I don’t like Mondays – except when…… If anything could brighten up a miserable Monday in the bleak mid-winter, the prospect of attending the National Off-Licence of the Year Awards, traditionally held in the Members’ Library at the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin, could meet the bill. Irish off-licences are a credit to us. I have a French friend who can’t get over the ‘ousome’ breadth of choice available in Irish offies compared to the limited parochial bias offered him in his local wine shop back home in France. Sponsored by Diageo, this was the 11th year of the National Off-Licence of the Year Awards which seek out nothing short of excellence in the independent off-licence sector. And that’s no idle boast for the winners. These awards take no prisoners and a more than impressive overall appearance coupled with outstanding customer service, hygiene and product range might just get you into the last 50 or so. But in the rarefied atmosphere of the final judging, 25 finalists must additionally undergo a blind-tasting to be skimmed off as the créme de la créme. This year’s awards made me realise how fortunate I am in having three of these finalists – Holland’s of Bray, Molloy’s of Leopardstown and Tom Deveney’s outlet at the crossroads in Dundrum – so close to my door. What came across from talking to the finalists attending these awards on the night was their sheer commitment to their businesses, to their customers and their unswerving focus on the betterment of the independent off-licence trade for retailer and consumer alike. It must be hard to put your marketing mitts up against the ever-encroaching multiple malice. It can’t be easy to put one’s best foot forward to be trodden on after a customer has come into the offie, looked round the shop carefully, sniffed disdainfully and then proclaimed how much cheaper he or she could get this or that brand in Tesco or Dunnes down the road. At my particular table, Munster Regional Winners Declan and Claire Brady of World Wide Wines in Waterford pointed this out. They’d experienced the all-too-frequent cry of ‘Rip-Off’ retailer from one such who didn’t seem to realise that where WWW could offer her a fairly wide selection of product with many extras as part of the package, the local multiple’s price-offer would be solely on the brand she complained about and if the multiple was prepared to lose out on this, they’d damn-well be sure to get her on the way back up the aisle again with some other product she’d place in her basket with an overpriced tag on it to make up the difference. And that’s perhaps the point. The independent off-licence cannot compete on price with the multiples so it is learning not to but to offer a quality of service unrivalled anywhere else in the country instead. It’s up to the consumer to decide that there’s more to quality of life than pricing. The evening itself passed off in a warm glow from the excellent food and wine – how can they dish up this many covers in a non-restaurant setting like the Members Library in the RDS and still make the food both interesting and tasty? The wine, supplied by Gilbeys, included the Lazarus-like superb South African Klein Constantia Muscat Dessert wine, about which Terry Pennington was heard muttering that he’d only been allocated 100 bottles of which 25 had gone on the evening. Not wasted, Terry, not wasted. They found a good home!