When Cassidy Wines booked into the Westbury Hotel, Dublin, to celebrate its 30th anniversary with a dinner for its suppliers and its guests, the company could hardly have timed it better. The booking date turned out to be very nearly true to the exact day that the company was incorporated in May 1977.
A portfolio tasting had already taken place earlier in the afternoon which witnessed 20 principals flying in from as far afield as Chile to show their wines. At the dinner later that evening, Cassidy Wines Managing Director Niel Cassidy told the 100 guests who’d arrived to break bread with the company that it had been Niels father Kevin who started off the whole thing when he began importing wine from Italy. This followed Kevin’s picking up on dark mutterings that there was no decent Italian wine in Ireland back then.
Problem for Kevin was where to find a good Italian wine supplier. Problem solved when he was introduced to the Tomasi family.
Thus began a 30-year association with the Tomasis (Amarone), initially with Daniel and later through Daniel’s son Gian Carlo and his wife Francesca.
Niel himself joined the company in 1983 and over the years has witnessed the huge growth in wine consumption.
Back then in 1977 we consumed two litres per head of wine, he told his guests.
Despite the fact that some 75 per cent of the Irish wine market is from the New World, there was much to be admired from the Old World, pointed out Niel.
And he was right. Diners raved about the spectacular dessert wine in Chateau de Fesles Bonnezeaux.
Guest speaker for the evening was none other than Senator Feargal Quinn who reminisced about Superquinn’s relationship with Cassidy Wines from way way back - practically at the start, when Superquinn became the first supermarket to buy from the company’s steadily growing wine list.
Now, 30 years later, the comany can boast a wine list of 300 and a staff of 24 - and Superquinn�s still buying from them….