A Weekend in the country (Part 2)

After our terrific start to the weekend we launched into Saturday with a full Irish breakfast and a trip to the beach. Here we partook in all types of watersports (surfing, body-boarding etc..) in an effort to burn off some of the previous evenings calories. It was a wonderfully warm afternoon and everyone was suitably sunkissed after a few hours so we departed off to St. Finians Bay to visit the Skellig Chocolate factory. Here they let us sample some delicious treats, lemon & mint brittle, honeycomb chocolate, gin&tonic dark chocolate, praline truffles being just a few examples. This is a fun/delicious spot to visit if you are ever in the area.

We rounded off the afternoon with a bottle of NV Tarlant Rose Brut Zero. This particular wine had been disgorged 2 years ago and I feel it may have been feeling it's age a little bit. Previous bottles have been much fresher showing delicious strawberry and apple notes. This bottle was a little sour on the palate and it's pink color faded a little towards the edge. Still quite tasty and a nice way to enter into the evening. We then hoped in a taxi and went to the Smugglers Inn perched on the edge of Waterville Beach. It was a gorgeous evening and we watched the sun set through the conservatory windows. This is a very rustic style gourmet restaurant perfectly balancing formality and informality. The ingredients being used we really top class and all of the dishes were delicious as a result. The wine list wasn't spectacular but we did manage to find some interesting bottles off of it, 2006 Moreau Chablis 1er cru Vallions to match all of the seafood dishes and 1999 Chateau Musar to match with the meatier selections. Similarly the wine glasses were a mish mash of sizes and styles but it didn't really matter. The starters were really delicious, I ordered calamari which was 3 meaty fried pieces of fresh squid fried to perfection. All of the starters were delicious and beautifully presented, my favourite starter was the lobster and spider crab bisque but most of the others ohh'd and ahh'd at the goats cheese tartlet. The Chablis went really well with my squid. It didn't create any fireworks but it was a nice young Chablis showing nice minerality, peach, lemon and had a smooth, long palate. For mains I ordered a grilled lobster. Lobster is somewhat of a family tradition whilst in Waterville and the smugglers cooked mine to perfection. It was a decent size and nice and meaty, it came with 2 different sauces (garlic butter & some sort of brandy based sauce) both of which were awesome. Of the other mains the duck was the best I have tasted in a long time and the black sole was cooked to absolute perfection. The cooking here is awesome and the fresh ingredients are inspiring (a sign up front captured the feeling perfectly 'if our fish were any fresher, we'd be cooking under water').

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It's been a while since I last tasted Chateau Musar and I had heard that the 1999 was a successful vintage so I was quite looking forward to tasting this wine. I must say I was very impressed with this wine. Quite a bit of 'funk' on the powerful nose coupled with red berries and a little tobacco, meat and pepper. It has a great acidic backbone which would suggest good ageing potential but this is quite delicious at the moment so I don't see why one would wait. Obviously this wasn't a good match to the lobster so I sipped sparingly with my meal but had a glass or two between courses. I'll have to track down a bottle or 2 of this to drink at home with something more appropriate than seafood.

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After dinner we went back to the village for a couple of social beverages but everyone crashed quite quickly after the days exertions. Yet another excellent day in the country.