Keeping it all bottled up at Foreign Affairs
GEMS: Chateau Lynch Bages 1998 and 2001 and Chateau Leoville Barton 1996
Sunday May 27 2007
DANIEL McCONNELL
DEEP within the bowels of the Department of Foreign Affairs lies a significant collection of wines from around the world, and while it's not an extravagant list, it does contain a few gems.
With world dignitaries to entertain and diplomatic appearances to keep up, the cellar list amounts to more than 1,500 bottles from various chateaux and wineries across the globe.
With an annual allocation of just over €30,000, the department's cellar list is consistently reviewed and updated by officials. The full list has been released to the Sunday Independent under the Freedom of Information Act.
The list contains some modest reds and whites from Spain and Italy, including a Guigal Cotes du Rhone which in 2001 cost £10.65 a bottle, a Gran Fuedo Riserva 1998 at £12.95, and the Delheim Shiraz from South Africa 2000, also at £12.95 a bottle.
While many of the wines listed are vintages of 2000 to 2005, some of the more refined wines date back as far as the early Eighties.
Many of the wines on the list come from chateaux with Irish connections. For example, a winery in Provence, Chateau Vignelaure - which is owned by David O'Brien, son of the racing trainer Vincent O'Brien - is on the list. The 25 bottles of the '97 vintage cost the department just £15.62 each.
The '99 Nijinski Cabernet Sauvignon, another from the O'Brien stable, cost £8.72.
The oldest wines in the cellar are two bottles of Chateau Rausan Segia 1982, which cost £28.82 back then but would be almost five times thatvalue today.
Also of note are the 24 bottles of Chateau Kirwan 1996, which cost £76 at the time of purchase. Chateau Kirwan in Margaux was given its name by Mark Kirwan from Co Galway in 1781.
Another old Irish-linked Bordeaux property is the Chateau Clarke in Listrac (€22.73); they hailed from Co Down.
There are 14 bottles listed.
The Leoville Barton Chateau in St Julien is run by Antony Barton, whose family hail from Fermanagh and have been in Bordeaux for eight generations. The Chateau Leoville Barton has three different vintages represented on the list.
One of the 24 1997 bottles cost the department £75, while the 1998 one cost £68. There are only two bottlesof the 1995 vintage, whichset the officials back £72.38 each.
However, noticeably absent from the list is the favourite tipple of former Taoiseach the late Charles Haughey, Chateau Petrus.
According to the Corkscrew wine merchants in Chatham Street, Dublin, most of the wines if bought today would cost substantially more than what the department would have paid at the time. For example, the 1985 Chateau Brane Cantenac, which cost £37.77, would now fetch a handsome €85 a bottle. The 1982 Chateau Rausan Seiga, if bought today, would cost you over €100 a bottle, and the Chateau Talbot, which cost £36 in 1995, has doubled in price.
According to the department, the prices quoted are what was paid at the time of purchase, which means that many of the wines have greatly increased in value. Also, a number of wines are bought in advance in order to get a good price.
It was also confirmed that a number of the wines are being held as they are not yet ready for consumption.
