All wine selections this week are Spanish

Only a couple of weeks to Budget 2015 and still time to contact Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, to encourage him to give small wine importers and wine shops a break by reducing our criminally high wine taxes.

There is another group however that he needs to consider and that is the closest thing we will ever have in Ireland to a wine industry: our wonderful Artisan Cider producers.

Globally the consumption of cider has risen by 50% since 2004 while production in Ireland has actually fallen by 21% (figures from Cider Ireland).