We’re running a brand new twitter event, a blind wine tasting on the 27th March at 8p.m.
The suppliers of the mystery bottle are Paul, Colm and Chris from the The Corkscrew, near Stephens Green in Dublin.

All you need to do to take part is buy the mystery wine online or in the shop, follow me, Kevin and the Corkscrew and then join us on twitter on the 27th at 9pm.

You don’t need to know much about wine or wine tasting. Kev and I will MC the event, and bring you through the process.
We’ll talk about the wine online and then guess

• grape varietal ->
• old v new ->
• country ->
• region ->
• year

Full details on the history of #twebt are here.

Hope to see you on the 27th!

I hope you’re ready for tonight’s twitter blind wine tasting.

To get ready for the tasting – there’s no need to chill the bottle. Just open it about an hour before we start, so at about 8pm tonight. Don’t look at the cork when you take it out of the bottle or you’ll give the game away.

make sure you’re following me, @kevatfennsquay and rednosewine.Kevin and I will be loosely mc’ing the show and Gary (rednosewine) will be giving us the answers when prompted.

We’ll follow the usual sequence,
* old/new – is the wine from the old world or the new world?
* the year – what year was the wine made?
* percentage of alcohol
* country of origin – what country does the wine come from?
* the grape – what grape or grapes is the wine made from?
* region – what region does the wine come from?

We’ll start around 9 and the whole thing should take about 90 minutes. See you later!

twebt 5 will take place at 21:00 on Sunday the 27th June.

Gary over at Red Nose Wine has chosen the mystery bottle for us this time. You can order it here or you can try our a new feature for twebt.
Gary has a special offer on his website, just for twebt people.
You get a case of 6 bottles, one of which is the mystery bottle plus a special selection of 5 of Red Nose’s finest for €80 plus a fiver shipping.

If you chose to order the mystery bottle all by its lonesome, it’ll run you €14 plus a fiver to ship.

Use the coupon ‘Twebt’ at checkout to get the delivery back to €5

What’s twebt?
It’s a blind tasting that we do on twitter. All welcome, all you need is a free twitter account and the mystery bottle. I’ve lots more information here. I hope you can join us!

Our MCs for the evening were Billy Forrester, the guv’nor of Bubble Brothers and the charming Valerie, native of the Champagne region.
We opened with some talks from Valerie mixed with some videos that appear to have been produced in the 70s by the Champagne tourist board.
They were long on style (more realistically 70′s porno chic) and a little short on facts. Valerie more than made up for the information shortage with humorous and informative vignettes.

We then moved to the The Castle Bar and Trattoria where we tasted 6 Champagnes.
I thought that there were a couple of absolute crackers amongst them – my pick of the bunch is the Jean Claude Vallois Assemblage Noble Brut. The Andre Clouet vintage was a close second, and I’d be very happy with either in my glass.

There was a very jovial crowd, who were in great form and enthusiastic about the evening. I suspect they could squeeze one or two more in, so by all means contact Bubble Brothers and come along to the next one.

As always, I’ve scanned my notes from the evening for those who wish to decipher my handwriting.

The big numbers in circles are my personal ranking. Sorry Rosé, I just don’t get you.

twebt (twitter event, blind tasting) is a wine tasting on twitter. You buy the mystery bottle of wine and at the appropriate time you open it, taste it and we all try to guess what sort of wine it is. It’s not competitive, there’s no prize and it’s for everyone, not just wine buffs. It takes place over an hour or two, so everyone has a chance to taste the wine, and start talking about it with everyone else.

The twebt itself will take place at about 8:00 pm Sunday the 31st January. You can buy the mystery bottle from Curious Wines either in-store in Bandon, or online.
It’ll cost €19 shipped to anywhere in Ireland.
You need a twitter account, and then you need to follow me – @brianclayton,Kevin Crowley, the lads at Curious Wines and everyone who signs up below. you then follow the #twebt hashtag and have fun!

taking part so far we have (at least):

• Brian Clayton – @brianclayton
• Kevin Crowley – @kevatfennsquay
• Lar Veale – @smallsips
• @grayzie
• @broddo
• @conoro
• @manicmammy
• @grapes_of_sloth
• @rfwine
• @despod

judges and imparters of information will of course be Curious Wines

We did this last November with a bottle from Bubble Brothers and it worked really well.

Huge thanks to the gents at Curious Wines and Kevin from Fenn’s Quay

We’ll hope do this again in a couple of months – we’re eyeing up Karwig Wines for the next one!

The good people of Bubble Brothers have prepared a suitable bottle, wrapping or otherwise anonymising it to preserve the mystery.

So far, the participants in this event are

• @brianclayton
• @grapes_of_sloth
• @KevAtFennsQuay
• @Grayzie
• @broddo
• @manicmammy
• @rfwine

I’m not entirely sure who’s idea it was, but credit to everyone mentioned above, particularly whoever in BubbleBrothers is getting in early christmas present wrapping practise. Thanks also to Mortons of Galway for bringing Galway in on the act. In the future we hope to try this again, with enough notice that we can arrange a country wide event.

This time around, we decided to upgrade to a 4 day mini cruise. This means that you leave at 18:00. on a Wednesday, arrive at 10:00 on Thursday, have all day Friday, and sail back as before at 18:00 Saturday. This gives almost 2 full days for sight seeing as well as one day for shopping. We upgraded our cabins on the boat too. Normally we’d get 2* outer cabins, but this time we upgraded to a 3* outer for the outbound leg, and a 4* outer for the return. The main difference in the 3* is a wider cabin – well worth the extra cash.

The 4* has a minibar and a telephone, but this is not worth the cash. Unless you really want to prank call your fellow passengers or something.

We decided to base ourselves in Roscoff, so we booked two nights in the Best Western in Roscoff. The hotel is modern, clean, has free wifi and a great waterfront location.

Roscoff is a tiny little town, and the hotel is located about 3 minutes walk from the main restaurant area. There’s free on street parking and the town is safe out. Dining wise, there’s great restaurants within walking distance, where you can get amazing meals:

We took one long ish drive to go see the Point du Raz.

Shopping wise, we shopped in the Geant in Morlaix and the Red Bus in Roscoff.
We saw a number of people buying for weddings, and some who were just buying a lot of wine and beer.

I kept the amount I purchased fairly small as I’ll be heading over again next May.

Money wise you can save a fortune if you’re buying high-end or in bulk.

All in all it was a great trip. I really enjoyed the extra time to plan and sight see that the 4 day mini-cruise gives you. The sailings were lovely, the new boat (the Oscar Wilde) is a real step up up from the old Normandy. We’ll do another 4 day cruise next year!

You could do this trip with kids – the boat is manageable, and the drives can be as short as you like. Roscoff itself is small, there’s a public playground and plenty of beaches nearby for the kids to go nuts. Equally, you can make it a short holiday, or just a shopping trip. You see all types on the boat.
What we don’t see as much of any more, is cars returning with the car scraping the road. I guess the recession is making people cut back. Shame, it’s fun spotting them in the carpark and wondering can they make it up the ramp onto the boat.

Aaron Drummond and Ryan Morgan* of Rathbone Wine Group were our MCs for the night. In true colonial style they immediately threw the tasting order out and opened with number 3 on the list – an absolute belter. The really amazing thing about this wine was that it’s the ’09. Gordon mentioned that about 7 months ago this was still a grape!
The Rathbone Wine Group is a family run wine producer. Some of the philosophies they follow are very interesting;

• the idea of simple wine true to the grape, with minimal intervention
• reducing alcohol content to focus on the taste
• reducing yield in favour of quality
• not being afraid to restart vineyards if necessary
• how “manual labour” intensive the work is

the thing there that really surprised me was the alcohol percentages. I have a perception that new world wines are higher in alcohol percentage, and this can often mask the taste of the wine. It’s very refreshing to see a producer allow the wine to speak for itself.

The enthusiasm with which Aaron and Ryan speak of the business is infectious, and despite the harsh sounding conditions in which they grow it sounds like a very intriguing place to work.

This was an excellent tasting – I think it was one of the quieter audiences ever, as the stories being told were so interesting.
My thanks to all at Bubble Brothers, the AGA shop, and Aaron & Ryan.

As always, you’re welcome to attempt to read my notes from the night.

* thanks Julian for the updated information.

First off, congratulations to Trish and Ronan. The wedding was a blast and we all wish them the very best for the future.

Secondly, the wedding went very well. It was held in Ballyseede Castle in Kerry. The wines had all been shipped down, so all we had to do at this point was drink them. The speeches were held after the starter, so the hotel staff served the pink fizz at that stage. The hotel staff had salted the bottles throughout the room and opened them all at the same time – so there was a continuous pop throughout the room. I could see heads turning to see what it was – great result.

The wines were very well received – I heard the waiters commenting that they were very nice.
We also had a good few compliments from guests, so we were delighted. They passed the “empty glasses” test with flying colours.

If I could draw a conclusion or two from this experience.
Wedding can and should be fun. They can be stressful though, so it’s a great idea to talk to your local suppliers and use their experience. Haggle! Talk to the venue and explain your plans, organise the delivery nice and early. Plan the sequence of events so the hotel knows the system. Haggle with them too. This can take a lot of the stress out of the planning and leave you free to enjoy the big day.

I’ll try to explain how we chose the wines. These are totally subjective choices, purely down to what we like and what we felt would best suit the wedding. All the wines were nice and the decision was very difficult in the end.

We tasted the whites first. We had a total of 3 to taste and choose from. We opened all three after dinner one night, and tried a sample of each.
We eliminated the one from the selection process early on. It was lovely, but we wanted something a little more mellow. We had a total of 8 people (family and neighbours who made the mistake of walking past the house) offering opinions on the other two, and the winning wine won out with a 5-3 majority.

The choice of reds came down to a really close run thing. Either wine would have suited admirably, and this was a very tough choice.

Finally we had to chose the fizzy for the toast. This was the big surprise of the night for me. We had a choice of 4 – one Rose and 3 Cavas. We opened the Rose first and after one taste it was declared the winner. It ticked all the boxes of look, sound and taste. It’s what we wanted for the wedding. I demanded to try one of the other Cavas but the executive decision was made.

If I had to say one thing about the experience, it’s that the sellers have lovely wines, right on whatever the price point. It’s very hard to chose between the wines. We made the decision purely on subjective grounds – what do we like, what do we want for and from this wedding experience. You’ll have to do the same.

Both sellers offer delivery to the venue. With a standard bottle weighing in at around 1.5kg, you’d be transporting a significant weight in your car. It’s much easier to have the wine delivered a week or so ahead of time – it’s one thing off the stress list!

Oh – and the three we chose are:
Les Cinq Pattes Bordeaux rouge, Les Cinq Pattes Bordeaux blanc and the Veuve du Vernay Brut Rosé.
My thanks to Matt, Mike, Julian and Valerie.