There's no other way of saying this but some jobs are just too demanding. Spare a thought for those restaurateurs and wine-retailers who had to work their way through 30 different champagnes, all lined up along the table in the Shelbourne Hotel during the week.
Take Russell Bailey, director of the five Milano restaurants in Ireland, who attended the champagne presentation. All through the afternoon, he had to sample the highest quality champagnes and choose the ones he wanted to order for the up-coming New Year's Eve celebrations. "I'll probably end up having six to eight glasses," he explained, not flinching at all at the idea. "I`m used to it," he explained with a little smile.
The tasting all happened courtesy of the Bubble Brothers - Cork-based Rory Morrish and Billy Forrester - who put their millennium range on show. Jim McNaughton, the owner of Tilestyle, was there to sample the best. "I'm an admirer of fine things," he said, not claiming to be a connoisseur but confiding: "I'd know paint-stripper, and they haven't any here."
Others at the tasting included Susan Walls and Sebastian Pailhous from Thornton's Restaurant; Norman Hewson, from Tosca Restaurant; Seamus O'Connell from Cork's Ivory Towers Restaurant and David Wecker from The Grey Door. All the champagne was very . . . hic . . . good. Later, at Dublin's Powerscourt Centre, there was more champagne to help launch the Wella Design Centre fashion show. The models, who remained trapped like a flock of birds in a back room until the off, emerged to show off the new ranges from designers such as Louise Kennedy and Mary Gregory.