GALWAY reverberates to the sound of beer crates being loaded and unloaded along the pub-clogged artery of Quay Street. Listening to this early morning rattle, it is difficult enough to imagine the city as the major wine place it once was a port outdone only by London and Bristol for the volume of its vinous business with France, Portugal and Spain. The tattered remnants of the Spanish Arch barely do its history justice. But, three centuries after the heyday, there are signs of new life in Galway's wine trade.
Three years ago, Murray's off-licence on Mainguard Street was bought by Frank Kinneen and transformed into The Vineyard, a wine shop with as diverse a selection of good bottles as you could see anywhere. Having worked as West of Ireland area sales manager for Irish Distillers, he was well placed to see which way the wind was blowing in and around the Windy City. "I'd noticed a huge move towards home drinking. Instead of going to pubs, people were beginning to stay in and drink wine. A lot of our early customers began with bottles at £4.99 and they've stayed with us, graduating up to £7.99, maybe even £10.99. That's very rewarding."
Last year Frank Kinneen bought Feeney's off-licence in Salthill. Since, a decade ago, he and a business partner had acquired G&L Stores in the Newcastle area of the city, this latest purchase brought the number of wine outlets under his wing to three. His wide-ranging stock is geared to suit a broad clientele. At the lowest, least daunting end of the spectrum are reliable wines like Two Oceans - popular, at £4.99, with students and party organisers. "We've sold a mountain of Two Oceans - an ocean, I suppose I should say, and we've never had a single complaint." At the other extreme is an impressive selection of claret with a special emphasis on the chateaux of the Irish Wine Geese. With its Galway connections, Chateau LynchBages is in constant demand. The Vineyard's prices for this high-profile Pauillac are lower than in Britain (1982, 1992 £27.99); Frank Kinneen is by now inured to the shock of seeing English visitors buy it by the case.
Other clarets which sell steadily, helped by their local origins, are Chateau Kirwan (1991, £17.95) and Chateau Dillon (1993, £12.25).
But a large slice of The Vineyard's business comes from more modest bottles. Candido Salice Salentino, an early Irish Times Bottle of the Week, sells nearly as fast as Claddagh rings in Galway. The Ochoa range and Gran Feudo, both from Navarra, are also hot items in a stocklist which derives as much of its appeal from the New World as the old. Lovely Martinborough Pinot Noir from New Zealand, luscious Saintsbury Pinot from California and full-blooded La Motte Shiraz from South Africa are just a few of the bottles that will tempt customers to splash out.
It's also just over three years since Noel O'Loughlin moved his fledgling Merchants Wine Club into a bigger space in the Cornstore on St Augustine Street. It is a fascinating shop for wine buffs, partly because almost everything on offer is imported directly and hence to be found nowhere else; and partly because Noel O'Loughlin's torrent of words makes you feel dizzy before a drop is drunk.
It all started, he says, back in the early 1960s when, as a hitch-hiking teenager destined for the priesthood, he was offered a lift by George Potts, a director of the Savoy Hotel in London. That set him on the wine road - working in vineyards in France and Corsica, then selling wine in London and making friends with key figures in the trade. At one stage he came back home with the idea of starting perfume distillation in the Burren. Thirty years later, in the early 1990s he toyed with the idea of settling in Galway to launch a brewery - but wine won out in the end.
As its name suggests, the Merchants Wine Club is more than a shop. "My idea, from the very beginning, was, to do small, interesting deals, Noel O'Loughlin explains. It is not just a matter of his buying up parcels of wine from the countless small producers he has cultivated over the years, in France especially - although that is what first strikes the casual browser, and presumably what appeals to the university lecturers and doctors who are his loyal customers.
"My chief interest is in getting together groups of investors - for example to buy the entire output of a particular estate, or to buy the vineyards themselves."
VineShare, his vineyard ownership scheme, offers a share in new vineyards in Portugal or the Languedoc for a minimum investment of £3,750. Apparently over 70 Irish punters are in the process of signing up.
Galway's oldest off-licence, McCambridges - attached to the splendid Shop Street food shop - also buys some of its wines direct. There is a long connection with the Barton family in Bordeaux, resulting in a wide range of vintages at prices Pat McCambridge describes as "about half what they are in Decanter magazine". Even by Dublin standards they are striking value. Examples: Chateau Leoville-Barton 1986 at £26.7s; 1987 at £18.50; Chateau Langoa-Barton 1986 at £18.95.
But, fortunately for everyday quaffers, the policy of direct importing isn't restricted to classed growths. Among McCambridges' fastest movers are easy-drinking wines from the Languedoc-Roussillon Domainede la Ferrandier which, minus any middleman, sell at just £5.95.
In between those two extremes lies the extensive Burgundy range of Bouchard Pere et Fils, shipped direct since 1969. Strangely enough, McCambridges also sells a substantial amount of port and even more madeira. It's comforting to think that, in spite of the New World hou-ha and all the marketing muscle behind popular brands, there's still a demand for those traditional drinks, downed in prodigious quantities by Galway merchants 300 years ago.