Fin Castle Wine quest

My friends welcome to my quest to find the best wine out there. My name is Finley Castle, and I come from Ireland. As you might have figured it out, I’m somewhat of a fan of drinking wine. The name of this website might have tipped you off, or the fact that there is an enormous glass of wine featured on the main page here. Yes, wine is a huge love of mine, and I do a lot of things to discover new and interesting wines. For example this summer I went on a trip to Split Croatia with the intent of spending three weeks doing wine tastings and occasionally enjoying in the sea and the sun. Normally you do things the opposite. You enjoy the sun and the sea, and wine is just an extra bonus. After asking around what to do in Split, I came across something that caused me to derail my plans and I went on various adventures away from wine, including something that I can’t recommend enough, which is the Blue Cave trip. I actually went on the tour a couple of times because I enjoyed it so much. Each time I went with the different agency, and I can say that I enjoyed the most with the Zen travel agency. For the last two weeks of my trip to the Dalmatian coast, I did enjoy some amazing wines that the warm Croatian sun and the salty Croatian air have produced. Here on this blog, I plan on talking about the wines I discovered on my Hvar wine tour, but also about a lot more.

How did my love for wine start?

Like with most other things, it makes sense to start at the beginning, so let’s talk about how I fell in love with wines. Seeing how I’m a guy and from Ireland, there’s this stereotype that’s prevalent that I need to love Guinness, whiskey or poitín. Well, when I was growing up I never really found myself fancying neither of those things. I did, however, enjoy a good glass of wine. Even to myself, it seems that wine is something that French would normally love. Despite all that, I persevere.

I guess I fell in love with wine in secondary school, when most folks start going out, attending parties and the like. That’s when you start getting familiar with alcohol, if you know what I mean, :). As I was going through all the usual suspects for an Irish party, like beers, whiskeys and so on, I discovered that I didn’t really enjoy them. I started to think that I’m an awfully boring person because I didn’t enjoy alcohol altogether. That was until someone brought a bottle of red wine to a party of a close friend of mine, who is still my friend even today. Hi Pat if you’re reading this.

The bottle of wine that was brought wasn’t from a fancy winery. It was just a cheapo supermarket wine, but lucky for me, it was one of those surprise cheapo supermarket wine that tasted great. Lucky for me because I fell in love with wine, or so I thought. The next bottle of wine that I tried was a godawfully bitter white wine and just didn’t taste right at all. That how I figured out that I do like wine, I just like a relatively good wine, that’s been prepared and handled properly during its lifetime. That’s how my love and the eternal search for good wines was born.

Finding the best wine out there

Now I make it sound like looking for wine is the focal point of my life and that I might be an alcoholic. That is definitely not the case. What I did make wine, however, is sort of a theme for my travels both within Ireland and also when I go and visit a completely different country. This usually means that instead of looking where all the best places to eat are, I look for places with vineyards and wineries that are highly praised.

I don’t think that’s bad unique that only I’m doing. Many people out there decide to travel for wine, and everyone who goes on a trip to somewhere new has their own curiosities about the place that they are visiting. My curiosity is just wine. Yours might be different. I would just like to repeat that I am not an alcoholic. Hmmm, now that I think about it, that’s something that an alcoholic would say, right? :).

What to expect from Fin Caste Wine

Fin Castle Wine website was launched out of sheer boredom. I’m a bank teller by day and when I’m not working I’m mostly at home with my cats, especially now that it’s winter and I’m stuck inside the house mostly. When it’s warmer I get out and go on long bike rides, especially around Dublin.

If you decide to stick around you’ll find articles about my favorite wineries in Ireland, my favorite wines, both domestic and international. Occasionally I’ll plan a trip abroad and of course then write about it here. Since I’m a country boy at heart, my plan is to save up and buy a place of my own somewhere in the Irish countryside.

I know that Ireland’s climate isn’t exactly suitable for raising grapes, but I’ve heard stories that there are some varieties of grapes that can still be raised even here in our very own Ireland. It’ll definitely be an adventure and you are more than welcome to join the ride. That’s it for me now. Cheers.