The new Wicklow wine, made in Newtown using strawberries
OUR REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF SHARED A GLASS WITH PAMELA WALSH AND BRETT STEPHENSON, WHO HAVE WOWED WINE EXPERTS WITH THEIR VINTAGE, MADE IN NEWTOWNMOUNTKENNEDY
E NNISKERRY resident Pamela Walsh is a highly qualified and experienced electrical engineer. Husband Brett Stephenson has worked the sound desk for such artistes as Ray Charles and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. So how come the couple are sitting in their new premises in Newtownmountkennedy’s business park surrounded by bottles their latest vintage?
Their Wicklow Way wine made from strawberries is suddenly in big demand from restaurants and off licences, the drinks hit of the summer of 2016. And they have a batch of elderberry with blackcurrant wine coming close to maturity in the 1,100 litre steel vats at Newtown, due to be unleashed in time for Christmas.
Their careers appeared set respectively for wind farms and rock concerts but instead they have created a business from what began as a hobby. Pamela, who was always good at problem solving subjects such as maths and chemistry as a schoolgirl, is a Dubliner from the northside suburb of Malahide.
She was one of very few females in her engineering class at the Dublin Institute of Technology before hitting the emigrant trail in the late Eighties, when jobs matching her new qualification were thin on the ground at home. She headed for the US to stay with a cousin and found herself falling in love with Brett, the man who was to become her husband.
They settled down together in the San Francisco area, where their son Shane (now aged 21) and daughter Celina (18) were both born. Brett was employed to work the sound system dials at corporate events for Elton John, Tom Waits or whatever superstar happened to be in town. His wife commuted to Silicon Valley.
They were a busy and successful family living pleasantly in The Bay of San Fran.
Then, in the year 2000, they suddenly decided that they should move to Ireland, where the children would have grandparents close at hand. The house was sold and their notices to quit were handed in before they could get cold feet.
Once back home, Pamela landed a high-powered job with the Airtricity power company. One of her first assignments was the landmark Arklow Bank windmills. Her office was in Dublin but she might be asked to take an aeroplane to just about anywhere in the world, from Denmark to China. The work put a strain on her lungs, with recurrent bouts of chest problems, prompting her and Brett to look around for something else to which they might apply themselves. So it was that the Walsh-Stephenson combination turned to a hobby as a possible alternative career.
‘I needed to get off the merry-goround,’ says Pamela. ‘But not to do something that had already been done hundreds of times before…’
The notion that wine must be made from grapes is clearly a nonsense. The same manufacturing principles may be applied to most fruits, though some are more suitable than others. Brett and Pamela were inspired to experiments after enjoying a very pleasant example of raspberry wine sampled at a party in California – different and delicious.
They played around in the kitchen with such ingredients as plums, banana, pineapples, elderflower, blueberry and kiwi fruit. Their house began to fill up with carboys, the large containers favoured by serious home wine makers.The gorse, by the way, turned out horrid, as they failed to capture the distinctive perfume of the prickly plant. The pineapple and banana made for a decent drink but they were discarded as the quest became serious. They wanted to make something genuinely Irish, so tropical imports did not qualify.
As they narrowed down the field and as their thinking become more commercial, strawberry emerged as the front runner. As pastime morphed into commerce, they put themselves in touch with experienced fruit grower Pat Clarke.
‘People ask us do we grow the fruit but that is not where the knowledge was missing,’ muses Pamela. Brett now expects to put the juice of 150 El Santa strawberries into each bottle of wine.
Contact was also established with the Wicklow local enterprise office where Louise Fleming and Carol Murphy were both very helpful, offering training and a useful grant.
Since the bubbling carboys had gradually filled every nook and cranny of their house in Enniskerry, they found suitable accommodation in the business park. Unit 8 is immaculately clean, with high ceilings and its own variation on the waxy smell which is
typical of a wine production plant. The place has plenty of space for all the gleaming tanks, as well as room to set up bottling, corking and labelling lines for what they call Wicklow Way Wines. The distinctive outline of the Sugar Loaf, half way between their home and the plant at Newtown, has been adopted as the logo along with the brand name ‘Móinéir’ – which is the Irish for meadow.
While Pamela concentrated on administrative tasks, Brett assumed the role of winemaker-in-chief, taking delivery of tonnes of strawberries grown in the summer of 2015. Other ingredients were yeast and just a little sugar to take the edge off the acidity of the fruit. He and his wife are horrified at any suggestion that water might be added. This is intended to be a high quality wine, after all, designed to explore the favour of the berries, and no shortcuts are permitted.
The result is a dark rosé which is a delight served cold as an aperitif but which also makes a fair accompaniment to a meal. It is a considerable and complex step up from being fortified strawberry syrup. This is Saint-Émilion come to Enniskerry.
Of course, the effort and skill and investment which went into hundreds of bottles of this distinctive and groundbreaking product offered no guarantee that anyone would want to buy – and buy at a premium price. So it was with much trepidation, after many sleepless nights, that the Móinéir twosome packed samples of their goods earlier this summer for Dublin and set off to Bloom, the garden festival in the Phoenix Park. Passers-by attending the event were happy to take a sip. The reaction from members of the public on their day out was good. But just as important was the very positive response among the trade. At Bloom, Wicklow Way Wines immediately captured the imagination of the writers and broadcasters, the chefs and restauranteurs.
An Irish wine! We may not be able to grow grapes in large quantity or dependable quality but we have many other fruits on this island which might make a respectable drink. The notion clicked with some influential members of the gourmet classes. Wicklow Way was talked about on radio and, since the outing in the Park, journalists from the national papers have been making their way out of Dublin to meet Ireland’s novel wine makers. The marketing effort paid off and Móinéir is now on the wine list at the Michelin-starred Chapter One and other well-known eateries.
It is also selling well through independent wine merchants, including neighbours Parting Glass in Enniskerry and Avoca in Kilmacanogue.
‘Six weeks ago, we didn’t even know if we had a business,’ says Pamela with obvious relief. She stepped down from Airtricity two years ago. ‘We are on the right side of it now.’ She is finally convinced that they do indeed have a viable enterprise. Since they made the breakthrough, she and her husband have been so busy promoting their 2015 vintage that they have not yet had time to start making the 2016 batch of strawberry wine.
Now Brett is itching to launch the second string to their bow, which is all but ready, and waiting in the vats. It has been concocted from a blend of blackcurrant and elderberry, its inventor stressing the time consumed in picking and processing 80 kilos of wild elderberries.
Pamela and Brett insist that Ireland should no longer be characterised simply as a beer drinking country.
The statistics suggest that we glug our way through 100 million bottles of wine each year. Wicklow Way Wines is up and running in their bid to take a share of that thirsty market – cheers!