Cork on the way to becoming the champagne capital of Ireland? That's the challenging claim being made by Bubble Brothers, a new company on Upper John Street, which now supplies the Irish market with over a dozen champagnes from smaller growers in France's Champagne region.
It began when Billy Forrester from Cork fell in love with Anne Boddaert from the small French town of Hem, near Lille.
They married on September 13th last year. His best man was Rory Morrish from Cork. As the champers flowed they started thinking about the possibility of becoming champagne importers.
They went to see a local champagne producer who introduced them to the region, the food, and the people of Champagne.
They imported 100 bottles with them and set about testing the market in Cork, cycling around the city with their wares, selling the bottles at £18 each.
The first consignment was gone within four days. That initial modest success led to the establishment of their company, Bubble Brothers.
They made the leap of faith and imported a further 1,000 bottles and at Ford Cork Week last July they made a big splash.
There are now six people involved in the company. Billy Forrester says: "The fact that we are not Dublin-based makes the shippers there wonder who we are. In a sense being based here in Cork gives us an advantage - it gives us a profile that we might not have enjoyed had we been a small outfit in the Dublin milieu."
He expects sales will reach up to 10,000 bottles in this pre-Christmas period. "If you can't do it at Christmas, when can you?"
Bubble Brothers will do personalised labels for its customers, for weddings, christenings, birthdays, or corporate events. You can even have your photo included.
The company also intends to use the Internet as a means of expanding. And there are plans to open a champagne bar in Cork next year.
The company is now beginning to come into profit and the team behind it feels that one of its strengths is bringing in some champagnes not otherwise available here.
Last Friday, as mentioned in Saturday's "On the Town" column in this newspaper, they went to the Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin to launch an exhibition by 12 contemporary artists from the Beara Peninsula whom they asked to come up with designs for a new champagne label.
You could, if you had the bones of £500, acquire a dozen bottles of bubbly with these precious labels, quirky and once-off. The 500 buyers, to whom the offer was made, went home, not only with their precious champagne but with a complete set of the original prints ready for framing as a collectors' item.
The champagnes come from the vineyards of Jose Pierlot a few kilometres from the town of Epernay on the Marne and from Gerard Gruget, whose Coteaux Champenois is made entirely from pinot noir grapes. Another producer is Bernard Gentil who operates from a premises once owned by Tattinger. Jean Claude Vallois, who has been in the business for six generations, and Bernard Depoire of Vindey, who is in the business with his two brothers, are also on the company's list.