An ‘eight bottle man’ is among Patricia’s tales

Patricia McCarthy’s new book, Enjoying Claret in Georgian Ireland (Open Air Books/Four Courts Press) refers to an 18th century judge called Tisdal who lived in great splendour in Stillorgan. He was much admired, not just for keeping a good table and for his hospitality but also for being ‘an eight bottle man’. That would be eight bottles of red Bordeaux at one sitting.

These days such wines weigh in at around 13.5 per cent alcohol but back then, according to the late Michael Broadbent, they would have been around 9 per cent or 10 per cent. Still...

A Kilkenny baronet, Sir Hercules Langrishe, biographer of Grattan and friend of Edmund Burke, was found by his wife with ten empty claret bottles.

She inquired if he had had any assistance in drinking them and he is alleged to have replied that he had: a bottle of Madeira.

I’m surprised that this story didn’t make it into the book as it is packed with anecdotes and, while very scholarly and structured, reads very entertainingly.

While from the 1770s port became ‘the Englishman’s wine’, the ascendancy of claret in Ireland continued, encouraged by the close links between Irish emigrants to Bordeaux, who have in recent years been named the wine geese. In the 1760s, some 60 per cent of the wine consumed in Ireland was French, most of it from Bordeaux but with Champagne, Burgundy and the northern Rhône (Hermitage and Côte-Rotie) well represented. Some sweet wines came from Languedoc, notably Frontignan, but most was Spanish, in particular Malaga. In 1828 Daniel O’Connell, entertaining Prince Pückler-Muskau at Derrynane, was complimented by his guest on the fineness of his ‘old wine’.

The O’Connell family, of course, had been successful smugglers until thirty years before so the prince was probably enjoying duty-free claret, so to speak.

Figures for the consumption of wine at the Viceregal Court are staggering and there’s also the cautionary tale of the Duke of Rutland who presided over Ireland from 1784 to 1787 and was described as ‘an exacting epicure’. In 1787, Rutland embarked on a three-month tour of Ireland where he was entertained royally. However, on his return to Dublin, he died — it is thought of liver failure — at the age of 33. If he might have survived longer in England, we will never know.