Wine company keeps the spirit alive for seven generations

It started with ladies supping port in a teacup in its Grafton Street tearoom. And leading wine and spirits merchants Mitchells is still owned by the same family. Rose Doyle reports

Mitchells, in the 1800s, was the Grafton Street place to go for tea, confectioneries and the odd sympathetic tipple. The last was a discreet extra, port served in teacups to the ladies-who-lunched of the time and who couldn't be seen imbibing publicly.

And it was in those comforting sups that the seeds of Dublin's most venerable wine merchants were nourished. Mitchell & Son moved in time from tea and cakes to whiskey and wine and, seven generations and a decisive resistance to take-overs and the multinational route later, are a nobility among the city's wine merchants.

From 21 Kildare Street, the elegant, Georgian building the family bought in 1887, Mitchells has for several of those generations been selling fine wines, spirits and its own Green Spot Whiskey. In 1918, it would have sold you a dozen bottles of St Emilion for 32 shillings, white Claret by the dozen for 36 shillings or 12 bottles of John Jameson & Sons whiskey for 108 shillings. They would have paid the carriage to the railway station too - and you wouldn't have been charged for the bottles.

R Jonathan Mitchell is managing director and chairman of today's company. He's closely abetted by Peter Dunne, also a director, who joined the company in l970. Robert Mitchell, son of Jonathan, manages the company's other wine shop, opened in Glasthule, Co Dublin in l997. Mitchells employs 15 people and will be 200 years old in 2005.

Jonathan Mitchell, with an easy affability, tells the Mitchell story over cups of dark black coffee. It's too early in the morning for anything else. Peter Dunne, an equally relaxed presence, adds anecdote and fact. There's nothing hurried about the mood in Mitchells.

"The family business began as a confectionery and bakery in 1805 at 10 Grafton Street - where McDonalds is today," says Jonathan. "It was started by William Mitchell, my great-great-great grandfather, who was a baker and came from the north of England." The company grew, supplying wedding cakes countrywide and opening tea and private diningrooms on different levels in the building.

Redoubtable women with remarkable names come and go through the Mitchell story. Sarah, who married George Patrick Mitchell, son of William, was one of them. She took over when her husband died, in l847 at a far too young 32 years, and by 1850 had garnered the first of many royal warrants and become "Confectioner to Her Majesty".

During Sarah's reign things went from good to better. Mitchells bought numbers nine and 11 Grafton Street and, through what was Grafton Street's coffee house hey-day - with the street knee-deep in the likes of Bewleys, Fullers and Robt. Roberts - Mitchells, with its variety of restaurants, was the place to go.

Jonathan remembers going there as a very small child, before it closed. "It was awe inspiring," he says, "with great stained glass windows to the back and window displays of iced cakes and ice sculptures to the front."

He remembers the legend too, the story of how polite ladies poured port from teapots into teacups of an afternoon, unknowingly heralding what was to come.

The first Robert in the family, son of the remarkable Sarah and of Patrick Mitchell, took over the company in time. In l887,with the sale of wine making an ever increasing contribution to the family business, he bought 21 Kildare Street from the then Provost of TCD, John Hely Hutchinson, and expanded into whiskey bonding and wines.

How Robert became a family name is a story in itself. "The first Robert was a great friend of Robert Emmet's," Jonathan explains. "It's said that on a visit to him in jail, he promised that the firstborn sons in succeeding generations of Mitchells would be called Robert - and that's how it's been."

Back in the 1800s when Robert, son of Sarah and G Patrick Mitchell was expanding into wine and spirits, the family home was in Ailesbury House, now the Spanish Embassy. Jonathan has pictures of the family then, with Robert at the centre of formidable gatherings of Mitchells.

Jameson and Power were the big Dublin whiskey distillers when Mitchells went into the business of whiskey bonding in l887. "Findlaters would have been around then," Jonathan says, "and Gilbeys. We had special whiskey cellars in Fitzwilliam Lane where we bottled our Green Spot whiskey and matured it for 10 years."

Green Spot, since the 1920s, has been a continuing success. Up there with Black Bush, it's distilled, matured and bottled for Mitchells and, in 2003, won the gold medal in Best of the Best Whiskey Tasting run by the prestigious Whisky Magazine.

The first marriage of Robert Mitchell ended with the early death of his wife. His second marriage, many years later, was to Agnes Fairburn Jury, of the Jury's Hotel family. They had three daughters and a son.

"Robert Noel Mitchell, the son, was my grandfather and very much their last child," Jonathan says. "When his father died Agnes was thrown into the running of both Grafton Street and Kildare Street. Robert Noel eventually took over and ran Grafton Street until the 1950s. A nephew, Harold Mitchell, ran things in Kildare Street - which meant the business hopped out of the direct line for a generation. Harold died young, in l947, and his widow, the famous and formidable Beatrice Ruby Mitchell, became madam chairman of the company for a while until my father, Robert, was whistled in from the army, which he liked, to do his duty by the family."

The young Robert Mitchell travelled extensively and built up the company's wine portfolio. "He developed contacts, went out to growers we still deal with today," Jonathan explains; he took over from his father in the mid l980s.

Peter Dunne says he joined Mitchells "virtually from school. As Jonathan did, I learned things from the bottom up, picking grapes in France, bottling, going through the whole gamut. It's a tough but lovely business to be in."

He's full of interesting detail, explains some of the practical realities and latter day great changes in the business. "We imported wine in casks until 1978," he says, "and had a Heath Robinson-like machine which bottled gin, rum,sherry, port - all of which came in casks. People returned their bottles, or if they didn't, were charged for them. We didn't bottle everything, of course. At the very expensive end of the market, as with Chateau Margaux, they bottled their own. By the late l970s and early 1980s, the EU was changing the laws appertaining to wine bottles almost by the hour until it reached a point where, along with other importers, we had to bring in wine already bottled in its country of origin."

In 1978 Mitchells converted the cellars into a wine bar and restaurant. The diversification ended in l999 and Bruno's Restaurant now leases the space. In 1999, refurbishment doubled the sales floor area in Kildare Street.

Wine consumption in Ireland has grown steadily over the last 10 years, the same decade in which new world wine has come into serious prominence. Mitchells, however, was importing containers from Australia and Chile in the early 1970s.

And Peter Dunne talks about the original emergence of these wines in 1560 as if it were yesterday.

"The line between new and old world wine was drawn when Mexico started to grow and make wine, after Jesuit missionaries started bringing it in for altar wine. Nowadays, countries like Slovenia, in particular, will be interesting to watch, and Hungary, which has of course been producing wine for a very long time."

Mitchells believes in the personal touch and intends remaining a family business, dealing directly with the château and vineyard owners who are their suppliers.

A Mitchell recipe, from 1922, for sunny days ahead . . .

Bottle of Champagne

Glass of curaçao or brandy

Two bottles of soda water

Slice of cucumber or pineapple

Let the whole remain an hour or two, then add lumps of clear ice.

The same year, Mitchells recommended that when drawing champagne, all wire, string and tinfoil should be removed before pulling the cork. Wine, they advised, would be spoiled by allowing it to run over mouldy string and rusty wire.