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We’re surrounded by farmers here and only some of them know what we are doing … we don’t broadcast it too much because they would probably lock you up.”
WHEN PICTURING A winery, the first images to come to mind might be a French château or a sun-kissed Australian valley. Something a long way from a sodden Irish field.
Yet a handful of ambitious – maybe foolhardy – producers are trying their hand at making the nectar of the Gods in a land renowned for pints of the black stuff.
David Llewellyn, probably best known for his cider and other apple products, has been selling wine made from the nearly 1,000 vines on his farm at Lusk in north County Dublin for the past decade.
“That’s tiny in vineyard terms … but I have got to the stage where I feel I am making pretty good red wine,” he told TheJournal.ie.
I’ve been selling wines since 2005 and since then only a few years would have been missed; some years I wouldn’t have had a crop or I wasn’t happy enough to sell it.”
It is a modest assessment from the man behind the only vineyard consistently producing commercial batches of Irish wine on the local market.
Ireland is, believe it or not, classified under the EU’s official wine-growing regions, joining much of Germany, as well as the UK and other northern European countries in a cold-climate zone.
However according to the Department of Agriculture, which doesn’t regulate vineyards because of the small scale of production in the country, Llewellyn is the only known commercial winemaker in the country.
The trained horticulturist, who said he learned the trade from working on other vineyards and trial and error, grows mostly cabernet sauvignon, merlot and rondo grapes on about half an acre of land.
An unfriendly climate
It is the last variety, a hardy, dark-skinned grape, that has proven the most suitable to Ireland’s unfriendly climate, growing outdoors without protection despite the dearth of sunshine during the essential ripening season.
“Producing in Ireland, there are so many disadvantages compared to an established wine-growing region,” Llewellyn said.
“You’ve got the weather to deal with, you’ve got lower yields so therefore you’ve got a very small scale.
Also, there are the disadvantages of having no supporting industry and there’s no body of expertise and advice to fall back on when you are setting up. You’re paddling your own canoe and making your own mistakes.”
Llewellyn admitted his Lusca wine, of which he produced about 500 litres each year and sold for €45 per bottle in specialist Dublin outlets, was “pretty expensive by normal comparisons”.
But people buy it, they taste it and they like it. I think the main thing for most people is novelty value, curiosity value.”
Southern exposure
Meanwhile in the south, there is what appears to be Ireland’s longest-standing and most-mysterious winemaker – apparently flying under the radar of even agriculture officials.
The Thomas Walk Vineyard near Kinsale in Cork is probably the largest on the island, according to its namesake founder.
German native Walk said he had been cultivating vines in the region since the mid-1980s and he was the first to successfully grow red grapes outdoors in the cold climate.
“I always like to do things which are unusual and making red wine in Ireland is very unusual – and it is even more unusual to do it successfully,” he said.
Walk, who is keen to keep his winery private from prying eyes for now, said he was growing up to three acres of grapes also using the rondo variety – although he was tight-lipped about how much of the end product he was actually making.
The winery’s website lists 2010 and 2013 vintages “spoiled by the southern sun of Kinsale” starting from about €25 per bottle with all the transactions done via Germany.
A chequered history
Others winemakers have come and gone in various parts of the island from as early as the 1960s.
According to Stephen Skelton’s UK Vineyards Guide, which includes an appendix on Ireland, Michael O’Callaghan had a crop at Longueville House in Cork’s Blackwater Valley from the early 1970s.
While the vineyard at one stage covered more than two acres, it was abandoned about five years ago and replaced with further orchards after he died.
Nearby, Mallow GP Billy Christopher started planting vines at his Blackwater Valley Vineyard in the mid-80s and produced wine through to 2006 – when the project was scrapped.
He told the author he had “20 years of fun” with the winery, but the inconsistent harvests meant the risk and reward were too far out of whack to make a vineyard worthwhile.
And Skelton, one of the UK’s top authorities on vineyards, was blunt in his assessment of the future prospects for any Irish winemakers.
“You just don’t have the sunshine and you don’t have the climate – although I would love to be proved wrong,” he told TheJournal.ie.
It has been tried and it hasn’t worked. There are grape varieties that no doubt will grow in very, very cool climates, but they make rubbish wine.”
Even in England and Wales, where warmer summers have enabled about 500 winemakers to set up and locally-made sparkling wines have been getting international recognition, there were questions over whether it was a sustainable pursuit.
“It’s not just a matter of finding a grape variety that will produce a fruit, you also need to make a wine that you don’t have to charge a price for that’s too high for what the quality is worth,” Skelton said.
‘Romantic’
But the challenge hasn’t deterred new winemakers from trying where others have given up.
Since 2011, David Dennison, who runs a wine-importation business and also grows crops like raspberries and blackcurrants, has been planting grapes at his property in Waterford and now has about 2,000 vines of rondo, pinot noir and several white varieties spanning about two acres.
He expects to make 500 bottles as an “experimental batch” – mostly rondo-based reds – this year and believes there is “huge potential” for selling wines from the southeast after visiting vineyards in the UK.
“We’re surrounded by farmers here and only some of them know what we are doing … we don’t broadcast it too much because they would probably lock you up,” he said.
In realistic terms it’s peripheral, but then you look at other crops that we grow in this country and you would wonder sometimes if they’re peripheral as well.”
Dennison said he believed successful commercial vineyards were possible in Ireland with the right grapes and growing techniques.
“Is it romantic? If you can sit down and drink a bottle of your own wine it’s romantic, but it’s a tough crop.”
This month, as part of TheJournal.ie’s ongoing startup and small and medium enterprise (SME) focus, we are looking at the drinks industry.
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Congrats to David on producing wine here. I wonder why he would not concentrate on making a wine out of our natural produce. Elderberry produce massive crops without the hardship and assumingly high levels of other inputs. It’s would make much more sense, you could also make gorse wines and similar plentiful irish crops. focus on what is available and use it.
It’s no coincidence that most wine is made from grapes they just have the perfect balance of sugar, tannins, acidity and flavour to make good tasting drink with a high enough alcohol content for the drink to not spoil for some time. When making an alcoholic drink from most other fruits something has to be added such as extra sugar or tannins etc so if at all possible to grow them grapes are the preferred crop.
Yes but try produce that in Ireland and you may find a wine far from biodynamically produced. Which is why I would like to see elderberry wines and the like. traditionally irish people would have made numerous ‘wines’ from the natural produce available to hand.
It would be preferable to make a drink from a plant that can be grown here, but the fact is you’re going into to largely unchartered territory trying to make a commercially viable drink from some of the lesser known fruits. Most grapes have been selectively bred over generations to optimise them for wine production, also there is a wealth of experience in growing them and a well known and understood market for wine.
In order to develop a good fruit wine industry we would need years of experimentation and to selectively breed cultivars of the plants in question that are ideally suited for alcohol production, which would take a lot of money and time which a lot of people are unwilling to give. People are taking a risk using other fruits which investors don’t like, they want low risk investments with quick returns. I wish this wasn’t the case but that’s just the times we live in.
I agree with you there. I would like see it happen though and think it be viable with elderberries here. I may start with a small batch myself first!
Yea I’ve been tempted to give it a go with gooseberries myself, I suppose if enough hobbyists are experimenting with different fruits and production methods one of them is bound to strike gold at some point and make a great drink.
I think to make it really successful a decent and unique name would have to be coined for one of these new wines, for example French Sparkling wine doesn’t have much of a ring to it, but champagne does. Perhaps if a new distinctive Irish wine is produced it should be named after the region it is invented in, instead of just calling it Irish elderberry/gooseberry wine.
Doesn’t Elderberry wine need a ton of sugar to be added?
Yes it would require a bit of sugar not the same as jam but still a good percentage.
Might not be as mad as it seems.Some of the German Eiswein are lovely.I’d be a little concerned about getting enough sunshine though but with the right grape it might work.
Good article but I’ve decided I’m never drinking again.
best of luck to them for the future.a big risk to take with so much labour and money invested into it.would love to know would olive trees possibly grow here as well
good Article,
i have bought wine from David before in the past. in England ‘ wine makers are having the same problem trying to domain the D.O.C.G but (again) losing out to the snobbish French. a pub were a drink in have some interesting and amazing drinks on offer that are home grown like a farmer who makes a Weiss beer in Wicklow and it is amazing.
My grapes are coming along…
not enough for a bottle of wine alas!
Ice wines are a big thing in Canada in the Niagara. However, southern Ontario is on the same latitude as Bordeaux so although the winters are severe because of theContinental climate the summers are very warm allowing vines to grow.
There’s no land of Guinness
I believe the white grape makes better wine for this climate but peaches make a good peach wine?
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