Wine:Irish names, well known in Bordeaux, crop up in wineries from South Australia to California
With an impeccable sense of timing an Irishman was last week the toast of the wine world. Anthony Barton, proprietor of the Bordeaux heavyweights Château Léoville Barton and Château Langoa Barton, was toasted at a dinner in London as Decanter magazine's Man of the Year.
The 76-year-old descendant of Hugh Barton, who bought Léoville Barton and nearby Langoa Barton in the 1820s, arrived in Bordeaux 51 years ago from the family estate in Ireland; eventually, in 1984, he was given the properties by his uncle Ronald Barton.
He had by then modernised the business and improved the reputation of the estates. In the process he had built a reputation for himself of a man who, with a great sense of style and purpose, goes his own way, not least in the matter of pricing.
Stephen Brook, interviewing him in the April issue of Decanter, writes: "Unlike almost everyone else in Bordeaux, he refused to increase his opening prices in [ the mediocre vintage of] 1997."
Barton said he refuses to "play the game of always competing with my neighbours. That's all about vanity and doesn't help the image of Bordeaux". And he adds that he's quite happy that Léoville Barton is cheaper than its peers. After all, he says, there are only so many new cars one can buy after each vintage.
Barton may be the most feted Irishman in wine circles this weekend, but he is not alone. Although Bordeaux's Irish connections mostly live on in the names of famous chateaux, such as Lynch-Bages, Kirwan, Phélan-Ségur and Clarke - their stories are well recounted by Ted Murphy in his book A Kingdom of Wine and on the website www.winegeese.ie - more contemporary wine geese have landed farther south in France and also in America, South Africa and Australia.
Celebrated Irish winemakers such as David O'Brien, son of the legendary horse-trainer Vincent O'Brien, at Château Vignelaure, in Provence, have been joined by the likes of Tim Kirk, of the Clonakilla winery in Australia, where this son of a son of Clare makes the most wonderful Côte Rôtie tribute, the Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier. And although his Hilltops Shiraz may be a lesser wine, all things are relative.
Murphy's book carries a revealing collection of labels showcasing wineries with Irish connections, from Vanya Cullen's beautiful Diane Madeline, from the Margaret River, to Mahoney Estates' Chardonnay, from Carneros in California; from Garvey's Fino San Patricio to Jim Barry's The Armagh. Sure, and didn't we do well.