Simon Tyrrell has teamed up with two top sommeliers to buy quality wines at source, writes Joe Breen
Some people are never satisfied. Take Simon Tyrrell. Not content with Tyrrell & Co's glowing reputation for sourcing memorable Rhône wines, he has turned to the incredibly complex world of Burgundy, teaming up with Charles Derain, a former head sommelier at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, and Thierry Grillet, who was head sommelier at the three-star Girardet restaurant in Switzerland, to form Nomad Wine Importers. And the trio is going one step beyond by making its own wines, under the brand name Lombeline.
"We originally started Nomad Wines with a view to putting into practice many of the things that we had learned over our years - and also to let Charles Derain loose on the market, as he is the best and most knowledgeable taster I have ever come across," says Tyrrell. "The wine business is clearly demarcated, with producers, importers and retailers - whether they be restaurants or shops - and the separate areas rarely cross over. So we wanted to have a crack at breaching the first domain, firstly for the challenge of seeing whether we were up to the task of creating our own wines and also as a means of eventually expanding our horizons beyond the Irish market and into export.
"We found that we had similar tastes. In other words, we liked wines that expressed their fruit and at the same time minerality, finesse and subtlety. As three buyers, we could be fairly critical of wine styles, and sometimes you feel that if only a producer had done X the wines could have been so much better - so we thought, let's try and do the X, and see what happens."
Nomad also imports wines from top Burgundy producers, including Ghislaine & Jean-Hugues Goisot, Alain Burguet, Armand Rousseau and Georges Roumier. But, he says, Nomad is different from larger négociants; it aims to be more like micro-négociants, such as the much-lauded Alex Gambal and Lucien Le Moine. "The idea is not to create volume or to do communes simply because we can but to source wine from and maintain long-term relationships with top growers . . . and to produce high-quality, small lots of wine."
Nomad's own wines are impressive. I tasted some of the stellar 2005 vintage, and each was notable and true to its commune, particularly the youthful and earthy Chambolle Musigny and the good-value Beaune, with a welcome light touch with wood.
"The style is determined by the three of us and must correspond to our tastes," says Tyrrell. "The wines we buy at source, before malolactic fermentation, have to display fruit, minerality, freshness, fine structure and finesse. When we transfer the wines to the cellar in Beaune, and put them in our own barrels, we are not looking to mask the fruit with oaky flavours but simply to use the wood as a support for the wine . . .
"We are given technical analysis and support by the cellar team, but the decisions on how much wood, when to rack, when to sulphur, when to bottle are ours to make. The wines are obviously a work in progress, and, hopefully, by the 2007 vintage we will have arrived at a settled style, but I think it is safe to say that the wines are modern in style."
And what about the name Lombeline? "It comes from St Ombeline, also known as 'the very happy Ombeline', who was a girl from a religious family in Burgundy who refused to follow her six brothers - one of them was St Bernard - into religious life and instead went her own way, and for many years led a worldly life before finally embracing the monastic life, when she got older. We feel, at this stage, more attachment to the slightly more rebellious part of her life."
Nomad Wine Importers, 41 Fitzwilliam Point, Fitzwilliam Quay, Ringsend, Dublin 4, 087-6733370