BUBBLE BROTHERS - CORK WINE MERCHANTS

If you're new here, you might like to subscribe using our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

My thanks to Will Knott for this link, which varies a theme that’s been playing in the background for a while: that of reinforcing the links between Bubble Brothers’ range of interesting wines and the exuberant development of ‘food culture’ in Ireland, in the hope that the new found courage allowing lemongrass or salad potatoes or boerewors to be bought and sold might extend to, e.g., swapping the Shiraz for a Prieto Picudo, or the Veuve Cliquot for a Tsarine.

Here’s the link - drink recipe tags tied to the neck of the drink

But what about easy food recipes tied to the neck of the wine… I have a cunning plan, along the lines of: we lend a food blogger a bottle of something, and they invent or suggest (with due respect to copyright and all that) a simplish recipe for food matching with that wine, that we can cut and paste on to a tag that gets tied to the neck of the bottle, or put in a dispenser on the wine rack, or something.  I know big (Spanish) wineries sometimes add recipes to the bottle - but would the local, blogly, small-scale element increase or diminish the appeal of the end result?

Food bloggers - dear readers generally, whaddya think?   Would it be worth it for you as a customer?  Should we make a competition out of it, or is a bottle for a recipe a fair deal?    What should the tag look like?  Does anyone except me keep all these little scraps of printed information against the day when a jar of the smoked Andalucian water pumpkins, essential for the authentic taste, appears in the cupboard?

Hey wow, another one of ours on the thunder show. It would really help us to keep the Saurels at Montirius happy if you could take Gary’s advice and buy some of their exemplary, biodynamic, unoaked Gigondas from Bubble Brothers. I’m afraid we can’t offer it at twenty bucks, and I don’t really understand how Mr Vaynerchuk does either. But it’s worth every cent of €28.90 and I hope it’s all the easier to part with the dosh when you have it tasted before your very eyes, not once but twice (he tries it again at the end):

It is very gratifying to get all our typing recognized as having some human character - one of the aims of the Bubble Brothers blog has always been to make the relationship between us and our customers as conversational and open as possible.   Marie Boran, who writes about technology at the Irish Independent, gives Bubble Brothers a complimentary nod in the paper’s periodic blog digest.

The other independent opinion I draw your attention to is the new and shiny website, complete with blog of “wine enthusiast and avid consumer” Robert Francis, who is putting Galway on the map of Irish wine blogs with advice and recommendations based on his own discerning palate.

While there are only so many hours in the day, it’s useful to be able to get the breaking news about this kind of thing from Twitter. I wouldn’t have known about the Independent piece otherwise, and it’s been my chief means of keeping an eye on Robert Francis Wine before the site’s formal launch.

Following the Bubble Brothers Taste of Cork 2008 competition, we are finally pleased to give you the names of the three winners of a delicious Magnum of Bordeaux Château Trocard 2000.

Rhona CAMPBELL, Mallow, Co.Cork
Michael COLLINS, Douglas, Cork City

Margaret MANNING, Bandon, Co.Cork

As you can see above, we’ve invited the winners to come to our Wine Depot at the Marina Commercial Park to collect their prizes, and submit to the pleasure of seeing their pictures on our blog.
For those who haven’t been selected among the three winners, we are preparing a consolation prize.
With Bubble Brothers, all our customers are winners!

We’re delighted to be joining in the fun at the Opencoffee barbecue, even though only in spirit. We’ve sent up a few cases of wine (this and this and this) to treat the blisters caused by Conor’s nuclear chicken wings (see clip), and heighten creativity generally.

Good weather to you all, good fun, and here’s to the Cork barbecue when it happens. You can follow some of the action as it happens at Qik: here, for instance.

If only we the sun would come out, we could be denying our young people ice cream too.

New York allows wine ice cream - decanter.com - the route to all good wine

I’m sure Kieran would find a way.

Good grief and odds bodlikins, cor blimey guv’nor &c. &c. Not just a new Irish wine blog, but one from within the trade. When I say new, Gabriel Cooney at On the Grapevine has been posting since April, but the blog has only just come to my attention, thanks to Gabriel’s joining the debate at Sour Grapes. Here’s the link:

On the Grapevine blog

Go and comment, go and buy, and mention the blog, and then comment with a review. That sort of thing. Is the shop on the map?

UPDATE:
Immediately after the appearance of this post, Twenga put things right, appropriately and with courtesy. (I was unable to contact them directly - they noticed for themselves.) Way to go, Twenga.
Comparison is pretty odious when our euro prices appear on price comparison site Twenga as though they were in sterling, i.e. unconverted.

Like this (click the picture):

The implication of this mistake: that we are very expensive, is not especially helpful to us, even though we don’t deliver to sterling-land. Because our wines are exclusive to us in nearly every instance, the opportunities for price comparison are pretty scarce.
You have to trust us - and your own judgement, which may be the harder thing to do - when you’re deciding if we offer value. That’s why I’m so keen to get new reviews on the website or LouderVoice, &c. A little diversity of opinion would go some way to showing whether we’re offering value or not, when the acid test of price isn’t effective.

Well, it just goes to show how wrong you can be. I always thought the drama of Noel Coward was a secret vice of the English of a certain generation - but here’s our youthful French colleague Valérie’s report on the current Cork production, which she enjoyed no end.

This didn’t publish when I asked it to, so I’ll take advantage of the fact to cram in another reminder about our ACCBank Cork Week champagne offer.  Sail Away, as Noel might have advised you, with 25% per cent off the super-exquisite and delicious Tsarine Cuvée Premium Brut.  Really good champagne, luxurious presentation in its St Basil’s-dome-swirled bottle, and four for the price of three, &c.  While stocks, and Cork Week, last.

Private Lives by Noel Coward

For theatre lovers, or if you want to laugh all through this play while sharing the true feelings of bitterness, anger or jealousy of its lively characters, Private Lives is for you…

Here’s Wikipedia’s summary:

“The action concerns a divorced couple, Amanda and Elyot, both recently remarried, who accidentally book adjoining suites at the same hotel for their honeymoons. The play centres on the two leads and their agonising realisation that they still care for each other, and contains some of Coward’s best dialogue.
‘Private Lives’ is set amid the world of the long-forgotten upper social classes of the 1930s and the four central characters are all glamorous beings locked within the social manners of the time.”

I highly recommend this play, which is currently at the Everyman Palace Theatre in MacCurtain Street - and for those who haven’t had time yet to see this wonderful comedy, its run will be extended until the 19th of July.
I would advise you to book your ticket as soon as possible if you want to be sure to have a proper seat, because the theatre is overcrowded every night as this play raises a great success.
Waiting for your comments, and have a lot of fun!

Valérie

Dear readers,

Konnichi wa

On Monday we received a visit from Mister Hiroshi Nishioka, the Managing Director of CHOYA UMESHU, the German based company through which we import Japanese products ranging from Sake, Shochu and Dento Umeshu to original Plum Wine.

It was a really interesting meeting to speak about how to develop Choya products in Ireland with appropriate marketing support and new cocktail ideas. Furthermore, it was Mr Nishioka’s first visit since the beginning of the partnership in 2007 between Bubble Brothers バブル   ブラザース and CHOYA UMESHU Germany.

We were really pleased to welcome him and show him our offices and what we do as a busy Cork wine merchant.

On the second day, I was invited by Mister Nishioka for dinner. We had a nice bouillabaisse next to the Lee and then decided to go for a dessert in Wagamama ワガママ . The place was overcrowded and we enjoyed a white chocolate cheese cake and a kudamono fruit salad with a glass of Choya plum wine.

I had the occasion to have a left-hand teacher who taught me how to use the Japanese chopsticks and I really must say that I can use them perfectly now. It was also the opportunity for me to learn more about the Japanese alphabet that he kindly explained me.

A cocktail idea: Choya plum wine spritzer with apple juice spritzer and crushed ice… delicious.

Sayonara

Valérie ヴアレリー