Show a toast to Irish love of wine

Ireland’s love of whiskey and stout is well established. What is less known, perhaps, is that the country has a long association with the grape, too, longer than the arrival of Blue Nun on our shelves a few decades ago.

In Susan Boyle’s entertaining one-woman theatrical performance, A Wine Goose Chase, which arrives at the Kinsale Arts Festival this week, some of the unlikely stories behind Ireland’s 2,000-year connection with wine are uncorked.

The lack of the requisite 100 days of sunshine didn’t impede Ireland’s love affair with wine, which was first brought to the island by the Celts. It was Irish Christian monks who spread the gospel far and wide, among them St Fiachra, renowned for his work in the vineyards of France, who became immortalised as the patron saint of gardening. St Killian, the patron saint of winegrowers, toiled in the vineyards along the Main Valley.