The wine list of the Whitethorn Restaurant in Ballyvaughan has featured in this column before - because it's funky and fun; delicious yet affordable. The selection, though modest in scale, is so well chosen that you immediately see half a dozen things you want to drink - and three or four more that you might try if an ambulance could be assured for the transfer home. The list is well written - accurate and entertaining. What's new is that it too has achieved national recognition, garnering the Wine List of the Year award in this year's Tipperary Water Guide to Ireland.
"It's terrific encouragement for small operators like us," says John McDonnell, whose big personality reverberates right through the restaurant. "It's proof that you don't have to have a huge list to have a good list. It can be good with only 40 wines."
It's also proof that you don't have to have a posh dining room to have a sassy wine list. The Whitethorn is a modest place, bustling with busloads of visitors by day and booked out with laid-back holidaymakers on summer weekend evenings. There's a touch of 1980s time-warp about the decor, which throws Sarah Cuddigan's bold food and McDonnell's audacious wine selection into sharp relief. It's another way of saying looks aren't everything. Loosen up. The sea is lapping right outside; the light flooding through the long glass wall. A bottle of sunny Albarino - now, wouldn't that be bliss?
This wine list goes to almost frenzied extremes to make wine fun, with its sprinkling of boozy quotations (Joe Louis: "A man is never drunk if he can lie on the floor without holding on") and eager exhortations (Chateau Tour Saint Bonnet Medoc: "Get some now, before Sarah and I drink it all"). But McDonnell is a serious wine man who worked for Yalumba in the Barossa and studied at Roseworthy, Australia's leading school of oenology, before coming back to settle in Clare. He is a regular lecturer for the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in the west, and runs the Irish office of the Australian Wine Bureau.
Whatever McDonnell's antipodean links, the Whitethorn's list is resolutely international, reflecting a wide range of enthusiasms. "I'd love people to get away from Chardonnay and rediscover old classics like sherry or German Riesling," he says, "or other interesting grapes, like Gruner Veltliner. Instead of playing safe with red Bordeaux, have the courage to try a Cotes du Roussillon, for heaven's sake!" This year, he's all fired up about Portugal, after his first visit (see the Luis Pato red below). Next season, it will probably be Tuscany, since he's organised a trip there in October for the Ennis Wine Club.
As his customers are in holiday mode, John McDonnell finds they prefer bottles and half bottles to wines by the glass. The Whitethorn offers about 20 well-chosen half bottles (Valdespino Inocente! Beaucastel! Domaine Tempier Bandol!) - a selection that would put plenty of fancier restaurants to snivelling shame.
He is apologetic about prices. "They've gone up a small bit this year." What he means, friends, is that Whitethorn wines now start at £11 per full bottle, instead of under £10. Think about that. How many times have you encountered tasty restaurant wines at £11? Moving up the price scale, mark-ups are still well below the norm - and have been for years. So there you have it. A varied, tempting list, chosen with care, sold with brio - and studded with bargains.
Whitethorn Restaurant, Ballyvaughan. Tel: 065-7077044. Open daily 9.30 a.m.6 p.m. until November, and also for dinner on Fridays and Saturdays in July and August.