Wine bar just the tonic

IN A case of new wine in old bottles, multi-pub owner Benny McCabe this weekend opens a city wine and food bar in one of Cork’s oldest retail buildings, one that served as a pharmacy for close to a century.

And the time-capsule is a repository of city family medical histories and secrets, bound up in old ledgers, from who was prescribed what, to things like what visiting musicians called by for the next best thing they could legally get to illegal substances.

But, no names. “I’m marrying my publican’s Hippocratic Oath to a pharmacist’s one,” notes bar creator and curator McCabe, as he puts the old ledgers with names, ailments, prescriptions and predilections on display behind steel bars.