James O'Connor's wine, art and food business will do a roaring trade in October. Joe Breen learns why
Trust two Wexford men to do it. Should you visit a Bordeaux château and be confronted by a French winemaker wielding a hurley stick, then blame it on James O'Connor and Donal Morris. These two mulled over an unusual calling card, and finally came up with the idea of presenting hurley sticks to six of their favourite winemakers during their annual visit to Bordeaux for the en primeur wine tasting earlier this year. It was arguably the best use of a hurley by any Wexford man this year - certainly it was the most creative. Thanks to this and other bold manoeuvres, Greenacres, O'Connor's firm, is one of the leading merchants dealing in the Irish en primeur trade.
En primeur is very like dealing in futures. Having tasted the wine, the merchant buys it while it's still in the cask and then sells it on to his customers. In theory, everybody should gain. Winemakers get a swift, guaranteed return on their produce, even before it is bottled; merchants are assured of supply at an agreed price, and punters get a chance to buy wine at a price lower than it should sell at in the shops a few years later.
Theory can bump into practice, of course, and leave all involved with a bloody nose. If, say, the declared price on a wine is too high because of greed, or because the vintage turns out to be poor, or a combination of both, then the investment can disappoint in the long run. Many who invested heavily in the 1997 Bordeaux vintage were burnt accordingly.
Ironically, it was with the 1997 vintage that O'Connor took his first faltering steps into the en primeur trade. He had started out selling vegetables in the mid-1980s, and moved into wine in 1994. "We went straight into selling Lynch Bages and Leoville Barton, Lagrange and Talbot. And only in 1996 did the price of Bordeaux start going up. At that stage, we were selling Lynch Bages for £20 a bottle and cases of Leoville Barton for £240. We were buying that from FitzGerald's and we were selling loads of it, but making very little profit. The first time we started selling stacks of fine wine was during the opera festival of 1995. I think we sold 60 cases of good Bordeaux in three weeks.
"Then in 1998 we went to Bordeaux for the first time. We went to Château du Tertre and met the winemaker, David Fennelly from Kilkenny, a son of Paddy Fennelly, who is a vet in Callan. And we tasted his 1997, which was absolutely delicious. And it was the only 1997 that we bought en primeur. I think we bought 20 cases." And they bought it only because they felt that Fennelly could do with a little support to ward off a less than sympathetic owner. "I think I have only a half-dozen bottles of it left now. It is absolutely delicious."
Since then, despite the price increases of the late 1990s and early 2000s, they have continued to buy Bordeaux en primeur - this year they bought 1,500 cases. "This has been the year that we have made our biggest impression because following an invitation to Château Pétrus for lunch we got an allocation of Pétrus, which we could sell to the UK for much more money. But we have sold it to our Irish clients because they are good enough to support us. And that's not being pompous or arrogant about it." Pétrus is one of the world's icon wines, and getting an allocation of it at any price is considered a privilege. It didn't hurt that Pétrus's key figure Christian Moueix knows and likes Ireland and warmed to the Wexfordman.
O'Connor is a big man with an expansive and friendly manner. Yet it is easy to see that when crossed, he could be a formidable foe. Certainly, the past year has been deeply frustrating for him. Having leased his original premises in Wexford to Boots, he has watched and waited for a year as planners considered his application to turn the building that housed his family's solicitors' practice into a three-storey wine, food, restaurant and art exhibition centre. Built 112 years ago on Selskar, the main shopping street running through Wexford, it is a wonderful building, full of old, seasoned rooms lined with aged timber, just like the one in which we are talking, which he hopes will be the "finest tasting room" in Ireland when his ambitious plan is finally realised.
For now, the building houses his wide selection of wine, a retail counter of artisan cheeses and other fine foods, and a number of rooms filled with modern paintings - he says he has sold over 1,000 paintings by artists such as Mark O'Neill, Eamon Colman, Felim Egan and Kate Millar in the past five years. The move into the new premises has come just as they head into their busiest period, the month of October and the Wexford Festival Opera.
"Our turnover between now and Christmas Eve will be more than 50 per cent of our total turnover. So it is crammed into a very short space of time. It starts with the festival. The month of October is a better month for us than December. We'll sell 100 paintings during the festival. We'll also do a lot of our Christmas business during the festival. We have one guy from Dublin who has only been to the shop once, during the festival, and now we do all his Christmas shopping for him. We send him our flyer and he gets back to us saying that he'll have two of those €500 hampers, two of those €200 hampers, send them to this address and send on the invoice. Thanks very much. And he's been to the shop only once."
Though there is no doubt O'Connor is a hard-nosed businessman - "they all think I'm a robber" - who relishes the glamorous side of the business, he is also the proud father of 11-year-old triplets and husband of Paula, who is a co-director of Greenacres. The other key figure is manager Donal Morris: "He is a gem and he has a terrific palate. I'm more concerned that we can sell the stuff, but he takes terrifically detailed notes. He's also very good at art and he loves his food. And we have great fun working together."
Together they have soldiered in foreign fields and mopped up after disasters closer to home. (Their temporary shop and store was flooded and they nearly lost all their stock, but through persistence were allowed sell top-notch wine such as Château Lafitte, Latour and d'Yquem at half-price after the bottles were cleaned. "The insurance company compensated us for half the cost price and we sold 150 cases of wine in one week.")
You sense that O'Connor's natural exuberance would enjoy all that drama. But he is deeply serious about his business. He uses a French company to source wine, and he criticises Irish wholesalers for taking what he considers to be too great a margin. He also thinks the Government is taking too much - "it's totally unfair."
O'Connor's wine is not all at the premium end, nor is it all from France. New wines, priced between €6 and €20, are on the way from Spain and South Africa, while the two bottles of the week (see panel) represent good value. And though he doesn't have other retail outlets, the website at www.greenacres.ie is well used, and they deliver throughout the state.
He believes that any wine costing over €50 is expensive. So, when would he consider the right time to drink an expensive wine? "Oh, birthdays, weddings, funerals, christenings, long weekends, Christmas, Easter . . .".
Interview over, he offers a glass of wine. The Riedel glasses are dusted down and, watched by framed images of illustrious O'Connor ancestors, we drink deeply on fine Bordeaux. And what wine was it? O'Connor doesn't miss a trick. It was the 1997 Château du Tertre, of course. And yes, it was delicious.