wine started with vines planted in 1999 and has passed two hundred vineyards, so Irish growers have a model to watch.

Wine itself is old news on the island: archaeological fragments suggest the Celts were importing it by about 500 BC. Making it at home is the new part.