A corking good time (From Living Northeast)

A corking good time

11:51am Monday 29th March 2010 in

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Mark and Emma Ryan run Great Northern Wine, a specialist independent wine merchants, with a shop and a lounge for live music and live comedy evenings, in Blossom Gate, Ripon.

Mark, 48, grew up in Ripon. Emma, 34, is from Bradford. They met on the Great Wall of China doing a charity trek for Cancer Research and, married three years ago.

Here, Mark, explains a bit about his love of wine...

Tell us a bit about the business

IT’S very much a team effort. Emma does the admin and I do as I am told, generally all the running around and selling of the wine.

When did you first become interested in wine?

It was when I was working for a speciality food company in London. We were supplying all the top restaurants and hotels, so while waiting to see the chefs, usually just before service, you were offered a glass of something, so wine was the obvious thing.

Is wine tasting a real job?

Most definitely! It is a lot harder than people think.

You have to be very serious about what you taste. At some of the bigger tastings you can be faced with upward of 300 wines so, firstly, you need to be focused on the wines you might be interested in. Then you can taste and evaluate each wine on merit, working out whether it is worth the asking price and if you feel you can sell it confidently for a sensible margin. There are always people who will say that we have a cushy number, but they only see that side of things. They don’t see the real side of the job, like when I am cleaning the toilets after a busy weekend, or the setting up of tables and washing and polishing 300 glasses for our tastings.

Do you get to travel a lot?

I have been very lucky in that the job does allow a bit of travel. It is the best way to get to know the wine-makers and the region and obviously tasting the wines in situ gives you a much better appreciation of them.

All the trips are memorable for one reason or another, but one does stand out and that was a trip to Oporto and the Douro region of Portugal. We visited the vineyards and then tasted the wines and ports of Dirk Niepoort – one of the top ten winemakers in the world. We also enjoyed a Michelin-starred dinner as we were talked through the wines by the man himself. It is very easy to build relationships with the winemakers because by nature it is a very social industry, so if you share the same passion for wine as they do, there is generally that common ground, which is a great starting point.

Does everyone have a palate that can be developed or are some people hopeless cases?

Everyone knows what they like! There is may be too much emphasis placed on what is right and what is wrong in the wine world. We always tell people to drink what they like, but always be prepared to try something different and to learn from those experiences.

What can you offer that supermarkets can’t?

As an independent, we offer a far more interesting range of wines from generally small producers who are all about quality, not quantity. We also have wines from lesser- known regions and wines made from interesting and rarely heard of grape varietals.

Is there such a thing as a good, cheap wine?

There is some very good inexpensive wine on the market, but I am a great believer in, “you get what you pay for”.

Tell us a bit about your social evenings.

We host live music, comedy and wine tasting events.

We try to provide a relaxed experience of quality wine and entertainment, something for the grown-ups. We both spend so much time in the business, we decided that we wanted to create somewhere we and our friends would like to go, so our working life is incorporated into our social life.

We started by trawling through MySpace looking for great musicians. If we liked them, we booked them, invited customers along and people seemed to enjoy it.

Both the music and comedy events have become really successful.

Any major changes in the industry?

There are major changes happening in the industry at the moment, brought on by the current financial climate and the Government’s insistence on increasing duty on alcohol. Despite the vast majority of voters who think alcohol tax is too high, the trade and ordinary drinkers are seen as the golden goose that keeps laying. That said, I think it is the time of the independent again, because we have the ability to diversify.

Mark recommends wines to complement some of the recipes in LIving Magazine Food and Drink Supplement...

Pan-fried duck with rhubarb and ginger sauce: In general, you need a rich gamey red with duck. The inclusion of the rhubarb and ginger it makes it interesting so I would go for Ferreri, Nero d’Avola, 2007, Sicily. £12.99, a juicy, eminently drinkable wine that exudes class. This pure Nero d’Avola spends only a short time in oak which preserves the intense concentrated fruit and plum-pudding texture, with the oak lending hints of vanilla and toast.

Red Thai bean curry: A difficult one. Most reds struggle with Thai food. Old world reds are probably best they are a little more sympathetic, not as powerful and juicy. I would choose Pousio Tinto, 2008, Alentejano, Portugal. Made from Syrah, Trincadeira and Alicante Bouchet.

Linguine with clams and courgettes: A light to medium-bodied, dry white. Brick Road, Chardonnay, 2009, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Oysters Kilpatrick (with Worcestershire sauce): A crisp dry white or Champagne.

You could try Clos Henri, Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand. £13.99.

Double chocolate cheesecake: Niepoort, 10-year-old Tawny Port. £26.99.

What is your favourite wine at the moment?

Good value: Domaine de Tourelles, 2006, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. £8.99

Splashing out: Martinez Lacuesta, Ventilla 71, 2005, Rioja, Spain. £19.99

Great Northern Wine,

Blossom Gate, Ripon HG4 2AJ. Tel: 01765-606767.

Details of upcoming music, comedy and wine tasting evenings on greatnorthernwine.co.uk.