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2009-12-20 - Bridgestone IRISH FOOD GUIDE 9th Edition

_{The Bridgestone, IRISH FOOD GUIDE 9th Edition}

_{Introduction:}

_{" Irish farming is in a state of crisis. The crisis is not merely financial, though that is presently the most potent manifestation of the crisis. But more fundamentally, the crisis in agriculture is a matter of power.}

_{Quite simply, the Government has ceded control over the fate of Irish agriculture to massive multinational supermarket chains, and in so doing it has sacrificed Irish farming and Irish farmers.}

_{It has allowed those supermarket chains to acquire and exercice power, but this power is wielded without responsability, and power without responsability, as Kipling remarked so long ago, has been "the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages".}

_{Are the supermarkets harlots, then? Most definitely.}

_{They are amoral and destructive and they dance only to the bidding of the money markets, as a true harlot does. They owe no loyalty, and they know nothing other than submission to their will to profit. They have no culture, and they are mesmerically clever; for how else can one explain why people shop in stores that destroy Irish towns, refuse to disclose their profit margins, and generally act in ways that are totally contrary to the best interests of the country. Above all, that means acting in ways that are inimical to the interests of farmers and farming.}

_{Ireland has been colonised, one more time. One more time, we are but a pawn in an empire, this time an economic empire.}

_{... "}

_{And we couldn`t agree more}

_{Le Caveau review:}

_{" A modest but intelligent man, with a real passion for wine". That`s how John Wilson, wine writer of the Irish Times, described Pascal Rossignol, when he wrote a piece celebrating the tenth anniversary of Pascal and Geraldine`s shop, which Mr Wilson called "one of the finest wine businesses in Ireland". Right on both counts, John.}

_{Le Caveau is a gem, one of those tardis-like shops that is tiny, and which unveils its wine portfolio  slowly, steadily, delightfully. They import 180 wines from more than 75 producers, and yet they never rest, always looking for new wines, new bargains, new frontiers, most recently their wonderful array of Italian wines.}

_{Talk to Pascal or Geraldine - like her husband, equally modest and intelligent - and they always stress the need for wines to show "character and authenticity". Add in the need for good value in these straitened times, and Le Caveau delivers at every point.}

_{Ten more years, please, ten more glorious years."}

_{John and Sally McKenna}

_{Buy the guide directly from John and Sally here...}