The Irish wine makers: ‘It is a miracle. Last year we got the same volume as growers in the north of Italy’

Ireland has now been making wine for more than 50 years. Details are not always easy to come across but there are more than a dozen vineyards around the country, some small operations run by enthusiasts, others quite substantial. Vines are growing in Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Westmeath, Tipperary, Mayo, Kilkenny, Louth, Dublin and probably more besides.
Traditional vineyards around Europe and elsewhere are heating up due to climate change. Rising temperatures force growers to harvest earlier, move to higher altitudes, or switch to new grape varieties.
English wine, once considered a joke by many, now receives many plaudits, especially for very high-quality sparkling wine (which works better in cooler climates). Closer to home, Wales boasts almost 30 vineyards. With increasing temperatures, Irish wine production will certainly increase over the next 50 years, although increased rainfall could cause problems.
Because of our cool and wet climate, most growers plant disease-resistant hybrid grape varieties made by crossing vitis vinifera (the wine grape) with other varieties more resistant to disease. In the past these were not given much respect by established wine-growing regions, but with climate change, producers in warm climates are taking a fresh look at hybrids.
Most of the plantings are very small scale and yields are very low, so Irish wine will never be cheap. If you expect it to taste like a rich warming Châteauneuf-du-Pape, you will certainly be disappointed. Irish wines are lower in alcohol and higher in acidity. They have a different set of flavours, but can be very good. As vines age, and producers learn more, they can only get better.
David Llewellyn from Lusk, Co Dublin is probably one of the better-known producers here and a true pioneer of Irish wine. Growing some of his grapes under cover, he produces an excellent sparkling rosé wine and a good fresh light red wine along with an array of other fascinating drinks and potions.
One of the largest new wineries is Old Roots near Wellingtonbridge, Co Wexford, where they have planted a range of grape varieties including riesling, gewürztraminer and pinot noir in their four-hectare vineyard. I wasn’t able to visit the vineyard or winery as it was harvest time, but the wines tasted good. Spanish woman Esperanza Hernandez is in charge of wine-making.
[ Did you know there are more than a dozen vineyards in Ireland?Opens in new window ]
“Before planting, we spent months looking for the correct place, checking climate reports, analysing soil samples, especially [but not exclusively] in Wexford. Not only was it the county where we have our home, it is also, in our opinion, the county with the best conditions to grow a vineyard, in terms of climate and soil quality. The wine has received fantastic feedback and most people are pleasantly surprised, but there are still some sceptics about Irish wine quality,” she says.
For the moment their wines are available exclusively through high-quality restaurants.
I also spoke to Daria Blackwell who lives with her husband Alex near Westport, Co Mayo. Like Thomas Walks (see below), they are former deep-sea sailors who now run a farm. Blackwell planted 130 vines in a portion of one field.
[ Four fine wines with strong Irish connectionsOpens in new window ]
“It is an experiment to prove a concept and do something environmentally sound. We are not interested in going commercial; this is a project we took up in retirement. We planted our first vines in 2015 and lost our first crop to the birds,” she says.
They recently tried their 2018, which she said was surprisingly good. She believes that rondo and solaris are the best two varieties. In 2019 they lost everything again. Visit her entertaining blog on viticultureireland.blogspot.com/
Thomas Walk is a German designer, inventor and deep-sea yachtsman who ended up building a house and planting a vineyard in Kinsale 40 years ago. He is therefore one of the very first here to produce Irish wine. Walk is very private and does not accept visitors, although he will start selling his wine in Ireland next year. In person, he is inquisitive, enthusiastic and full of life.
“Water was my thing,” he tells me. “I first arrived here in my yacht and fell in love with Kinsale, made friends and started to come back to Ireland every year.” His wife was the same. “She said if we ever build a house it has to be here. And so, we did. We held our housewarming in 1983.”
With several acres of land, they wondered what to do with it. Walk had become interested in wine in his native Germany and on visits to France. “The only wines we could find in Ireland were sweet liebfraumilch like Blue Nun, so we decided to try making our own.” The first vines, three to four rows, were planted in the mid-1980s. He now works alongside his wife Karin, daughter Charlotte and a small team of local friends.
“I never did any courses; I am self-taught in everything I do. I’ve done land, sea and air — I got my pilot’s licence at 70. I love a challenge, but once I succeed, I get bored.”
He tried nine different varieties but none of the traditional grapes would work. Instead, he became one of the first people to plant rondo, a hybrid grape developed by Dr Becker in Geisenheim University in Germany. Today it is the only variety in his vineyard. “From what I know it is the only really good outdoor cool climate grape, although there are others like solaris. I never have to spray; the vines are never affected by disease.”
He has three vineyards all south or southwest facing on a gentle slope. He is as ecological as possible, using mulch and natural fertilisers. He uses no additives except a small amount of necessary sulphur before bottling. “It is possible to make good wine in Ireland if you do the right things,” he says.
I tried a range of wines here, various red wines, including several lovely ones from 2013, a rosé and a delicious sparkling wine. All of the wines were very good, light in alcohol with refreshing ripe red fruits. At the moment the wines are only available via Germany – obviously a costly exercise – but Walk hopes to have a licence to sell in Ireland next year. Thomaswalk-vineyard.com
David Dennison worked in various hotels in Dublin before moving to Waterford. “I went to an agency and said, ‘get me a job anywhere but Dublin’.” In 1993 he set up The Wine Vaults, one of Ireland’s very first wine bars, in Waterford, which traded successfully until the financial crisis in 2009.
Dennison switched to growing various fruits on his small farm in east Waterford, including 3½ hectares of apple trees, mulberries, blackcurrants and almost two hectares of vines. The apples are used to make some excellent ciders, there is a blackcurrant liqueur and of course, wine. The farm has been fully organic for three years and is now certified, a considerable achievement in our climate.
As an ambassador for Nature he encourages wildlife, but birds can be a problem at harvest time. Like others, he has to use nets on his vines, having seen his crop decimated one year. He also planted hundreds of hazel, willow and walnut trees.
“This has gifted us with wood for supporting the young vines, which is essential to encourage good stability for the roots system,” he says.
“We are 4-5km from the sea here, which means we get quite a lot of rain. We occasionally get a north wind straight from Russia which brings frost. We do get some mildew, which is treated with seaweed, nettle and silica teas [all organic treatments]. The soils here are quite heavy but we usually get decent drainage. It is possible to get a crop every year if you do things right, although you will get the occasional terrible vintage. But mostly some varieties will work. It is about attention to detail, and when you harvest.”
His preferred grapes are solaris for white wines and rondo for reds, although he recently planted an additional 1,500 vines, which include cabernet cortis, johanniter, suovignier gris, seyval blanc, phoenix, pinotin as well as the trusted rondo and solaris.
As for 2024, he says: “It is a small crop this year, but thankfully a good result with high sugar mass and high acidity.”
I have featured his Nádúrtha Pet Nat before. The white and red wines I tasted were very good, all 11-12 per cent natural alcohol with clean fresh ripe fruit. Vikingirishdrinks.com
Irish man Philip Little and Australian Séan Kerin produce the Triskelion wines in Piltown, Co Kilkenny. Séan is an Australian who fell for local girl Úna. They met in Australia and moved back to Ireland for a few years when he worked for O’Briens. Back in Australia for four years, he worked for Kooyong, one of the most highly regarded wineries on the Mornington Peninsula, close to Melbourne. The couple then moved back to Ireland and have been here ever since. Over here, Kerin worked several vintages with Stephane Montez, one of the leading producers of the Northern Rhône in France, and in the UK.
Little has an 18-hectare orchard and runs the Little Irish Apple Company in Piltown, selling apples and juice at Midleton market, supplying Sunshine Juices in Carlow and more recently eating apples to Aldi.
“Séan stirred my interest because he had such a passion for wine,” says Little. “He was helping me with the apples, but he obviously had no real interest and was always running off to France and the UK to make wine.”
The two decided it would be fun to grow some grapes. That was on Good Friday six years ago. “We are still working and learning,” says Kerin.
“I thought it sounded like fun, romantic and interesting, and it is,” says Little with a smile.
For the moment the tiny winery shares warehouse space with the apple business and countless beehives, for bees to pollinate the apple trees.
“I have no regrets,” Little says. “You have to do something enjoyable in life and not just work, work, work all the time. I’d like to see if we can get it up to some sort of commercial operation. We have to pay the bills. Last year we had a decent volume of wine, so now we have to work out how to sell it and can we sell it for reasonable money. It doesn’t have to be the world’s best wine, but it has to be drinkable.”
They have two small south-facing vineyards in Piltown planted with a mix of different hybrids including regent, rondo, seyval reichensteiner, sauvignon gris and bacchus. They have 1,400 vines in total and could produce 1,000 to 1,500 bottles a year if the weather is right. Last year was a great vintage with good quantities of ripe grapes, but 2024 they tell me has been very difficult with a cold wet spring and poor flowering. “We’ve pretty much written off this year,” says Kerin.
For the moment the wines are not commercially available, but they hope they will be shortly. I thought the wines, mainly from the 2023 vintage, were very good; a fun frothy sparkling rosé, some good white wines and several enjoyable reds.
Carlo Rizzi, from Verona in northern Italy, is foremost a hunter, fisherman and golfer. For years he ran expeditions to far-off places around the globe and had a TV show on Sky Italy and Spain. Now he spends most of the time in his house on the shores of Lough Owel close to Mullingar.
“It was my son Alberto who first had the idea of planting grapes,” he says. With help from wine friends in Italy, he planted six rows of vines, each one a different variety. The chardonnay, muscat, pinot noir and refosco didn’t work, but the cabernet and merlot have exceeded all expectations. Other growers in Ireland told me that it wasn’t possible to ripen these two varieties in Ireland, but Rizzi believes that, with the help of various wine experts in Italy he planted the right clones and rootstocks.
“It is a miracle,” he says. “I don’t have to spray, and last year we got the same volume as growers in the north of Italy.”
This year has been different. He and his son have been away a lot so the vines were not cared for and the weather didn’t help. There will be no harvest. The cabernet and merlot vines still look remarkably healthy. The 2023 red wine I tasted was very good too; 12.5 per cent abv (alcohol by volume) with soft ripe blackberry fruits. The Rizzis produced 130 litres (150 bottles), so it is kept for friends, neighbours and visiting journalists. He was hoping to get help from the Irish Government to expand, as Ireland is now listed as an EU wine producer, but he says the authorities have not really been interested. casarizzini.com/en/ and CarloRizzi TV on YouTube.