About Me

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Dublin, Ireland
Hi, I'm Dermot Nolan, and I became a Master of Wine (MW) in 1997, and resigned from the Institute of Masters of Wine in 2023 after being an MW for exactly 26 years. I opened a wine shop in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, called The Wine Library, which closed in 2018, and this is my personal wine blog. I will do my utmost to be fair and responsible in my posts – please read my Who Pays article in re the ethics of wine trips and writing. I have worked in wine education, retail, and consultancy since 1990. I was a Director of the Institute of Masters of Wine (IMW) from 2008 to 2014 and was also a member of the Events Committee, founder of the Trips Committee, and member of the Governance Committee. Having had problems with potentially libellous comments from unidentifiable posters, I now require that if you post a comment, you must identify yourself properly or it won't be published. Please note that I do not review products or services on request so kindly don't ask. I value my independence and I believe my readers (few that they may be) do so also.

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Singing for your supper...

People like me often have to sing for our supper and recently I had a great time at a wine dinner hosted by The Royal Irish Yacht Club (RIYC) on 18th October, 2018. Many of my best customers in The Wine Library are RIYC members and I also have a few friends therein!

Saturday, September 8, 2018

And the bad news is...

A study was recently published by The Lancet in relation to alcohol-related harms and it shows that there is no safe minimum level of alcohol consumption - bad news for wine drinkers! Or is it? The study is extensive and has lots of data (although the copy I found online in the above link does not contain the appendices) but there are some questions about the findings.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Ignorance is bliss


There is an old joke which defines an economist as someone who finds something which works in practice and then spends their life trying to prove it will work in theory. This definition could be used for those who predict wonderful/appalling outcomes for Brexit – we won’t really know the effects until well after March 2019.

However, there are a few things which we can certainly posit with some degree of certainty and one of those is that, whatever transition deal is made between the UK and the EU it is likely to cause the cost of wine to rise rather than fall. Why?